Erp and Re-Engineering - What Is Re-Engineering

ERP AND RE-ENGINEERING

What is re-engineering?

Referencing this 22 year old article, (Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate, 1990), not much has changed to date with the definition of 'reengineering' as it's applied in both articles. In simplest forms, re-engineering is the thorough rethinking of all business processes, from organizational structures, to supply to chain management, logistics, work flow processes - and basically the reevaluation of underlying assumptions and beliefs about the way work gets done. Once these things are analyzed, then new, better processes are determined and implemented, where needed. Therefore this achieves dramatic improvements across all internal and external business channels. The term reengineering is not only used when discussing Ford and MBL (Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate, 1990). One must consider the context of the subject, as it can also be said that reengineering was prevalent back in 8,000 BC when the wheel was being invented. (Early men placed rollers beneath heavy objects so that they could be moved easily, for example. Re-engineering developed the wheel!) (Thinkquest)

However, even though this article is 22 years old, it is still relevant to Information Systems and information technology because believe it or not, not every business is on the MIS bandwagon. (ERP, CRM, etc.) When it comes to ERP, it's the Enterprise portion that is most relevant to reengineering and it plays a crucial role in today's competitive marketplace. ERP attempts to integrate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer system (network) that can serve all those different departments' particular needs. Reengineering and ERP not only eliminates the 'now far out-dated' sales order entry paper trail of 1990 but now it's used to replace the stand alone computers in each department. This can sometimes be a dozen or a thousand stand alone computers in different buildings, departments and/or countries. At one point this was considered reengineering. Going forward, more reengineering was analyzed and now there are POS and CRM systems in place as well as ERP systems. Each of these technological advances was done with a thorough re-examination of exactly what the business processes are, step by step. Then, as the article suggests, "...reengineering....involves recognizing and rejecting...work....and then finding imaginative new ways to accomplish work." (Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate, 1990)

What are the possible reasons for ERP failure or success?

Referencing the next article, 'Putting Enterprise into the Enterprise System', this article describes the important considerations of Enterprise strategy. (Davenport, 1998) Y2K is twelve years past now and