Abstract
From the first appearance of the term “business process reengineering (BPR)” in the literature, information technology (IT) has been viewed as the central feature of the reconfigured enterprise. As the practice of process reengineering matures, a host of software tools and enabling technologies has besieged the lucrative BPR marketplace. This paper attempts to demystify the role of IT in enterprise reengineering, and offers a taxonomy of relevant applications, as well as some lessons from practice.
In broad terms, IT has two discrete functions in process reengineering:
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1.
it can support the mapping, analysis and modelling aspects of BPR projects; and
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it can provide essential communications and systems infrastructure to facilitate the integration and automation of redesigned work processes.
This paper will explore both of these application areas and provide an assessment of their contribution to BPR methodology and process realisation in practice. The paper will finally comment on the difficulties of migration to a process based IT infrastructure and the constraints imposed by legacy systems and data.
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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Lyons, G. (1995). Application of Information Technology in the Redesign and Implementation of Business Processes. In: Browne, J., O’Sullivan, D. (eds) Re-engineering the Enterprise. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34876-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34876-6_5
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