As you prepare for the next century, the challenge of meeting business objectives is driving a new course of reengineering in the enterprise. CTR's new 265-page report focuses on the latest strategies and methodologies and best practices of revitalizing enterprise business processes, including how to measure the financial benefits of using intranets.
What is Reengineering?
Reengineering can be characterized as a refinement of an organizational or departmental structure in order to streamline business processes. The goals of a reengineering project may include improving the quality of customer service or increasing cost savings. Regardless of an organization's specific goals, the ideal end result is a company that runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
CTR's new report, Reengineering and Restructuring the Enterprise: A Management Guide for the 21st Century, is designed for information technology (IT) professionals who are responsible for planning and implementing organizational reengineering efforts. It is also intended for the IT manager who is required to support any reengineering efforts and educate users on the benefits of IT and help them understand the non-IT aspects of reengineering, such as change management and leadership issues.
The report outlines the successful use of reengineering with business process management (BPM) and change management, along with the tools and techniques needed to implement the reengineering strategy.
Why Should Companies Reengineer?
In order to remain competitive in today's marketplace, companies must be fast, flexible, and responsive. The report explores the definitions and philosophies behind reengineering, including some of the more popular methodologies of the commercially-oriented management consulting firms.
Although reengineering has its roots in IT management, it is primarily a business initiative that has broad consequences in terms of satisfying the needs of customers and business partners.
Reengineering Tools and Techniques
The emergence of BPM has produced an explosion of engineering tools. Reengineering and Restructuring the Enterprise: A Management Guide for the 21st Century examines the types of tools available in the market and provides techniques and tips on the utilization of these tools within the enterprise environment. The report also offers guidelines on how to choose the processes to restructure and outlines the steps necessary to do so.
Managing Change in the Enterprise
Change is the reality of today's business environment, brought about by mergers and acquisitions, deregulation, new market entrants, increased customer focus, and new technology. In the face of these forces, any commercial organization must continually renew itself, its products, and its processes to survive. The report examines both the cultural aspects of change and the technological aspects of change, integrating the two to show how technology is both an enabler and a controlling element of successful reengineering.
The Growth of Remote Access
Remote access technology enables users to easily and cost-effectively access all the resources on the business network, regardless of the application, wide-area transmission medium, or protocol being utilized. In the past few years, greater reliance has been placed on remote access solutions that support high volumes of users. The report discusses the factors responsible for this, including the explosion of Internet access, the growing dependence on E-mail and groupware, increasing levels of sales force automation, and the prevalence of mobile computing.
The report also reviews both internal and external business processes and explains how to meet their information needs.
Information Technology and Enterprise Networks
Like most other aspects of an organization, the role of IT is changing. Largely driven by the need to control costs, the restructuring and realignment of IT within the organization is now a large part of the reengineering process. Over the last few years, a new way of thinking about IT's business value has evolved. Reengineering and Restructuring the Enterprise: A Management Guide for the 21st Century explores IT and its return on investment (ROI).
Many factors must be considered when reengineering and redefining requirements for the enterprise network. The report reviews the most important aspects of enterprise networking and the benefits derived from developing each level of functionality.
The report also offers an in-depth discussion of how the implementation of some newer technologies such as the Internet, the Web, intranets, and extranets could affect company productivity and cost savings.
The Future of the Enterprise
It is clear that IT plays a major role in operations and business processes today and will continue to do so increasingly in the future.
The conceptual simplicity, potential results, and mass popularity of reengineering have made it the management tool of choice for restructuring an organization. New organizational change processes and structures, as well as new types of IT are needed to head into the 21st century. This new report from CTR is an invaluable guide for designing, implementing, and managing a reengineering project.
Alea Fairchild is Director and Managing Partner of Greiner International, Inc., a pan-European market consultancy, and a founding member of the European Consultancy Network, a team of information consultants and market analysts. Her special area of interest is the development and use of intelligence and IT in product planning and business strategy. Her technical expertise lies in open systems and software. Mrs. Fairchild has ten years experience in global IT market analysis, and has worked for Dataquest, IDC, Romtec, and many other major market research agencies as a consultant. She has also performed as a consultant for the European Commission, as well as major multinational IT companies throughout Europe. As an IT market expert, Mrs. Fairchild has been a contributor to the Wall Street Journal Europe, European Computer Sources, O1 Informatique, Automatisering Gids and CM Corporate. She is a member of both the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) and The Strategic Planning Society (SPS).
Mrs. Fairchild has a Masters degree in International Management from Boston University/Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium, and a Bachelors degree in Business Management and Marketing from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
