questions and answers on business process reengineering....please leave your comments

1. 1. Why outsource? What are key indicators that selection of a vendor IT solution to
implement business process reengineering may be the best decision? What are the
potential pros and cons? Provide examples where possible.
Business process reengineering is the process which involves the rethinking and
remodeling of the processes within the business for the purpose of attaining an
enhancement in the strategic and key sectors of a particular business, such areas
include the quality of products, the cost of the products as well as the qualities of the
services offered and the speed of delivery of those services (Hammer & Champy, 1993:
46). There exists several factors that can be used as potential indicators to show that
the selection of a vendor IT solution could be the best option in the implementation of
the business process reengineering. To begin with, dis-functionality of the current
system components is a major indicator for the implementation of an IT solution.
Shortfalls constantly recorded in particular portfolios are noted as being the worst
performing will need reengineering. Secondly, the importance of the particular process
and its influence on customer satisfaction. It is noted that the process that least provides
proper customer satisfaction is substituted with an IT solution that increases the speed
and the quality of services offered. Finally the feasibility of the reengineering process
also plays a fundamental role in the reengineering process. The organization considers
which portfolios can be successfully reengineered and hence helps in the decision to
acquire a proper vendor IT solution for the particular reengineering process. According
to Meyer Richard(1998), a business process refers to a specific predetermined set of
steps that are intended to produce a product or service, comprising all of the services
required to satisfy a particular customer’s request.

2. 2. State and discuss the key strengths of service-oriented architectures, especially as
related to modern businesses. Support your answer(s).
Service oriented architectures are a complete and specific set of methodologies and
processes that are implemented in the development of business software’s. Service
Oriented Architecture is an architecture that serves to eliminate redundancies as well as
enhancing the delivery of services in the business organization. It mainly achieves this
by consolidating and reusing the services involved within the particular organization
.Such kind of architecture has proven to have several advantages over the other normal
set of architectures available for software development. To begin with SOA enables the
business functions to be able to be self reliant and dependable. This in turn will enable
the entire business process to be self reliant. In addition, SOA offers the required
functionalities in the form of an interface that is relevant to the offered services. This
offers the consumer an easy method of interacting with the system as well as acquiring
the products and services offered by the business organization. It also sets itself aside
as the architecture that a consumer involved with other application functionalities may
find useful to employ with another preferred application or service. SOA is able to
separate the implementation of the service from its actual interface. The service
provided is viewed as the endpoint which is support of a given contract or format. SOA
are also self bound dynamically as well as being discoverable. This is because it
supports service discovery concept. In this mode of service execution the consumer is
not required to know the request message format, until the particular service is actually
needed. It is also has modular and self-contained services in its structure. Its modular

3. decomposability allows the application to be split and divided into smaller more
manageable components.
3. Describe how environmental analysis, SWOT analysis, value chain analysis, and choice
of business strategy influence business process reengineering. Provide examples.
SWOT is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and
Threats. It is an analysis tool that is used for understanding different situations that may
arise within the business organization; hence it can also be used in decision making for
a wide range of situations within the organization. SWOT analysis is used in the
development of the business, evaluation of the competitors within the market,
marketing, as well as the development of product reports and research reports. Prior to
conducting a SWOT analysis the organization carries out the PEST (Political,
Economic, Social and Technological) analysis. This helps the organization’s potential
within the market as well its potential basing on the external factors affecting the
organization. SWOT analysis can be effectively used in business process reengineering
where it can be used to determine a particular business position in the market, such as
its commercial viability, it could also be used as a method of distributing sales as well as
used to offer invaluable information on strategic options that may involve entering new
markets or even the timely launch of a company’s product. On the other hand
environmental analysis involves the careful considerations of all the external factors that
affect an organization in its activities of production. Bearing in mind that the typical BPR
projects include a cross-functional cooperation, it becomes highly necessary for the
organization to consider the impacts of the environment and changes that occur within
its environment. This in turn will serve as an impetus for the ongoing reengineering

4. process as it will enable proper establishment of guidelines during the reengineering
process.
4. Describe and rate the overall organization and information systems function in terms of
scorecards and methodologies provided by standards such as Capability Maturity Model
(CMM), Six Sigma, ISO 9000, and Balanced Scorecard.
The balanced score card is a business management methodology that offers an
approach to strategic management of an organization. It offers an insight into what
companies should put into consideration in order to measure and balance their financial
obligations as well as “perspectives”. The ISO-9000 is an international standards
organization rating of an organizations performance and quality of management in
industrial organizations. Six sigma is a process that offers help on focusing in the
production and delivery of high quality services and products. It is based on deviations
from the required standards where the management considers the shortcomings and
defects in their organizations products and services and tries to eliminate them
systematically in order to come up with a near-perfect product. These standards of
rating an organizations performance ensure high standards and quality of goods and
services offered while ensuring that the best managerial skills and principles are
employed in the business organizations processes. They serve to boost the consumer’s
confidence in a particular company’s products and or services that have been rated by
these standards. Such promotes the returns of the company as well as increasing its
profitability. It also extends to maximal utilization of the organizations resources ranging
from the labor to cost reduction while not compromising on the high degree and levels
of performance expected.

5. 5. Rate the organization’s ability to achieve its overall goals, including high customer
satisfaction and superior return on investment, based on product and process
innovation, customer focus, knowledge management, strategic systems, and motivated
people.
Every organization has set goals and targets that are to be achieved within certain
boundaries of time and resources available. Regardless of these boundaries, the
organization is always expected to provide high quality output that considers the
customer satisfaction and exceed their expectations in terms of quality. High customer
satisfaction involves meeting the needs and requirements of the customer up to the
expected levels and standards that have been set. It involves producing products and
services that are of high quality and within the reach of the customer in terms of price
friendliness. In addition to that, an organization will be highly rated if it has a high level
of innovativeness and can be able to reinvent its product so as to always appeal to the
customer as well as be able to match the ever changing needs of the customer base.
Ina addition, it should always be able to meet the new requirements without
compromising the quality of the product. Knowledge management of the organization
also plays a fundamental role in ensuring that an organization is up to speed on the
developments within the markets and hence enabling it to appropriately adapt and be
able to compete with its competitors within the same field of production. Having
strategic systems within the organization involves having the appropriate managerial
and production systems that enable the organization to meet its demands and
obligations to the client satisfactorily.

6. 6. Compare the organization and its systems and processes to the rest of its vertical
industry, based on industry best practices and benchmarks, including revenue and
profitability.
A vertically integrated organization is one which encompasses more than one single-
output process production in which there is an option of all the output from an
upstream process is utilized as a part of or of the whole quantity of one input
intermediates in a downstream process. In addition it is the “is the ownership and
control over neighboring stages of production or distribution”(Perry, 1989). Industry
level specialization is a major practice which is enhanced by advances in technology
as well as standards. This leads to the emergence of a group of producers as well
as the division of industrial processes into modular components, where the
equipment is split and reorganized to enhance the division of labor. Consider DIS
markets which the most successful as well as largest firms were initially vertically
integrated (Schlueter-Langdon 1999).
7. Based on the above indicators, predict the organization’s ability to conduct a
successful information systems project that meets or exceeds its stated goals, including
return on investment, appropriate functionality, successful implementation, and minimal
reversion to old systems/processes
By implementing the vertical industrial processes, an organization will be able to
conduct with great chances of success, an information systems project that will be able
to meet the organizations fundamental goals and also act as a means of implementing
its fundamental targets. The organization will be able identify strategies by which their

7. emerging industries can operate. The various settings with different levels of industry
concentrations could be created with the purpose of reflecting the prevailing and the
emerging conditions of the competitive market that the organization is in. this will give
the organization a competitive edge over its rivals.
8. Analyze the changes in external (and internal) environment, such as changes
introduced by the competition, regulatory changes in various markets, changing
customer needs and demographics, and systems and products nearing the end of their
life cycle(s).
In the constant endeavors by business to enhance their business processes and
improve the customer experience, many organizations have had to face a variety of
challenges, both from the internal and external environments of the organization. To
begin with there are changes that are competitor oriented which necessitate an
organization to reorganize its processes, for instance when a company’s costs become
higher than those of the competitors, they will be force to reorganize their business
processes. In addition to that, there could be an increase in the number of competitors
in the market, to cope with such changes the organization will be forced to reengineer
its processes. Apart from these changes in the economic environment also proves to be
a bottleneck to the organizations processes. Changing customer or consumer needs will
also pose a challenge to the organization for it to reorganize and remodel it processes.
Internal challenges such as over ambitious managers , found in company’s which are in
their peal conditions, will face the challenge of ever struggling to be way ahead of their
competitors, in order to maintain their market dominance over their competitors while
satisfying their consumer’s needs.

8. 9. Identify and analyze changes in business strategy that have to accompany the changes
in the business environment.
For a business organization to remain competitive, it must identify and suitably adapt to
the changes that are constantly occurring within its environs. For instance trade offs are
a major change that businesses have to consider when faced with a situation that
challenges the company’s existence. Pursuing of sustainable development strategies is
also a change in the business strategy that business organizations must always
consider in order stay afloat with the stringent rules of development while cost cutting on
their operational costs. Internal changes in the business strategy include; increasing the
accountability of the business firms to nontraditional stakeholders as well as
encouraging the habit of continuous internal reporting. This increases the accountability
of the management as well as enhancing governance within the organization.
10. Identify and analyze changes in business process architecture that have to accompany
the changes in business strategy.
Changes in a company’s business strategy ultimately lead to changes in the business
process architecture of the business. Some of the changes that will be experienced in
the business architecture include changes in the baseline business context. This will
cause a reverting from one source of input into the system to other more reliable
sources of input. There will also be a change in the Target Business Architecture where
the organization will be required to describe its products and services in a new and
fresh manner.

9. 11. Evaluate key existing business processes and systems in order to distinguish the
ones that are hard to duplicate and contribute directly to competitive advantage,
versus the ones that are not necessarily unique but are essential to conducting
business.
There exist several business processes which are essential for the fundamental
being of a business. These processes ensure the smooth running of the business.
To begin with there is the management process. This process oversees all the
system operations; such management systems include strategic management as
well as corporate governance. There also exists the operational process of the
business. These are at the epicenter of the business as they comprise the core
business activities. These contribute directly to the business competitive advantage
against the business rivals. Such operational processes include advertising,
purchasing, supplying as well as marketing of a company’s product and services.
This process is fundamental and quite difficult to duplicate from one instance to
another. Finally there are business support processes which are subsidiary
processes that facilitate and enhance the occurrence and success of the other core
processes. Despite the fact that such processes are easy to duplicate and replicate
their effect , they play a fundamental role in ensuring the smooth flow of the other
business processes.

10. 12. Propose ways to ensure that these key processes and systems are not
compromised in the information systems project.
In the creation and development of a viable system, the system developers should
always bear in mind that the business process and systems should not be compromised
to ensure a smooth transition and flow during the implementation of the new system.
Consequently, by observing certain factors and procedures, this can be ensured. To
begin with , the system developers must set down clearly their missions and goals
expected to be attained by the new system to be created, in view of this, the system can
be broken down into modules which can be developed separately without majorly
interfering with the management and day to day running of the organization. The
different modules enhance the system development as each has its own attributes as
related to the whole process of creating a new system. In addition to that the system
developers should always consider a variety of techniques for modeling the system.
Such techniques as the business process modeling notation could be employed
whereby the developers represent the business process using tools known as workflow
diagrams.
13. In conjunction with business process owners and a process change committee, develop
workflow diagrams with swim lanes for each department/entity, documenting the current
state (IS) of the processes

11. 14. In conjunction with business process owners and a process change committee,
develop workflow diagrams outlining the proposed (SHOULD or TO-BE) state of the
processes, including possible variations (COULD).

12. 15. Develop use-case scenarios in Unified Modeling Language (UML), identifying the
design of steps in the proposed processes that involve automation and interfacing
with existing or new systems.
16. Make a determination regarding whether the system will be developed in-house or
by using external resources.

13. 17. Is the organization in the business of developing information systems?
18. Can the organization truly do a better job than software vendors who are dedicated
to developing and implementing best-of-breed applications that already incorporate
industry best practices?
19. Can the solutions provided by software vendors be made to work for the
organization? At what cost? Will key internal processes have to be changed or
compromised dramatically? How difficult will it be to maintain modified code?
Solutions provided by software vendors can be incorporated into the organization and
made to facilitate the enhancement of the functionality within the organization. Such
solutions provide the organization with reduced redundancy and there is no duplication
of roles within the organization. The software vendors will be required to develop
program solutions that are able to tackle problems encountered by the organizations
members and also promote the organizations delivery of services and products to the
end user. Depending on the level of functionality required by the organization, the cost
of implementation of the software vendor solutions will vary from one organization to the
other. Organizations that heavily rely on manual systems and processes and require a

14. complete overhaul of the system will require more intense and cost intensive software
vendor solutions. With regard to such changes, the internal processes of the
organization will be changed to a varied degree, in the sense that deeper and more
intense vendor solutions implemented will result in more and intense and considerable
changes in the internal processes of the organization. The maintenance of the code will
highly depend on the participation of the end user and their interaction with the new
software installed or recommended by the software vendor.
20. In case there is no off-the-shelf application available that fits the bill, and the
organization chooses to outsource the development to a software vendor, what
methodologies will have to be adopted to ensure that outsourced development yields
the desired results? What does the organization stand to gain or lose by outsourcing
the development?

15. 21. Compare the costs and benefits, tangible and intangible, of each approach.
22. Research software vendors who are industry leaders in the major enterprise
applications in categories such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM
(Customer Relationship Management), and LOB (Line of Business). Examine their
offerings for companies of various sizes and industries.

16. 23. Document functional requirements focusing on the support of key business
processes (utilizing process diagrams of the proposed processes). Break down the
requirements into categories such as “mandatory” and “optional.”
24. Document technology considerations, including interfaces to pre-existing systems,
technology standards, and constraints of the IT infrastructure.

17. 25. Identify reports, input forms, and other screen-shots needed by users at all levels of
the organization, and by users outside the organization.
26. Identify and make public the evaluation criteria and the precise formula that will be
used to compare proposals from competing vendors.
27. Develop detailed implementation timelines that the vendor will have to work with,
based on internal business cycles, customer service needs, and regulatory
standards (if applicable).

18. 28. Research articles and Web links regarding best practices and trends in outsourced
software development.
29. Research available case studies on companies that have successfully managed or
completely failed at outsourced systems development, whether domestic or off-
shore.

19. 30. Focus on the challenges and critical success factors relative to managing and
participating in geographically dispersed software development projects.
31. Rate the outsourcing organization’s capability maturity using CMM and its ability to
handle clients and projects of a size and industry similar to the case study at hand.
a. Conduct capacity planning for the new system.
b. Develop and implement a plan for conducting unit testing on each system
component, and load testing and integration testing on the overall system.
c. Develop and execute a plan for data migration and parallel operation of old
and new systems.
d. In the case of having to test system(s), component(s), and/or code from
external sources, the challenge is to create effective test plans that can
uncover underlying, hidden “problems.” How will this be addressed?

20. e. Address changes to management systems, job descriptions, organizational
structure, and performance measures.
f. Develop a plan to ensure that managers get evaluated using new metrics
based upon the redesigned processes.
g. Develop ways of predicting and dealing with the challenge of possible
reversion to earlier processes.
h. Examine and apply Critical Success Factors of change management.
i. Discuss best practices and case studies relative to successes and failures in
managing change in systems projects.
j. Discuss the importance of marketing the change to management and end-
users.
k. Address the involvement of upper management in ways that are appropriate
to the success of the project.
l. Discuss why people comprise the most important and complex aspect of
change in system implementation projects.
m. Explain the role of politics in process analysis and system implementation
projects.
n. Explain the need for, and appropriate role definition of, project champions.
o. Determine strike force creation and management. Discuss who is best suited
to be part of the “strike force” and if there is a need for multiple committees

21. outside of the strike force to conduct “public relations” and “selling” activities
with employees and stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
p. Discuss best practices and case studies relative to successes and failures in
managing the people aspect of change in systems projects.
q. Discuss ways to build and sustain project momentum by using “quick wins”
while continuing to engage unwieldy, complex problems that require longer-
term change management efforts.
r. Discuss ways in which facilitation can be provided to help end-users and
managers affected by system changes to come up with their own home-
grown strategies to deal with the changes. Contrast this with the approach in
which, not only is the change imposed from above, there is also no help
provided to the employees in the area of developing coping mechanisms.
s. Discuss how e-business applications may be more complex than internal
applications and involve multiple constituencies and stakeholders outside of
the organization.
t. Discuss protocols and standards in business-to-business applications,
including legacy approaches such as EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) and
newer approaches such as XML-enabled Web services (utilizing other
standards such as SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL).

22. u. Discuss the role of XML and its subsets that are optimized towards certain
vertical industries for creating, transmitting, and receiving business
transactions.
v. Discuss the role of emerging technologies such as WAP (Wireless Access
Protocol) and WML (Wireless Markup Language) that can be used to create
new applications for serving the customers in the e-business context.
w. Discuss the complexity of achieving real-time and batch interfaces with
systems owned by other entities, including customers and suppliers.
x. Discuss how IT/IS organizations within companies can serve a role in
strategic planning.
y. Discuss how IT can be an enabler toward positive change versus how it can
be a drain on corporate and societal resources.
z. Discuss why IT/IS personnel ought to think of themselves as facilitators and
problem-solvers in service to the stakeholders, process owners, and end-
users. Contrast this with a more adversarial situation where IT sees itself at
odds with the rest of the enterprise, or even with certain parts of the
enterprise.
aa. Discuss ROI models and total cost of ownership metrics in use in the industry.
Explain why ROI metrics are essential to the success of any IT/IS project or
application.

23. bb. Brainstorm ways in which IT personnel and managers can collaborate with
functional managers and process owners to help create new business models
and revenue sources, and realize improvements in competitive advantage,
employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction.
32.