THE EFFECT OF BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING ON THE ORGANIZATION OBJECTIVES 

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    Background of the Study

Business process re-engineering (BPR) is the analysis and design of workflow and process within an organization. According to Davenport (1990) a business process is a set of logically related task performed to achieve a defined business outcome. Re-engineering is the basis for many recent developments in management. The cross functional team, for example, has become popular because of the desire to re-engineer separate functional task into complete cross-functional processes. Many recent management information systems developments aim to integrate a wide number of business functions. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, knowledge management, groupware and collaborative system, human resource management systems and customer relationship management.

Business process re-engineering (BPR) began as a private sector technique to help organizations fundamentally rethink how their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operation cost, and become world-class competitors. A key stimulus for re-engineering has been the constituting development and development of sophisticated information system and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work (Marshal, 2007).

Business process re-engineering is basically the fundamental re-thinking and radical re-design, made to an organization’s existing resources. It is more than just business improvising.

The importance of business process re-engineering cannot be overemphasized within the framework of assessment of organizational objective. Hence the need to study the subject matter of this research: the effect of business process re-engineering on the organizational objective in first Bank Plc Kaduna main Branch, becomes worthy of investigation.

1.2    Statement of Problem

Business process re-engineering has earned a bad reputation in several organization because such project have often resulted in massive layoffs (Roberts, 2004). This reputation is not altogether unwarranted, since companies have often downsized under the banner of re-engineering. Furthermore, re-engineering has not always live up to its expectation because re-engineering assumes that the factor limiting an organization’s performance is ineffectiveness of its process (which may or may not be true) and offer no means of validating that assumption. Hence the need to investigate business process re-engineering become the problem in which this research is triggered.

1.3    Objectives of the Study

The central objective of the study is to:

i.             Examine the effect of business process re-engineering on the objective of First Bank. The specific objectives are to:

ii.           To evaluate how workflow redesign can affect the operation of First Bank Plc Kaduna Main Branch

iii.         To identify the methods of business process re-engineering used in redesigning the operations of First Bank Kaduna

iv.         To find out issues and constraint hindering business process re-engineering projects in First Bank Plc Kaduna Main Branch

v.           To proffer workable solutions to such constraint

1.4    Significance of the Study

The study will be beneficial to corporate organization and First Bank in particular especially as they use the findings of this research as a basis to re-design their workflow or process. The study will add to existing knowledge on business process re-engineering and would serve as a good reference materials to individual students, scholars and researcher who may wish to use this research work as a spring board to undertake similar research work.

1.5    Research Questions

i.             To what effect is business process re-engineering towards achieving the organizational objective of First Bank

ii.           How does workflow re-design affect the operations of First Bank Plc Kaduna?

iii.         Which method of business process re-engineering did First Bank Plc use in re-designing their operation in recent time?

iv.         What are the constraint hindering business process re-engineering projects in First Bank Plc Kaduna?

v.           What are the possible solutions to this constraints

1.6    Scope of the Study

The study covers an examination of the effect of business process re-engineering on organizational objective of First Bank Plc Kaduna as well as the evaluation of workflow re-design and its effect on the operation of First Bank and the issues and constraints hindering business process re-engineering in First Bank. Collection of primary data will be restricted First Bank Plc Kaduna Main Branch. The study covers a period from 2011 to 2012 being the time allowed for this study.

1.7    Limitation of the Study

The limitation of this study arise from the shortcoming of the research design, the instrument of data collection and the non-challant attitude of respondents. For the fact that the survey study is used it is not certain whether other research design such as the descriptive design, historical design or ex-post design will yield the same result. It is not also certain if the same result would be obtained if other kind of instrument of data collection other than the questionnaire is used to obtain data. Besides, the non-challant attitude of the respondents and the over exaggeration or understatement of their responses when scoring the items in the questionnaire could affect the validity of their responses. These limitations should be taken cognizance of by other researchers conducting similar studies.

1.8    Definition of Terms

Re-engineering – re-design of work process

          Workflow – work process or procedures

          BPR – This is an acronym for business process re-engineering

          BPM – This is an acronym for business process management

Process innovation – Introduction of new technique in work procedure

Process improvement – this is the incremental, gradual and constant change or innovation in workflow

TQM – This is an acronym for total quality management