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Business process engineering or Business process reengineering is a technique to
help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically
improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors.
A key stimulus for reengineering has been the continuing development and deployment
of sophisticated information systems and networks. The organizations are using this
technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current
ways of doing work.
Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, reengineering
focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps and procedures that
govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs
of particular customers or markets. As a structured ordering of work steps across
time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measured,
modeled, and improved. It can also be completely redesigned or eliminated altogether.
Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns an organization's core business
processes with the aim of achieving dramatic improvements in critical performance
measures, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.
Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented
into sub processes and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional
areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance
of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of
sub processes can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements
if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason,
reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve
the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive
for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's
work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts
that focus on functional or incremental improvement.
The methodologies for implementing BPR solutions are based on some basic principles
and elements which are as follows:
1. Envision new processes
- Secure management support
- Identify rseengineering opportunities
- Identify enabling technologies
- Align with corporate strategy
2. Initiating change
- Set up reengineering team
- Outline performance goals
3. Process diagnosis
- Describe existing processes
- Uncover pathologies in existing processes
4. Process redesign
- Develop alternative process scenarios
- Develop new process design
- Design HR architecture
- Select IT platform
- Develop overall blueprint and gather feedback
5. Reconstruction
- Develop/install IT solution
- Establish process changes
6. Process monitoring
- Performance measurement, including time, quality, cost, IT performance
- Link to continuous improvement
Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing and managing resources
to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.
The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals
and objectives while honoring the project constraints. Typical constraints are scope,
time and budget. The secondary—and more ambitious—challenge is to optimize the allocation
and integration of inputs necessary to meet pre-defined objectives.
Summitworks’s Consultants are experienced project management practitioners, with
proven track records managing projects of all sizes.
You can rely on SummitWorks’s consultants’ years of experience to develop project
management systems appropriate to your organization’s size, industry, products and
services to:
- Optimize resource allocation
- Allow for greater growth with existing resources
- Develop basic planning and scheduling
- Identify and manage risks
- Be proactive in approach, rather reacting on a daily basis
SummitWorks’s global team of business and project management practitioners provide
support at all levels in achieving business objectives through:
- Project start-up assistance
- Project risk assessments
- Project rescue & recovery
- Project teambuilding
Summitworks works with clients to develop project management systems, policies,
guidelines and templates unique and appropriate for their products, services, projects
and required level of sophistication
Information architecture (IA) is the art of expressing a model or concept of information
used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these
activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user
interactions, database development, programming, technical writing, enterprise architecture,
and critical system software design.
Information architecture is the term used to describe the structure of a system,
i.e. the way information is grouped, the navigation methods and terminology used
within the system.
Information architecture is most commonly associated with websites and intranets,
but it can be used in the context of any information structures or computer systems.
Information architecture is often a combination of the following:
- Business/Context: Understanding an organization’s business objectives, politics,
culture, technology, resources and constraints is essential before considering development
of the information architecture.
- Techniques for understanding context include:
- Reading existing documentation
- Mission statements, organization charts, previous research and vision documents
are a quick way of building up an understanding of the context in which the system
must work.
- Stakeholder interviews
- Speaking to stakeholders provides valuable insight into business context and can
unearth previously unknown objectives and issues
- An effective information architecture comes from understanding business objectives
and constraints, the content, and the requirements of the people that will use the
site.
2. Content
The most effective method for understanding the quantity and quality of content
(i.e. functionality and information) proposed for a system is to conduct a content
inventory.
Content inventories identify all of the proposed content for a system, where the
content currently resides, who owns it and any existing relationships between content.
Content inventories are also commonly used to aid the process of migrating content
between the old and new systems.
3. Users
An effective information architecture must reflect the way people think about the
subject matter.
Business intelligence (BI) refers to skills, technologies, applications and practices
used to help a business acquire a better understanding of its commercial context.
BI applications provide historical, current, and predictive views of business operations.
Common functions of business intelligence applications are reporting, data mining,
business performance management, benchmarks and predictive analytics. Business intelligence
often aims to support better business decision-making. Thus, a BI system can be
called a decision support system (DSS).
The major thrust of business intelligence theory looks at certain factors to make
high quality decisions. These factors include customers, competitors, business partners,
economic environment and internal operations. Here is some more information on how
these factors help businesses make quality decisions.
The five key stages of Business Intelligence are:
1) Data Sourcing
Business Intelligence is about extracting information from multiple sources of data.
The data might be: text documents - e.g. memos or reports or email messages; photographs
and images; sounds; formatted tables; web pages and URL lists. The key to data sourcing
is to obtain the information in electronic form. Typical sources of data might include:
scanners; digital cameras; database queries; web searches; computer file access.
2) Data analysis
Business Intelligence is about synthesizing useful knowledge from collections of
data. It is about estimating current trends, integrating and summarizing disparate
information, validating models of understanding, and predicting missing information
or future trends. This process of data analysis is also called data mining or knowledge
discovery.
3) Situation Awareness
Business Intelligence is about filtering out irrelevant information, and setting
the remaining information in the context of the business and its environment. The
user needs the key items of information relevant to his or her needs, and summaries
that are syntheses of all the relevant data (market forces, government policy etc.).
Situation awareness is the grasp of the context in which to understand and make
decisions. Algorithms for situation assessment provide such syntheses automatically.
4) Risk Assessment
Business Intelligence is about discovering what plausible actions might be taken,
or decisions made, at different times. It is about helping you weigh up the current
and future risk, cost or benefit of taking one action over another, or making one
decision versus another. It is about inferring and summarizing your best options
or choices.
5) Decision Support
Business Intelligence is about using information wisely. It aims to provide warning
you of important events, such as takeovers, market changes, and poor staff performance,
so that you can take preventative steps. It seeks to help you analyze and make better
business decisions, to improve sales or customer satisfaction or staff morale. It
presents the information you need, when you need it.
Corporate Strategy is the determination of the basic long-term goals and objectives
of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources
necessary for carrying out these goals.
Corporate Strategy involves:
- Examination of the current and anticipated factors associated with customers and
competitors (external environment) and the firm itself (internal environment)
- Envisioning a new or effective role for the firm in a creative manner, and
- Aligning policies, practices, and resources to realize that vision.
Corporate IT practices and procedures enable you to find an answer to the below
queries
- Do your projects support corporate strategy?
- Does IT align with business goals?
- Are critical resources being used efficiently?
- Can the existing IT infrastructure support numerous business processes?
- Are projects managed in a consistent manner?
- Can projects be consolidated?
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