Systems Engineering For Business Process Change New Directions

Systems Engineering for Business Process Change: New Directions is a collection of papers resulting from an EPSRC managed research programme set up to investigate the relationships between Legacy IT Systems and Business Processes. The papers contained in this volume report the results from the projects funded by the programme, which ran between 1997 and 2001. An earlier volume, published in 2000, reported interim results. Bringing together researchers from diverse backgrounds in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering and Business Schools, this book explores the problems experienced by IT-dependent businesses that have to implement changing business processes in the context of their investment in legacy systems. The book presents some of the solutions investigated through the collaborations set up within the research programme. Whether you are a researcher interested in the ideas that were generated by the research programme, or a user trying to understand the nature of the problems and their solutions, you cannot fail to be inspired by the writings contained in this volume.

A very large proportion of commercial and industrial concerns in the UK find their business competitiveness dependent on huge quantities of already installed, legacy IT. Often the nature of their business is such that, to remain competitive, they have to be able to change their business processes. Sometimes the required change is radical and revolutionary, but more often the required change is incremental. For such incremental change, a major systems engineering problem arises. The cost and delay involved in changing the installed IT to meet the changed business requirements is much too high. In order to address this issue the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) set up, in 1996, a managed research programme entitled Systems Engineering for Business Process Change (SEBPC). I was appointed as co-ordinator of the programme. The overall aim of this new managed research programme was to release the full potential of IT as an enabler of business process change, and to overcome the disabling effects which the build-up of legacy systems has on such change. As such, this aim addressed a stated objective of the Information Technology and Computer Science (IT&CS) part of EPSRC to encourage research at a system level.

Business Process Change, 3rd Edition provides a balanced view of the field of business process change. Bestselling author Paul Harmon offers concepts, methods, cases for all aspects and phases of successful business process improvement. Updated and added for this edition is new material on the development of business models and business process architecture development, on integrating decision management models and business rules, on service processes and on dynamic case management, and on integrating various approaches in a broad business process management approach. New to this edition: How to develop business models and business process architecture How to integrate decision management models and business rules New material on service processes and on dynamic case management Learn to integrate various approaches in a broad business process management approach Extensive revision and update addresses Business Process Management Systems, and the integration of process redesign and Six Sigma Learn how all the different process elements fit together in this best first book on business process, now completely updated Tailor the presented methodology, which is based on best practices, to your organization’s specific needs Understand the human aspects of process redesign Benefit from all new detailed case studies showing how these methods are implemented

Due to growing concern about the competitiveness of industry in the international marketplace and the efficiency ofgovernment enterprises, widespread initiatives are currently underway to enhance thecompetitive posture offirms and to streamline government operations. Nearly all enterprises are engaged in assessing ways in which their productivity, product quality and operations can be improved. These efforts canbe described as Business Process Engineering (BPE). BPE had its roots in industry under differing titIes: Process Improvement, Process Simplification, Process Innovation, Reengineering, etc. It has matured to be an important ingredient of successful enterprises in the private and public sectors. After extensive exploitation by industrial and governmental practitioners and consultants, it is attracting increasing attention from academics in the fields of engineering and business. However, even with all of this attention in the popular literature, serious scholarly literature on BPE is in short supply. TItis is somewhat surprising, especially since so many large international organizations have attempted BPE projectswith varied success.

This collection of essays examines the key issues relating to business process re-engineering (BPR). The contributors assess the relative merits and true value of BPR, analyzing its impact on the business community.