- 20 Marks
BMIS – L1 – QE6 – Introduction to information technology and information systems
Question
Nexlify is a large manufacturing firm, dealing in several product lines. Currently, there are plans to explore other foreign markets for its products. 40 staff are tasked with matching goods received notes with orders and then with invoices. It has been observed that an appreciable length of time is spent trying to find why some of the set of three documents do not agree. While some managers recommend the computerisation of the existing process to facilitate matching, others propose the use of Business Process Re-engineering.
(a) Explain Business Process Re-engineering.
(b) State FIVE characteristics of a re-engineered business process.
Answer
(a). Business process re-engineering (BPR) is the fundamental re-thinking and radical design of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed.
BPR asks “why do we do what we do? “Without making any assumptions or looking back to what has always been done in the past.
It should also achieve very high performance and not just marginal incremental improvement
(b). Characteristics of re-engineered business process include:
- Several jobs are often combined into one.
- Workers are able to make decisions.
- The steps in the process are performed in a logical order.
- Work is performed where it makes most sense.
- Checks and controls may be reduced, and quality ‘built – in ‘.
- Tags: BPR, Business Process Re-engineering, Process Characteristics
- Level: Level 1
- Uploader: Samuel Duah