Business Reengineering

The Principles of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) are as follows:

• Organising around outcomes instead of tasks
• Employees who make use of the output of a process should carry out the process
• Include the processing of information part of a process into the work that the information is produced from
• Resources which are not centred geographically should be treated as if they are centralised
• Strive to integrate activities parallel to each other and not just their results
• Decision making should be placed where the work is being done with control built into the process
• Information should only be captured at the source and once only

BPR for SMEs

Although BPR methodology has been widely accepted, it is more often than not targeted and implemented by large organisations.

And while BPR in large organisations is popular and there have been a lot of publicised successful implementations in large organisations, Logic Figures focuses solely on the implementation of BPRs for SMEs­. The process is vastly different because most SMEs have limited resources, both financial and human even though they play a major role in the development of our economy.

Because SMEs are limited in human, financial as well as material resources there is always the question as to whether SMEs have the financial backbone to implement a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) project successfully.

We’re here to help.

We believe that SMEs can apply the principles of reengineering to their business no matter the size, but that small enterprises need to ensure that they do not make the same mistakes that large organisations make such as dividing the business into functions that are performed instead of processes.

Implementing BPR

Logic Figures suggests that the following steps should be considered by organisations in the process of undergoing BPR implementations

• Study the organisation and how it operates.
• Implement the use of a methodology.
• An explicitly defined vision of the organisation.
• Explicitly defining the objectives of the process.
• Identifying processes that affect a large part of the organisation.
• Extensively documenting and measuring processes before they are redesigned.
• Considering using IT/other tech to leverage the redesigned processes.
• Making sure that managers are involved with the project.
• Take employees into consideration and provide support for them.
• Making sure there is an evaluation after the project has been implemented.
• Protect the company’s niche. Study the market for threats and the actions of competitors.
• Focus on the customer instead of on reducing cost alone as this can adversely affect the company’s capabilities.
• Take advantage of the company’s small size, as it is easier for smaller organisations to change quickly.

Many SMEs have outdated processes in place that have not evolved to take advantage of technology. In some cases, processes have carried on for many years with no one asking why a process still exists even when the purpose for the way the process is run is no longer valid.