Our market research has concluded that most of the medium sized businesses have apparent organizational structure problems and process deficiencies. In many cases this is due to unplanned sudden organic growth, which happens often to family businesses that acquire a huge market share in Egypt.

 

Those businesses have recently started to realize the problem; however we believe that their perspective of the solution is incorrect. They think that implementing a software system will magically organize their processes. What they do not see is that they do not have a well-defined and efficient process, so implementing the software becomes prone to failure and its budget is expected to be over estimated.

 

To put things in perspective, a definition of a successful software implementation is essential. Software implementation projects have the highest risk of failure in all engineering projects To call a business software implementation successful it should integrate each and every aspect of the organization, in order to produce the needed extensive operational and financial reports. If a business does not have a well defined and efficient process, there is no way a software implantation will be successful.

 

The first phase in software implementation is requirements engineering, which involves analyzing and documenting requirements for the software. Software providers are mostly concerned with selling their products, so most providers tend to fast forward through this phase as to sign the contract without ensuring that their software properly addresses all the clients' needs. Even for leading software providers like Microsoft who have a well defined Post signing analysis phase, they do not perform a business process reengineering phase. So the greatest achievable success is through implementing the software to integrate the inefficient current business process.

 

To conclude, our goal is to fill in the gap mentioned above by re-engineering and properly documenting the business process. This will basically enhance the client’s operations as a start. This will also protect the client when deciding to buy or build software, as it could act as the contract between the client and software provider. A list of advantages can be found later.

 

 

Technical Summary

 

Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a management approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the processes that exist within and across the organization. The key for BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a clean slate perspective, and to determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business. The main aim of BPR is determining how a new process could help maximize customer value, while minimizing resource’s consumption. In order to achieve this, BPR may involve dramatic process transformation.

 

A key stimulus for re-engineering has been the continuing development and deployment of sophisticated information systems and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work. [Business process assessment reengineering guide, United States General Accounting Office, May 1997]

 

 

 

 

The figure above depicts the business process re-engineering cycle:

   1. Identify current process.
   2. Review, update and analyze process as is, highlighting deficiencies.
   3. Design target process based on highlighted deficiencies and improvement vision.
   4. Implement and test new process measuring its efficiency and effectiveness improvement.