Chapter 13, Problem 1RQ

Explanation of Solution

Kinds of organizational change

• There are four kinds of organizational change that can be promoted with information technology.
• The first organizational change is automation and in automation, employees work efficiently and effectively.
• The second organizational change is rationalization which involves streamlining standard operating procedures, redesigning business processes, work flows, and user interfaces.
• The third one is business process redesign.
• Here organizations rethink and streamline business processes for improving speed, service and quality.
• The last one is paradigm shift and it shows how an organization out its business.

Explanation of Solution

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 is any combination of methods used to manage a company's business process.
• Here the processes can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable.

Steps for carrying business processes

• The first step is to identify the processes for change which means a business first need to identify the business processes which need improvement.
• Improving the wrong processes simply allows a business to continue doing what it shouldn’t do in the first place.
• The second step is to analyze existing processes which means an organization must understand and measure the performance of existing processes as a baseline including inputs, outputs, resources, and the sequence of activities.
• The process design team identifies redundant steps, paper-intensive tasks, bottlenecks, and other inefficiencies.
• Otherwise, the effectiveness of the changes can’t be determined.
• The third step is to design the new process which means the process design team need to improve the process by designing a new one that can be documented and modelled for comparison with the old process.
• The new process design needs to be justified by showing how much it reduces time and costs or enhances customer service and value.
• The fourth step is to implement the new process which includes translating the new process into a new set of procedures and work rules.
• The last step is continuous measurement which means the new process must be continually measured because it may deteriorate over time as employees fall back on old methods or the business experiences other changes.