Business Process Engineering: Analysis of Chen (2001) and BPR Concepts

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of business process engineering (BPR), focusing on the analysis of the Yih-Chang Chen (2001) article, "Empirical Modelling for Participative Business Process Reengineering." The essay explores the significance of BPR in modern business, highlighting its impact on management practices and organizational processes. It discusses the core concepts of BPR, including process redesign, the role of IT, and the importance of customer orientation. The author examines the evolution of BPR, its principles, and the factors influencing its success and failure. The essay also delves into the challenges of implementing BPR, such as employee resistance and the effective adaptation of IT. Furthermore, the essay emphasizes the importance of participative approaches in BPR, highlighting the need for communication, evaluation, and understanding of human factors. The essay concludes by underscoring the dynamic nature of business processes and the need for continuous iteration and adaptation to achieve business goals.

Running head: BUSINESS PROCESS ENGINEERING
BUSINESS PROCESS ENGINEERING
Name of student
Name of university
Author’s note:

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Introduction
This essay aims to debate the topic business process engineering and provide some
insight using the reviewing of article. The Yih-Chang Chen (2001) “Empirical Modelling for
Participative Business Process Reengineering” article has been chosen for reviewing. The
article offers an idea regarding the business process engineering of business in the present
world with some idea about the modifications that can be done for improving the business
processes.
Discussion
The authors presents the evidence about the growth of the business process
engineering in the present world as it is used extensively in the businesses and the industries
and the academy community as it could probably modify the management practices and the
working processes of the organisations in the long run (Feldmann 2013). Furthermore, it has
been considered that all the aspects of the BPR is significant for the organisations and it could
be a problematic aspect for the businesses. All the assumptions of BPR along with the
principles is explored by the authors and the significant factors were identified that could
affect the successes and the failures. In the recent times regarding the BPR, significant
theories has been raised regarding the BPR. These debates have been highlighted by the
authors in the article. According to Jeston (2014), the redesign of core business process can
be associated with a business process engineering, operating under smarter environment or
the modern engineering of the industries. The common characteristics emphasises on
employment of the IT technology in the modern business process that aims to improve the
operations of the business. Basically, major aspects associated with any BPR includes the
discovery of the operations of business process, the procedures of redesigning of process for
mitigating the issues regarding the wasted or else the redundant effort along with the
improvement of the effectiveness and procedures of implementing the modifications in
process to gain extensive competitiveness. Basic idea of BPR, according to the authors, is
associated with the pursue of developing innovative methods of the task organising,
organising the people and then perform the redesigning of the systems of the IT for providing
significant support for all the processes and the assist in the realisation of the business goals.
The authors claim that the process that requires engineering is denoted as the business
process. According to Hammer (2015), the processes of the businesses in any object oriented
manner is referred as the stages of the sequences that modifies the present circumstances of

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business objects and the moreover create the significant events in business. However, the
customer oriented business style is the major intention of any business. Hence, the outputs of
the business processes should not only assist in the achieving the company objectives,
keeping in mind the fulfilling of all the requirements of the customers. The authors claim that
the origin of the aspect of the reengineering was first discovered in nineteenth century,
residing the management theories (Chang 2016). According to the authors, the BPR was first
observed as significant influence of the BPR majorly out in market by 1960. The organisation
went through huge alterations in the business processes during the extensive competition of
the business market as these organisations utilised the primitive processes (Habib 2013). The
authors claim that it was evident from the fact of the developments in the business processes
of the organisations that the researches have offered the correct insight regarding the business
process reengineering. The widened significance of the innovative BPR and the modification
in the use of the IT technology is broadly considered by the organisations. Currently, with the
introduction of the developed information technology has provided significant support to the
redesign of the structure and the innovative methods for the enterprises. According to several
researches, the distinct tasks are now combined for increasing the efficiency of the business
processes (Laguna and Marklund 2018). The popularity of the BPR is majorly due to
mechanism that alters the environment of the business competition of the businesses in the
present world against any company even though the enhancement and adapting to the
innovative features is executed by the enterprises.
The crucial concepts of the BPR are evident and it is legitimate. The BPR suggests the
innovative procedures for scheduling the tasks, provide effective management of the officials
and achieving all the goals of any organisations with the respect to the goals (Harmon 2014).
The analysis are critically analysed and then the redesigning for the achievements and the
benefits. According to the authors, the BPR is predicted to provide the:
 Orientation of the goals and the process
 Analysis of the factors of exploitation in the information technology
 Offers the radical alteration and then challenges the assumptions
 Modification of the organisation by effective re-structuring
This is evident from these facts that the major goals of the companies that are intended to be
achieved in any organisation by the calculation of the elimination of the unnecessary and the
redundant processes. There are several reasons behind the notion of considering the changes

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in the BPR is the radical change rather than an incremental one. As an instance, the
competition and the innovation are observed to be dynamic, therefore, the organisations have
to be prepared efficiently while implementing the changes and then face the developments
efficiently. Secondly, it can be observed that the changes that that are influenced radically
drives the organisational shape of any organisation by depending on the present structures.
According to Trkman (2013), these radical alterations offers the innovative insights in any
organisations. Furthermore, it has been observed that the DSS, TQM and the BPR are not
similar in the minor issues, but yet it has several aspects in common, which are:
 Improvement of the business operations
 Focus on the business processing
 Providing the hierarchical solutions to the management
While the assessment of the problems is done with the respect to the BPR implementation in
any organisation, it is reported that almost 30% of the BPR projects has been successful
(Huang et al. 2015). Some of the perceived factors that reveals the issues regarding the
problems are the:
 Resistance of the employees to any kind of changes
 Lack of support and guidance during the process of implementation
 Lack of direction in reaching the ultimate solution in several publications
 Inefficient adaptation and the trust issues of the IT in any organisation
Next, the discussion would be suitable in sense of the reasoning of the motive of the IT in the
BPR. The utilisation of the IT technology in the BPR is considered to create radical
alterations and yet they have worked nevertheless. The capabilities and the issues of the IT
are unappreciated and ignored, therefore it leads to the inefficient adaptation (Chen 2001).
Therefore, the proper adaptation of the IT is claimed to impact significantly in the
competitive advantage for several businesses in the market. Moreover, the inaccurate
adaptation would create the phase of the struggle in the consistently alter the business market.
According to the authors, when the aspect of advantages is considered, the systems are the
vital field of technology that could provide the fast response and swift processing, moreover
it might fail in the transcribing flexibility in communication among the humans (Bai and
Sarkis 2013). Therefore, it is perceivable that the IT in BPR could be disadvantageous and
advantageous and it is majorly dependent on the suitable technique of adaptation.

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The issues like the cultural, organisational and the political along with the human
factors are complicated and difficult matters in the implementation of the BPR in any
organisation. According to Engelmann (2013), the major emphasis must be imparted on the
dependence of the programmes of reengineering and it is majorly on the changes of the
organisation and the human resource.
The resistance to the changes is measured as one of the major factors in the issues of
BPR for the humans. The intention of any BPR is to offer the alterations in any organisation,
which would provide significant success. Some of the officials have become concerned to the
jobs and it might perceive as the threat to any content, quality and the promotion of the job
life. For avoiding this complicated situation, majority of the people must be included in the
creation role and therefore they might support the changes (Rinaldi, Montanari and Bottani
2015). According to several researchers, many individual possesses the varying perspective
to any change. Any change can be perceived as advantageous by some people and some other
people might see it as a significant problem in their business. It is the major constraint during
the implementation of the BPR in any organisation.
For obtaining significant information regarding the reasons of the failure of BPR is a
debatable aspect. BPR includes several topics like the research of operations, human resource
management and the MIS. From the viewpoint of the authors, it is vital to highlight the
procedures of the system development as the systems are best understood by them and the
efficient analysis is carried out by them (Vom Brocke et al. 2014). Considering this aspect,
the information system provides the opportunity of the efficient processing of data and
effective decision making. Information system is vastly utilised in the business organisations.
The activities report is offered by this technology to any company. According to the authors,
it is vital to emphasize the relationship among the world and the software system. The
designing of the software is done as an abstract system as this symbolises the conception of
the humans. Moreover, the prediction of software can be done about the behaviour, whereas
the activities of the world are increasingly becoming unpredictable (Mlay, Zlotnikova and
Watundu 2013). Therefore, it can be perceived that the aspect of engineering of the business
processes are dynamic in nature while the additional iterations are required to redesigning
and reassessing. The authors claim that the requirement of the software system is relied on
the redesigning of the business process and moreover, it could affect the present strategy of
the businesses. The software systems must observe the evolution when the organisational
business style is dynamic and secondly, the result of any software system is presumed to be

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uncertain. Evolution must be supported by the software system and the development must
meet the new business goals.
The impact of the information system and the software in any organisation is reaching
beyond the business strategies and it can be extensive. It alters the behaviour and the
perception of the people (Anand, Wamba and Gnanzou 2013). The introduction of the IT in
any business affects the relationship among the worker and the management but it does not
affect the organisation directly. The traditional methods of software development perceives
the company as machinery in which the determination of the behaviour is done by the
individuals. The IT concepts are ignored and the concentration is majorly generalised on all
the physical parts. The methods are commonly unsuitable in the analysis of the BPR as it
does not provide any essential insight regarding the behaviour of the affected people.
Therefore, the dynamic processing is commonly unsuitable by utilising the linear procedures
whereas the people prefer the option of the dynamic and it might be susceptible to error.
It is perceived that none of BPR realises the achievement in any market deprived of
the lively contribution from people. This procedure of participation improves the cultural and
the social phase of the organisation as the BPR guarantees the re-designation of the processes
to the context of organisations. The higher level of communication and the evaluation is
essential. The execution of BPR must be executed when all the requirement of the people is
completely understood and the evaluation of the effects that are concerned and the prevailing
processes in any organisation is done. According to the authors, in the participative BPR,
each level of officials of the business throughout the solving of problem and process is
observed to be same to all theme of TQM.
Conclusion
Basically, the aspects of any BPR includes the discovery of the business process
operations, the procedures of process redesigning for mitigating the issues regarding the
wasted or the redundant struggle along with improvement of the effectiveness and the
procedures of implementing the modifications in the process to gain extensive competitive
advantages. The idea of BPR, according to authors, is associated with the pursue of
developing innovative methods of the task organising, organising the people and then
perform the redesigning of the systems of the IT for providing significant support for all the
processes and the assist in the realisation of the business goals. Currently, with the
introduction of the developed information technology has provided significant support to the

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redesign of the structure and the innovative methods for the enterprises. According to several
researches, the distinct tasks are now combined for increasing the efficiency of the business
processes.
References
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process management, business process reengineering, and business process innovation.
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