The role of information technology in business process reengineering

IT development is largely determined not only by internal factors, scientific and technical research and development, but also external, for example, dominant management theories, which are designed to theoretically substantiate practical measures to improve the performance of organizations of different profiles. One of the latest trends in this area is called the “Business Process Reengineering”. The English term “reengineering” in Russian is “perestroika”, but due to the specific “loading” of this concept for the Russian reader, in my opinion, it is preferable to leave a direct copy of the English “reengineering”. The content of this concept is quite capacious and is deciphered on many pages of publications on this topic on management theory. The relevance of considering the essence of reengineering - business in the pages of this article is explained by the key role in this IT process.

According to the author of the term, “reengineering” M. Halemer, the modern business world is transformed too quickly. Companies are not able to adequately rebuild their strategy and tactics in response to changes in technology, distribution of customer needs, based on the principles of organization outlined by the classic bourgeois political economy. A. Smith in the work "The Wealth of the Nation" (1776). The division of labor, as the basis of the labor process, was later embodied in the Henry Ford pipeline and the principles of managing large companies of Alfred Sloan. The conditions of rapid growth of the first decades of industrial development in Western countries were well matched by the pyramidal structure of an organization with multiple levels of government. This kind of structure implied a steady, growing demand for products (automobiles, household appliances, etc.) on the part of the consumer who did not have much choice. However, today the situation has changed dramatically. Nothing can be predicted for a sufficiently long period - neither the emergence of new technologies, nor the life cycle of products and services, nor the nature of competition. In developed countries, the buyer-seller relationship has changed significantly. Seller no longer dominates. It is consumers who tell suppliers what and when they want to receive and how much they will pay for it. There is no longer such a thing as “customer at all”, there is only “this customer” with whom at a particular moment they are dealing. The mass market has broken into pieces, some of them are so small that they hold only one customer. Many factors have contributed to the change in the balance of power in favor of the consumer. The consumer today has a much larger selection of similar goods and services, including due to the information richness of the market. In addition, a large consumer can acquire the technology he needs (for example, a desktop publishing complex) and not go anywhere. The principle begins to act: "Do as I need, or I will do it myself." Intense competition has changed almost the entire market. The same goods compete on completely different grounds: in one market - on the basis of price, on the other - on the basis of choice, on the third - on quality and additional services. With the resolution of border trade barriers, this kind of competition has become international.
Thus, the world of modern business has changed so much that organizations created to work in the former stable conditions cannot adapt to the new environment without improving the principles of activity and structure. It is in this context that reengineering can be interpreted as "a fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of the business process to achieve fundamental improvements in today's main performance indicators, such as cost, quality, services and speed." Another definition of reengineering is “the ways in which an organization can achieve radical changes that affect the cost, life cycle of products, services, quality, methods, and technologies that treat a business as a series of customer-oriented processes, and not as a series of oriented functions. "
Process change is made possible through the use of information technology (IT). However, the company in which they are first looking for problems and then looking for technologies to solve them, is doomed to lag IT in reengineering, it requires inductive thinking, the ability to first recognize the right solution, and then look for means to implement it. The main mistake of most companies is that they view IT through the prism of existing processes. They ask: "How can we use new technological capabilities to improve what we are doing now?", Instead of asking: "How can we use technology to do things we have not done?" After all, reengineering is the use of the latest technical innovations to achieve completely new business goals.
Naturally, IT plays its part in changing business processes along with other major factors determining the business development strategy - administration, pricing, technological innovations, etc.
Examples of how new IT is changing the forms of work are shown in the table below:


The positive conditions for the effective use of reengineering include the following:
- the probability of success of reengineering largely depends on the commitment of this idea from all the top managers of the company. The project should be implemented under the control of the main manager;
- more chances are not success in those organizations that realistically assess the goals of reengineering and the expected results, have an idea of ​​the timing, effort and finance necessary for its implementation;
- as part of the team that prepares the project of reengineering and then monitors its implementation, should be employees who have the authority and are able to create an atmosphere of cooperation;
- projects that are considered in terms of and expansion, have a greater chance of success, because they generate more enthusiasm and less resistance;
- the success of reengineering also depends on how well the management and ordinary employees of the company understand how to achieve strategic goals;
- solid and skillful management is very important;
- The project must have its own budget, especially if it is planned to use IT intensively.
Any restructuring can be used to accept your own idleness and incompetence. Actually reengineering is not the first technology, the use of which serves to save from unpleasant worries. Reengineering is spreading because it meets the many desires and needs of more people.

Literature
Popov E.V., Shapot MD Business process reengineering and intellectual modeling - materials of the seminar “Dynamic intelligent systems in management and modeling” - M: CRD, 1996.
Chapot MD Business process reengineering support tools. - Workshop materials. M: CRD, 1996.
')

The article 2-3 years ago was published in a book (one of the collections of articles by students of technical specialties). To my shame I do not remember the exact name. Author V.V. Terekhov

Thanks for attention!