The role of IT in Business Process Reengineering

Abstract

South African organisations are facing increasing demands stemming from growing competition, fast changing technologies and global trends and pressures. The methods and management structures enabled these organisations to make effective use of information technology (IT) during the 70s and 80s, are currently proving to be inadequate. IT has extended into the organization and beyond the IS department's control, and is accordingly expected to support entire business processed. As such an increasing number of organisations have decided to use business process reengineering (BPR) as the primary vehicle for organizational transformation. Because of the complexity of the BPR process, a failure can be very costly in terms of time and money. BPR literature is full of success and failure stories that identify various critical success factors. However, most studies do not identify the correct use of IT as a critical success factor. In this paper, we present our research findings on the identified critical success factors and the important role of IT, within BPR. Next, we present the key critical success factors as identified by current BPR literature. We then present the results of our survey of South African businesses and their evaluation of the identified critical success factors, and especially the role IT should play in the BPR process. Finally, we present a framework which focuses on the role of IT in BPR.