Business Process Reengineering and ASAP : Side-by-side

Lukman Susanto - 2003 Abstract In this paper, we will analyse how Business Process Reengineering has became a critical step in implementing a new system including all the consequences which may occurred during the process. System that initially has been a popular methodology throughout IT system developer and now become less popular because of the impact and length of processes. This paper will also underline on how Accelerate SAP (ASAP) interact with Business Process Reengineering and why ASAP overcomes Business Process Reengineering during SAP implementation.

INTRODUCTION
In todays life, business means competition. Every business will contend to produce not only a better and more reliable products but also providing a better customer services. In the mean time, they are enforced to minimise their production costs as well as their overhead costs. These can only be achieved through developing a better information system, a highly reliable infrastructure and a more efficient management system. ERP Systems born to bring a fresh air in bottleneck businesss information system to provide an integrated system which capable to handle far more complex transactions and yet providing a highly dependable system. But as any other system, implementing ERP can be a painful process especially because most of ERP systems are complex and yet no one have what so called the best implementation solution. One of the solution which has been around for sometimes called Business Process Reengineering is no longer respected as a good system as it may take time longer then needed.

CHARACTERISTIC OF BPR
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is often referred as as-is and to-be modelling. This is because the main characteristic of BPR is analysing of current business system before ERP implementation and what the new business process be after implementing ERP. Some distinctive characteristic of BPR approaches (BPRC, 1996)

View company as open socio-technical systems which has to be more concern in customer satisfaction rather than business-only oriented. It has been over a decade where most companies were only concern with their production strategy on how to produce a product or provide a service in the most

economical way. Came out of this method they were ended up by producing in volume most of their products which in turn, high competition and price cutting as well as stocking and devaluation became a significant issues for companies. This has been a huge lost throughout the business. Companies now are enforced to accurately measure their production capacity and market demands as well as trends. They are expected to be able to produce a product which suits and satisfy each customer and yet delivering their products in the right time with the right strategy.

Production can be examine more from process oriented and not individual tasks. Rather than concentrating in each individual tasks, through BPR companies are now obligated to put their attention in group of processes which consist of several consecutive tasks. By doing so, the production strategy can be easily adjusted when the trend or marked demand changes. Individual tasks will be handled more in teamwork level of production where different skilled of personnel will have their own authority and power to make decisions which in turn will result a better product and more efficient processes.

Attempting to rebuild the whole company policy from the scratch. ERP is such a huge system which its existence requires radical and thorough change throughout company processes. For such major tasks, company will be required to develop policies from scratch as their existing policy is nowhere near to suit the ERP system. Attempting to use the existing policies will make the whole processes longer than what expected.

Thinking in a completely new way in doing business. ERP implementation bringing completely new ideas in doing business. Because of its integrity of the system, companies are capable doing things which they had never done before. Also with this capabilities, most of business process theories have to be reviewed and adjusted to match the current business practices.

Assume stability as stagnate of business and continuously making a significant progress instead. ERP born as a dynamic system which expects dynamic approaches in its implementation. Many people said that ERP implementation will never end and it requires constant adjustment and upgrades. Change is constant. Stable business is considered as dead and because of extreme competition, business required to make a significant progress to survive.

Establish company wins in measurable benefits in competitive performance, such as increased revenue, enhanced quality, shorter cycle times and an improved cost base.

Through BPR companies are expected to underline their wins in measurable benefits to compete in the market. Some of the aspects which may be considered are increasing revenue, enhancing products quality and producing in shorter times.

Change company from centralised command by assigning more local empowerment and autonomy. One of the critical methods in BPR is decentralisation of authority. Company is enforced to spread its power throughout the systems to increase the efficiency and reduce time wasted for information flows between components of production process.

Establishing a great teamwork which each member are qualified and skilled to produce the best outcomes. The key success of BPR is a solid teamwork which consist of qualified, skilled, dedicated and trustworthy members in order to be able to produce the best possible products in a highly efficient ways.

The main initial step of Business Process Reengineering is analysing current company system and planning the new system in which the company ideally will be moved forward to. The existing business processes and system will be thoroughly examined and documented so that when the major changes happening, the company will be able to measure any movements throughout its system. This can be a lengthy and costly process and in most cases this reengineering process will never end as everyday the company may implement a new thing. Just documenting those existing system can be a painful moment for the company even though the new system only require minor changes. ERP implementation is undoubted requires major changes throughout the company. In many cases, the company needs to restructure the whole business processes and its system. As any other new system, ERP implementation requires Business Process Reengineering. But, can BPR cope up with such a huge system implementation? How long will BPR process be before ERP can be implemented, go-live and ultimately giving Return On Investment (ROI)? Or, will it finish ever?

ASAP & BLUEPRINT

In order to overcome the needs of BPR which remarkably require a long process, SAP has developed an implementation methodology to speed-up the whole process by instantly implementing principals which has been underlined by SAP business process recipes.

SAP as a major ERP developer providing a considerable solid collaborated system has came up with an instant process to simplify its implementation. Accelerated SAP as a part of TeamSAP and SAPs is a comprehensive solution which capable to handle continuous change by optimising time, quality and efficient use of resources (Ciudad Futura). Three main components of ASAP

ASAPs Roadmap Roadmap is consist of project plan, detailed description on what to do, how to do, why doing it and ultimately underline the level of urgency of each individual processes (Ciudad Futura). In here, detailed project management and individual roles of each business component are clearly identified and finalised (General SAP Roadmap).

Five stages of ASAPs Roadmap are (General SAP Roadmap):

o

Project Preparation In this phase, project leader or key executives will define clear project objectives and the whole decision making mechanism. Documentation plays an extremely important role in this phase; every predicted or unpredicted tasks and events will be documented as well as uncompleted tasks which require more attention. Both internal and external issues need to be documented as well.

Business Blueprint In this phase scope of the SAP implementation is clearly decided and defined. Selection of business module or function which need to be implemented and all business requirements are detailed and documented as Business Blueprint. There are various tools which may be used in this phase including:

ASAP Implementation Assistant Q&A Database Business Process Master List (BPML) SAP R/3 Structure Modeller and Business Navigator.

Another critical activity described in this phase of implementation is Project Management which include:
o

Conduct meeting for project team and committee meeting General project management Describe any issues related to business change management

Realisation This is the phase where the actual SAP R/3 is installed and configured. The configuration is consist of two steps:

Baseline configuration At this step, the company requires to clearly identify, plan, schedule and monitor the R/3 configuration including monitoring and testing the whole installation process.

Final configuration At this step, project manager is checking the status of system, completeness and readiness of the system by conducting independent quality audit both internally and externally.

Final Preparation The aim of this phase is final preparation of SAP R/3 system before going live in real production area. Included in this phase are testing, end user training, overall system management and finalising company readiness to go live. All the processes during this phase will be monitored by project manager. Also in this phase, the R/3 system will be handed over to the individual user who will actually run the system in day-by-day basis. Those users will be prepared by providing adequate training specifically design for their job. Manuals and user documentation are also prepared to help the end user in operating the new system as well as disaster recovery plans are prepared and implemented.

Go Live & Support This is the phase where the whole system go live in production processes and will be supported by SAP experts who will analyse the system performance (EarlyWatch) and monitor thoroughly the progress of all activities.

ASAPs tools

There are various tools provided by SAP to help company to implement effectively and cost efficiently (Ciudad Futura). Some of the packages listed below are used for configuration of business processes.
o o

Project Estimator: tools to estimate required resources, costs and time frame. Concept Check Tool

ASAPs services and training SAP services and training includes all training, consultation and support service i.e. EarlyWatch, remote upgrade and backup.

BPR & ASAP INTERACTION

BPR and ASAP are built for a similar purpose, that is as a method to implement a new system, however, they are based on completely different approaches. While BPR requires deep analysis on the existing system as well as the new system, ASAP is mainly ignoring the current system. All ASAP does is enforcing the business to use SAPs own methodologies. ASAP assumes that the company is working on an extremely tight timeframe and there is no major BPR required (CiudadFutura). ASAP main concern is to prevent companies from developing their own reengineering whilst thousands of other companies worldwide had already done so. By providing what so called the best business practice, SAP expects no more time and resource wastage during its system implementation and all negative affects can be minimised. Even though both BPR and ASAP system interact differently, the main concept of ASAP is still based on BPR. ASAP itself is a the best of business process engineering which has been clearly documented and fulfil universal rules of business practice. By using ASAP, company is no longer need its own major BPR, however some minor issues throughout SAP implementation are still require adjustment or reengineering in some sort.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
This paper clearly described that any new business system implementation will require deep analysis and business process reengineering (BPR), however there are ways of overcome this lengthy process. ASAP as in Accelerated SAP implementation has brought us a great example on how the needs of BPR can be eliminated or minimised by providing the business templates ready to be implemented and instantly run. The only drawback with this system is its enforcement to company to implement a complete new business processes underlined by SAP. This may sometimes cause negative impacts to the company as many of the personnel may resistant toward changes and losing its own unique production processes. This is where a good solid change management will be needed to handle such major change throughout the company in order successfully implement a big system such as SAP in the business smoothly.

REFERENCES
Accelerated SAP
Ciudad Futura: http://www.ciudadfutura.com/sap/sap/faq/acelerated_sap.htm

ASAP Business Engineer

Santosh: http://www.geocities.com/santosh_karkhanis/ASAP/roadmap.htm

ASAP Roadmap
SAPGenie.COM: http://www.sapgenie.com/asap/roadmap.htm

BPRC Business Processes Resource Centre

BPR Human Issues: http://bprc.warwick.ac.uk/peltu.html

BPR OnLine Learning Center

http://www.prosci.com/Change_management_overview.htm

ERP Implementation The Traps

Neville Turbit

Houston schools spell management success 'ERP'

Heather Harreld http://www.civic.com/civic/articles/2000/july/civ-techtrends-07-00.asp

Information Week Customization of ERP Apps Requires Development Skills

http://www.informationweek.com/722/22iuerp.htm

Reengineering ERP: Business Processes and Personal Dynamics

Industry Search: http://www.industrysearch.com.au/features/reenginerp.asp

Lukman's WWW Groups copyright 2002 - 2003 Lukman Susanto http://www.eastwoodfurniture.com.au http://www.awesomefurniture.com http://www.majawana.com.au