Business process re-engineering in the small firm: A case study

INFOR, Feb 1996 by Hale, Andrea J, Cragg, Paul B

The processes that were re-engineered covered a wide proportion of the business as a whole but affected each division to varying degrees. Both Electronics and Manufacturing had been changed entirely, whereas Trading had adopted the teambuilding but changes had affected mainly the customer service part of their business. The only area that had not been affected to the same degree was the Auckland division, but the firm had similar plans for that branch in the future.

7.2 Differences to the Literature

There was no development of process objectives during the planning for BPR, rather management just looked at the company's long term mission statement, and formulated their plan from that. This did not appear to have a significant effect on the success of the project. As the whole business was being affected, the long term plan may have been adequate as the next step was the definition of essential or valueadding tasks and the allocation of these to each employee.

The role restructuring did not include an initial definition stage, where the processes as they existed at the time were analysed, documented and measured before going ahead with the planned reengineering. Without this step, the effects of the project can not be determined with great certainty, even after implementation, as the situation prior to reengineering was not known (I/S Analyzer, 1993). This is supported by the managing director's statement that the profitability and employee turnover have been steadily increasing "since we began measuring." Had the company adequately measured and analyzed the process undergoing change prior to that change, they would have had a more complete view of the success of the project.

8. CONCLUSIONS

The aim of looking at the approach of a small firm in applying BPR was to provide an initial indication of the possibility (and necessity) of developing a methodology specifically for the small firm. The management of the chosen firm implemented a culture of team-building and continuous improvement after the redesign of their processes.

A number of steps outlined by Davenport & Short (1990) appear in the case company's methodology for role restructuring. The firm did not identify and document processes before reengineering. However this did not appear to be a hindrance to the changes in the different divisions, Nor did the absence of formal alignment of the reengineering project with the business strategy appear to have much significance on the success of that project. This is considerably different to the recommendations for large organizations for whom strategic alignment is considered to be an essential step of any BPR effort (Davidson 1993, Luftman et al 1993, Grover et al 1993).

Among other factors already discussed, the extent of the business included in the reengineering appeared to contribute to the success of the project, as the whole organization was going through similar changes. This is also consistent with the literature. The success appears to be largely attributable to the high level of management support of the project. Their extensive involvement and concern in ensuring that the employees gain a feeling of ownership of the processes that they are responsible for is highly recommended in the literature. Although there were problems with acceptance at one of the divisions, management provided adequate support and managed to bring that division back to profitability.