Chapter 4 - Basic Principles of Business Process Management

Total quality management and business process re-engineering: A study of incremental and radical approaches to change management at BTNI

Purpose – In today's height of competition, business process management (BPM) is regarded as best practice management principle that can assist companies in sustaining competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to strengthen theory building of BPM in fostering sustainable competitive advantage based on dynamic capability theory. Design/methodology/approach – BPM owes its existence to total quality management (TQM) and business process reengineering and has gained importance as an enabler to coordinate the intricacies of the organisations. Past researches on BPM have been largely conceptual using case studies with scarce evidence for theory building. Findings – Based on the review of literature, the study of BPM can be studied based on dynamic capability theory. Originality/value – The outcome of this paper would add value to theory building for BPM.

Malaysian construction sector in 2010 contributed five per cent to the Malaysia gross domestic product (GDP); the rate is very attractive to business investment. However this sector is considered to be responsible for high pollution level, climate changes and other environmental threats. All businesses seek to obtain local and global competitive advantages, corporate citizenship and public relation. These advantages can be achieved by improving business performance to be more people- or/and environment-friendly. This is one of the reasons for a construction company to improve its environmental management system (EMS) via Project Environmental Management. This includes the processes required to ensure that the impacts of the project execution to the surrounding environment will remain within the limits stated in the legal permits. The shortest way to improve business EMS is to manage and reengineer its process, thus improving its public image. The aim of this paper is to present literature review about characteristics, drivers, benefits, and barriers related to EMS, to Business Processes Management (BPM) and Business Processes Reengineering (BPR). This paper also suggests a Process Oriented Environmental Management System (PO-EMS) framework based on EMS of ISO14001, BPM and BPR.

Total quality management versus business process re-engineering

This study examined the potential of adapting the software Capability Maturity Model as a process improvement paradigm within the context of industrial process improvement. Traditional methods of process improvement incorporate some facets of Total Quality Management (TQM), business process improvement (BPI), business process reengineering (BPR), business process management (BPM), benchmarking, regulation, legislation, Six Sigma, and standards. Hypothesis testing showed two statistically significant outcomes regarding the first and the fifth maturity levels reflecting ad hoc processes and optimized processes, respectively.

Business process re‐engineering is a hot topic around management and information systems areas. However, the verdict of the new idea is not clear and reports of successful cases are not numerous. Analyses the definitions and characteristics of business process re‐engineering (BPR). Reports on a literature survey on the critical failure reasons and success factors. Recognizes that the lack of clear concepts and understanding of BPR definitions creates many problems and, therefore, compares the BPR effort with other improvement programmes such as automation, downsizing, total quality management (TQM) for a better understanding of BPR. Suggests a methodology which can be used as general guidelines for management and re‐engineers in performing BPR to enhance success for BPR efforts.

Whereas BPR (Business Process Re-engineering or Business Process Re-design) is being offered as a means by which organizations may be able to respond to the challenge of increased competition, Process Improvement, on the other hand aims to improve productivity, product quality and competitive advantage. Fundamentally, both activities offer a means by which organizations may be able to deal with a rapidly changing business environment, through internal change. BPR extends the concept of process change (albeit rapid change through innovation) to include changes to the basic assumptions and principles of management. The results, however are not positive: estimates of between 50 and 70% of firms fail to achieve the expected dramatic gains from BPR. An alternative to BPR for software development organizations is Process Assessment and Process Improvement. This paper presents a Process/Product Quality Model which incorporates three separate evaluations: process conformance, process effectiveness and product quality as a means of evaluating ‘what is’, i.e. the current status of activities, within a software development organization. The model aims to identify possible areas for process improvement and to uncover all relevant issues which may affect attempts to implement improvement initiatives. Preliminary findings from a set of case studies conducted within software development organizations in Australia are presented in support of the usefulness of the model.

Purpose - The researcher investigates the extent to which knowledge sharing moderates the relationship between knowledge creation and business process re-engineering (BPR) outcomes of financial services offered by financial institutions in Uganda. Design/Methodology - The study adopted cross-sectional survey design to collect data at one point in time using self-administered questionnaire to examine the relationship between knowledge creation and business processes. The study at first used statistical package for social scientists to establish clusters among the surveyed financial services and later a model was derived using R programming software to test for knowledge creation and business process re-engineering performance outcomes. Findings - The study found a significant conditional effect of knowledge sharing on knowledge creation and business process re-engineering outcomes. Implying that investment in knowledge sharing creates awareness about the financial services outcomes of financial institutions using business process re-engineering to provide financial services. Originality - This study contributes to business process re-engineering literature by advancing the idea that BPR is an important economic resource that enhanced through instituting knowledge creation and sharing practices in a complex environment. Ideally, creating and sharing knowledge is one of the drivers of customer value, efficiency, and effectiveness of financial services in financial institutions. Practical Implications - Managers of financial institutions need to pay keen interest in managing business processes using relevant knowledge and transforming in new products, new processes, and new markets to boost business process re-engineering outcomes by building a strong knowledge creation system through training and development programs for senior managers.

For a number of different reasons, some more rational than others, public sector management has often fallen for the allure of the “quick fix” promised by the latest managerial fashion. Although it is commonly accepted that complex problems rarely, if ever, have simple solutions − this has not hindered public organizations from eagerly experimenting with trendy, increasingly radical, managerial practices. More often than not, these experiences, when weighed on the background of the original promises and eventual outcomes, prove to be utter failures. In order to clarify the reasons behind this pattern of failure, this article deconstructs two of the most notable recent managerial fashions: Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Process Reengineering (BPR). It proposes that management fashions fail to lead to effective and productive organizational change primarily due to the fact that their logical construct, which relies on over-dramatization and oversimplification of organizational realities, is at odds with the operational complexities of public sector management. In particular, they fail to account for politics. To this extent, then, they are more likely to be destructive than productive when zealously adopted in public service.

Information System is one of the key domain in which lot of research has been done in the past few years. Applying Information systems to heterogeneous and distributed environments is one of the current research areas. Business Process Management Systems is the information systems which deal with the administration of tasks in the business processes, organizational structures, or in the related context. The Workflow Management system, the early idea of BPM, controls the workflow in an organization, data transfer, and integration of legacy information systems with existing programs and program modules, delegation of business tasks. Offering task management services especially modeling of business processes and underlying organizations, BPM serves it meaning and incorporates the WFM system. BPM supporting the use of knowledge concerning the awareness/unawareness of integrated software, and analysis of processes and organizational structure in terms of verification, modification, evaluation are key management in BPM system I.INTRODUCTION TO BPM: Combination of corporate restructuring and mergers urged the department and processes to be automated and linked together. Unfortunately it created largely disconnected spaghetti of systems and applications. Business Process Management (BPM) was born from a strong need to streamline internal processes and connections between both internal and external functions. It provides ability to model, monitor, manage and manipulate processes quickly in response to changes in strategy and market forces. BPM is an extension of classical Work Flow Management (WFM) systems and approaches. BPM delivers the maximum utility of legacy system. It is a method for revolutionizing the way the work moves throughout an organization. II.COMPONENTS OF BPM: The four key elements in Business Process Management are: Process modeling, Process rule, Process management, and Process performance analytics. Process modeling: Process modeling describes the flow of information (business process).It helps in building a model of process and mapping into an implementation frame work. Modeling requires a consistent analysis and representation of the processes. It forms the basis for the userspecific process environment. Process Rule: Process Rule is a heart of the BPM. It involves execution of discrete steps & integration of information. A process rules engine is used for this purpose. The engine is to monitor and manage the given steps by providing a flow control over the business process. If a process fails or delayed, a compensated action can be done to rectify. Process Management: Process Management is to correlate business/application events to fundamental business metrics .It enables the organization to monitor and optimize the business process. Once the process has been analyzed, modeled and the associated rules are formed. The next stage involves the visualization and management. Visualization means transaction data ranging from holistic to process-state or client state specific rules. Process Performance Analytics: Process Performance Analytics is a transition data source available for sophisticated management analytics .This data should be available on a retrospective or real-time basis. It should answer to one of the most difficult question like “how much does it cost to process a specific transaction?” By this way BPM mainly addresses four components. They are Work Flow Management, Content and records management Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business Activity monitoring (BAM). III.RELEVENCE TO SYSTEM INTEGRATION: BPM can be fitted easily on the top of existing IT system. It is the Process rules that governs all the happenings and optimizes the process. BPM will not be able to work without the connectivity provided by the EAI layer. EAI layer provides BPM to gain and measure the value from the investment. On the other hand, BPM provides value to the EAI technology layer of Information technology. BPM layer offers business management the view of the message processing layer. It is used to unlock the value of the information held in the integration layer. It is also used to gather data of every transaction in the lifecycle. IV.APPLICATION OF BPM: BPM can be applied to any application which needs these advantages. BPM reduces unnecessary high losses in time critical transactions, helps to provide any critical information, practical application yield fast ROI ,better control over the information, identifying and maximizing the benefits faster, better analysis and tracking, provides enterprise-wide visibility of business processes, improve the effectiveness of the core operations, provides ability to coordinate interactions between information systems, business process and the people, flexible and easily changed by non-technical business people.

Companies often use business process management as a discipline to improve process stages and achieve company goals and objectives.One widely recognized technique for improving processes is business process reengineering, which is sometimes known as BPR.Despite the inherent risks, companies often use business process reengineering (BPR) to improve processes and achieve desired goals and objectives within a certain timeframe.This study aims to examine business process reengineering to improve local government performance.We conducted this research by evaluating the literature using bibliometric analysis from Scopus and Program R Studio.The findings suggest that business process reengineering can improve local government performance.These findings are expected to provide valuable insights for stakeholders seeking to improve local government performance.

The paper is a reflection on the nature of business processes and the way which their nature necessarily manifests itself in business process modeling methodologies and languages. Respecting the nature of business processes is an essential condition for the meaningfulness of a process model. The importance of this topic is also emphasized by the fact that not all methodologies or languages respect the nature of business processes sufficiently. The paper briefly summarizes the main facts about and principles of business process management and points out the main natural features of business processes which have to be necessarily respected in modeling methodologies and languages. Subsequently, their main resulting features are analyzed in mutual relationships by examples from MMABP methodology. The paper also contains some critical reflection of current process modeling approaches and BPMN language in occasional contexts.

Enterprise resource planning: A taxonomy of critical factors

It is generally assumed in the popular management literature that the TQM (total quality management) and BPR (business process re‐engineering) movements are the two latest expressions of an increasing sophistication in management techniques and principles. Following this logic it only is a matter of time before they will be superseded by yet another management innovation. This paper aims to explode this ‘beyond’ myth by exposing the underlying logic of TQM and BPR implementation patterns in two case companies. Empirical findings will be related back to critical approaches to the study of TQM and BPR. Concrete suggestions as to how to move beyond the quick fix managerial mode will be proposed. Our approach is intended to provide a counterweight to the unreflective discourse surrounding TQM and BPR by breaking open the naturalness of this discourse. It supplies a few landmarks for managers and researchers to take a step back, hesitate, and reflect on the phenomenon of planned organizational change.

The new faces of total quality in Europe and the US