Discuss about the Enterprise System for Reinventing Business Process through Automation.
Enterprise systems are software packages which are large-scale in nature and able to control and track all operations in a business that are complex. Business automation, easy decision making, and report making are enabled by the systems as they serve as central command hubs. Several firms have tried experimenting with business process reengineering (BPR), most of them attaining less than the expected results. To investigate the likely solutions for the underachievement of BPR a deep case study has been carried out on events within the restructuring of the entire business process are the major focus of the study at Safeco Corporation.
Information Services and Systems (ISS) lead in redesigning since they are fully responsible for Personal Lines Systems (PSL) which offers business support. Likely reasons for the failure of the re-engineering project analysis of the study which contains a detailed description. Safeco is a financial corporation that is widely diversified in the United States. Safeco gets its strength from the laborers, who are recruited with good communication skills, the desire and ability to continuously learn, a philosophy of conservative investment and innovative technology (Thong, Yap & Seah 2013, p.285). The case of analysis is a re-engineering project on Personal Line Systems (PSL). Personal Lines Insurance business is given Information Technology (IT) by PSL. Safeco offers fire, automobile, homeowners and boat insurance-related products to the customers through Personal Lines. An effort by ISS to create a pattern wide enough to share information, increased competition in the main business and rising costs with low returns from an investment is the main drive for choosing PLS as a business process reengineering (BPR). The drive for BPR efforts at Safeco arises from ISS, whose objective is ensuring cost-effectiveness in the implementation of IT in business activities of the company, which are aimed to have high returns of growth and profitability in the long-term basis. Below is a critical outcome of decisions of the project, evaluation of present businesses and processes with likely improvements.
There are several ways and strategies in which business processes can be automated. Some of them are continuous improvements, reengineering, paradigm shifts and process design. Safeco Corporation believes that success in BPR is accompanied by cultural change, which requires the change in the mindset of people for it to be effective. Modeling of behavior is required for the change of mindset. Though systems automation in Safeco is still there, the returns of the investment are not are not good, there is no increase in customer levels of satisfaction and no decrease in cycle time (Baba, ML, & Falkenburg, DR 2012, pp ,45). The cause of a problem is that the business processes are not changing with automation. Top management belief of Personal Lines is a critical business leads to a conclusion that change issues are common to PLS team and thus it is used to such deals. PSL can perform large-scale implementation of BPR project according to the Safeco’s top management. If this works well, it paves way for better future projects. The objective for resigning of PLS is to decrease the time cycle in terms of rate changes and cultural changes. This because rate changes are ideal issues to Safeco, hence essential for business success. The clients cost when taking insurance coverage at different levels is what is referred as rate changes, they have to take less than 8 weeks from the 18 weeks they were taking to cope with competition (Mistrík, Tang, Bahsoon, & Stafford, 2013). The inherent organizational structure of surface also has a problem, it is rigid and multi-layered and this hinders communication and poses a problem to the improvement process. Good BPR involves the closing of businesses and departments with systems, for this to be achieved facts people should have a look on status quo and question it and be involved in teams that work better in a cross-functional way. Finally, the outcomes can be obtained by creating consensus by negotiating instead of dictating. Reengineering the first step used to justify the procedural automation of systems containing critical information, it is useful in helping ISS introduce BPR as wide enterprise effort if topmost management gets convinced.
The automation outcomes in Safeco are driven towards effectiveness and efficiency. The management hopes to reduce costs due to the decrease in manual paperwork. However, these costs reductions are not observed due to staffing of technical personnel, technology updates costs and l maintaining of legacy systems. Thus no realization of savings.ISS similarly tries to reduce project hours in order to save time on the piece basis, this aims at saving more time for the entire job. This automation is challenged by people extending their work to in order to have job fitting. This is much challenging as it is difficult to know where and how one used time. The reason why automation did not bring any added value nor reduce the final cost is the system automation with no training to people on the usage of the system. To solve this, ISS should send top executives in management to training seminars, include BPR information literature in Safeco library and motivate individuals to read BPR magazines and books. The existing process should be well understood to ensure that system automation is in line with the business.
Current, cross-functional view of a process as an automation technique is common. Individual tasks are replaced with team charters and team works encourage people to practice creativity and innovation as they are part of business success. Employees are in charge of their projects as a team. There are changes to systems of award from reward system. System change encourages individuals to change their behaviors. Most people today always want to be given something to do, they need an encouragement to think on their own since solving problems is not part of them. This behavior can be changed or improved by rewarding individual accomplishment, quality and thinking of status quo (Hass 2015, p.125). Still, ISS cost is increasingly changing, it’s now a lender and not a service organization or cost center’s major challenge is staffing of individuals who are just programmers who don’t think in terms of applications but are concerned with programming tasks. To correct this, they have to consider both internal and external customer satisfaction. They should consider the business first then decide on systems support. Generally, ISS should restructure its paradigm to external view rather than the eternal view.
The challenges facing the organization and possible future improvements are:
There is no visible and active support to the top management in the case study. This is an ideal disadvantage in BPR plan of Safeco. The primary parts are well catered. The strategy for PLS is rigorous together with the PTI structure. The uses IT is primarily used too. There is need to provide a wide enterprise support since it can only attain functional improvement with this (Page 2016,125 )There no elasticity or flatness in the structure of the organization. Though PTI structure is a good start point, work environment imposes limitations which can hinder any ideal cross-functional achievement. PTI structure offers individuals with actual empowerment a norm that is not real in outside structures. Some of the participants of process path are never involved and this is a challenge as cross-functional change can’t be enacted permanently. This can be improved by a complete participation of all individuals.
An improvement in processes is possible with automation use. However, the redesign of the process together with automation of IT is a bit low. This is a result of low flattening of organizational structure compared to quick automation (Belvedere, Grando, & Bielli, 2013 p.425). To have improvements all Safeco workers should know the need for change to allow working better of BPR. Other than top management been a major issue, there are other issues that are critical to the reward system and organizational structure. Thus though Safeco is focusing attention on other projects, Safeco is experiencing growing pains and it may take a while before changes can be attained in the organizational structure since the top management reluctant in committing BPR activity(Shani, & Noumair, 2014,p.595).
In conclusion, Safeco is moving on the right path in many areas. With the establishment of charter teams which passes member ownership, grants powers in decision making and indicates the required responsibilities. The corporation is well informed that redesigning is important for automation to work well.
References
Thong, J, Yap, C, & Seah, K 2013, ‘Business Process Reengineering in the Public Sector: The Case of the Housing Development Board in Singapore’, Journal Of Management Information Systems, 17, 1, pp. 245-270
Baba, ML, & Falkenburg, DR 2012, ‘Technology management and American culture:Implications for business process redesign’, Research Technology Management. Pp.39-45
Hass, KB 2015, The Enterprise Business Analyst: Developing Creative Solutions to Complex Business Problems : Developing Creative Solutions to Complex Business Problems, Management Concepts Press, Vienna, VA. Pp 120-130.
Page, S 2016, The Power of Business Process Improvement : 10 Simple Steps to Increase Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Adaptability, AMACOM, New York.The Power of Business Process Improvement : 10 Simple Steps to Increase Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Adaptability, AMACOM, New York.pp 108-120
Belvedere, V, Grando, A, & Bielli, P 2013, ‘A quantitative investigation of the role of information and communication technologies in the implementation of a product-service system’, International Journal of Production Research, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 410-426.’A quantitative investigation of the role of information and communication technologies in the implementation of a product- service system’, International Journal of Production Research, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 410- 426.
Shani, AR, & Noumair, DA 2014, Research in Organizational Change and Development, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bradford.pp.600 -700
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