Business Process Re-engineering

Business process reengineering (BPR) is the practice of rethinking and redesigning the way work is done to better support an organization's mission and reduce costs.

However, at AFRITAM, we reengineer two key areas of our businesses. First, we use modern technology to enhance data dissemination and decision-making processes. Then, we alter functional organizations to form functional teams. Reengineering starts with a high-level assessment of our mission, strategic goals, and customer needs.

Basic questions are asked, such as "Does our mission need to be redefined? Are our strategic goals aligned with our mission? Who are our customers?" And so, we find our organization operating on questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of the customers. Only after the organization rethinks what it should be doing, does it go on to decide how best to do it.

Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, re-engineering 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.

If process reengineering is to work, priorities must change and however at AFRITAM, we focus on the following:

·       From boss to customer focus;

·       From controlled workers to empowered, involved process owners and decision makers;

·       From activity-based work to a results orientation;

·       From scorekeeping to leading and teaching so that people measure their own results;

·       From functional (vertical) to process (horizontal or cross functional) orientation;

·       From serial to concurrent operations;

·       From complex to simple, streamlined processes;

 

·       From empire building and guarding the status quo to inventing new systems and processes and looking toward the future.