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 today’s 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 business’s 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 SAP’s 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

• ASAP’s 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 ASAP’s 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.

o 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:

• Conduct meeting for project team and committee meeting

• General project management

• Describe any issues related to business change management

o 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.

o 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.

o 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.

• ASAP’s 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 Project Estimator: tools to estimate required resources, costs and time frame.

o Concept Check Tool

• ASAP’s 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 SAP’s 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

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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

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