Abstract Science Construction’s business is in planning, developing and building road projects. The major of its clients are municipalities, city governments, and other public sector entities. While the bankruptcy rates for these clients is very low, when economic downturns happen, their ability to pay in a timely fashion also suffers. This leads to businesses such as Science Construction needing to take on additional debt and to find creative methods in order to stay afloat during times of recession. Methods such as selling accounts receivables at discounted rates and taking larger lines of credit through banks and other lending institutions are some of the ways organizations can remain viable when their cash inflows have turned into a trickle. Science Construction is asking the Turkish Courts to postpone their bankruptcy proceedings for a year while they attempt to restructure. Through this, suggestions such as forcing shareholders to pay their debt to the organization, gaining credi...
According to the video by Prolearn posted on Youtube, business process reengineering or BPR has three components of action (Nagasundaram, 2014):
adding value to the customer,
carefully and completely rethinking an organization’s goals and processes, and
radically transforming the processes to achieve efficiencies and new, and formerly unachieved goals.
BPR was a significant movement in the thoughtful restructuring of an organization that began in the early ’90s. The idea behind it was to make your company more flexible, responsive, efficient and effective for all stakeholders, including customers, employees, and owners (Grimsley, 2019). That idea of company reform comes with plenty of radical changes. Some easier to get behind than others:
The focus must shift from management to customer (who now becomes the boss)
Empower employees with decision-making powers
Shift emphasis from managing activities to result driven
Focus on leading and teaching employees, not “scorekeeping”
Change the orientation to be inclusive of the hospital environment, not just functional
Multitask instead of doing things on at a time
Use the KISS principle when it comes to processes; keep it simple stupid
Invent new processes and systems that look towards the future
Companies embarking upon business process reengineering engage the process in stages. Some authors give the process as many as 6 steps or stages. As posted by Grimsley at Study.com, we look at 4 stages (Grimsley, 2019):
Stage One is Identification of Goals and Purposes. What is this process going to help my company achieve? Examples would be to shorten delivery times, increase customer satisfaction, etc.
Stage Two is the Analysis of Current Processes. What are we doing now? Understand your current processes and how they work in real time of analysis.
Stage Three Find or Create Ways to Improve. What problems did we uncover and how can we make things better? An example is you uncover that your response to customer email is more than 24 hours. With today’s technological advancements in business processes, this is unacceptable so big changes take place. You institute a FAQ section of your customer service site for the repetitive questions that come in via email. You add the option of a chat box for customers who need more immediate attention. You add a night shift to address the questions that go unanswered overnight.
Stage Four is to Implement. How do you go about implementing these changes in the process? Start with having a meeting with the IT department to discuss the FAQ section and chat box addition to the customer service page.
An incremental improvement is an approach to process improvement in which you and your staff focus efforts on smaller solutions that slowly but surely move the business toward success. These ideas are typically low-cost and low-risk and are implemented by employees throughout the entire organization (Kainexus, n.d.).
Even though BPR and incremental improvement are both put into action to create positive change within an organization, it’s the process and focus that differs. While BPR looks at the entire organization from mission statement to benefits, from IT to customer service, and across the company. Incremental improvements happen on a smaller level with a tighter focus. Changes using the incremental process happen over a longer period of time unlike business process reengineering where the changes are more immediate and on a grander scale.
What is business process management?
Business process management (BPM) is a discipline in operations management in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. BPM focuses on improving corporate performance by managing business processes (Wikipedia, n.d.). The installation of the BPM process helps an organization improve time to market, customer and user experience, and operational agility. BPM consists of 5 phases as described at IT Knowledge Portal (n.d.):
Design - identification of existing processes
Modeling - takes a theoretical design an introduces variables
Execution - automates the design and modeling of a new process
Monitoring - measure the performance of the process
Optimization - includes retrieving process performance information from modeling or monitoring phase; identifying the potential or actual bottlenecks and the potential opportunities for cost savings or other improvements; and then, applying those enhancements in the design of the process.
What role does it play in allowing a company to differentiate itself?
By working through the process of business process management, byproduct benefits can be built in reporting and monitoring, empowering employees to make decisions, enforcing best practices to ensure the highest quality, and enforcing consistency to protect the brand.
Which ERP is the best?
ERP stands for enterprise resource planning. In companies, the term "enterprise" is often used to describe business processes that encompass all departments or elements of the business. Thus, enterprise resource planning means that all parts of the company collaborate in the process of acquiring and managing efficient resource use (Kokemuller, n.d.).
ERP software helps enterprises to use integrated solutions for business management and to automate the functions of departments such as IT, services, and HR. ERP software also serves to integrate the functions of manufacturing, development, product planning, sales, and marketing (Gilbert, 2019). It is used by large corporations to customize and analyze business data and to deploy and upgrade their processes successfully. Small companies can complete all this with a simple ERP that is suitable for their specific industry (Gilbert, 2019).
I have no legitimate working knowledge of ERP software and what to look for when trying to buy one. Looking around, I found an extremely reputable website that states NetSuite ERP was named best ERP software at Finances Online (Gilbert, 2019).
Do some original research and compare three leading ERP systems to each other.
At the website Capterra.com (n.d.), a list of ERP software systems is listed along with their features. The website also allows you to compare the systems. My only criteria for choosing the ones to compare was that they must have been given at least 4 stars for an overall rating and reviewed by at least 100 people but no more than 150 people. I chose Brightpearl, IQMS, and MIE Trak Pro. The three share the exact same options for a platform, support, and training. The stars are best out of five. The following are how they compare in other ways (Capterra, n.d).
Brightpearl
IQMS
MIE Trak Pro
Best For
Brightpearl is ideal for multichannel retailers of finished goods selling in-store, online, or via online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon trading $1m or above.
IQMS manufacturing ERP solutions are designed to support repetitive and batch process manufacturers. 21 pre-configured BOMs are available for a multitude of manufacturing processes.
MIE Trak Pro is best suited for custom manufacturers and fabricators that handle up to 500M in fabrication and processing.
Ideal # of users
2 - 99
2 - 1000+
2 - 999
Ease of Use
⭐
4.5/5
4.5/5
4.5/5
Customer Support ⭐
4.5/5
4.5/5
5/5
Feat/Func ⭐
4/5
4/5
4.5/5
Value for Money
⭐
4/5
4/5
4.5/5
Product Features
7/12
12/12
9/12
Platform Supported
5/5
5/5
5/5
Support
3/3
2/3
2/3
References
Capterra. (n.d.). Software Categories.Retrieved from https://www.capterra.com/enterprise-resource-planning-software/compare/124180-103908-161558/Brightpearl-vs-IQMS-ERP-Software-vs-MIE-Trak-Pro
Gilbert, Nestor. (May 2019). https://accounting-software.financesonline.com/c/erp-software
Grimsley, Shawn. (2019). What is Reengineering in Business? Definition, Examples, and Methodology. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-reengineering-in-business-definition-examples-methodology.html
ITKnowledgePortal. (n.d.). Business Process Management. Retrieved from http://www.itinfo.am/eng/business-process-management/#chapter4
Kainexus. (n.d.). Incremental Improvement. Retrieved from https://www.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/best-practices-for-continuous-improvement/incremental-improvement
Kokemuller, Neil. What Does ERP Stand for in a Supply Chain? https://smallbusiness.chron.com/erp-stand-supply-chain-78245.html
Nagasundaram, Murli. (March 2014). Business Process Engineering. Video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0tlBsUg1m8
PNMsoft. (n.d.). Business Process Management Lifecycle. Retrieved from http://www.pnmsoft.com/resources/bpm-tutorial/bpm-lifecycle/
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Business Process Management. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management#Definitions
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