IFSM 300 Stage 2-Assignment

Optimizing Business Processes

Companies are continually required to evaluate and revise their business

processes to address customer demands for better products and services.

Since customers often have many alternative sources, businesses are

forced to remain competitive. As they strive to improve their business

processes, many organizations begin with continuous process

improvement. Using the continuous process improvement model,

organizations document and measure their current processes, make

incremental changes, and measure the results of the changed processes.

The result is a continuous loop of making improvements and measuring

the results. This method is used effectively for gradual and incremental

change.

There are factors that sometimes force an organization to make a more

dramatic change. When new technologies become available or are

implemented by the competition, they drive the need for accelerated

implementation of changes in business processes—either to create or

maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Businesses have an

ever‐increasing number and variety of competitors requiring them to be

constantly aware of outdated processes and change accordingly—just to

stay in business. The rate of change is driving the need to make

improvements more quickly than ever. Slow process change does not

meet the needs in today's marketplace. Therefore, many companies have

implemented business process reengineering (BPR) initiatives to achieve

rapid change and dramatic improvements.

Learning Resource

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BPR approaches the problem from a different perspective than is used

with continuous process improvement. It starts with a clean slate and

asks questions such as: What do the customers want/expect? How do

best‐in‐class companies perform the process? How can new technology

enhance the process? What should the process look like? Then, a new

process can be defined, rather than just making incremental changes to

the original process. When considering what technologies and what

systems would benefit an organization, the leaders of the organization

must ensure that the processes to be implemented or supplemented by

the system are performed in an efficient and effective manner—or

systems will be implemented that just automate inefficient or ineffective

processes. Sometimes this is referred to as "paving the cowpaths." While

BPR must be carried out by the process owners within the organization, it

is frequently the IT department that develops the expertise in the BPR

process, and it is the chief information officer who must advocate for

process optimization prior to implementation of automation.

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