Raija Kuurola, Selina Mäkinen, Anu Pekari and Hannele Piirainen

BPR ANALYSIS OF HELPDESK PROCESS

TJT L67

Process Engineering with Process-oriented Information Systems

Project Work

University of Jyväskylä

Department of Computer Science and Information Systems

Jyväskylä

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1INTRODUCTION......

1.1General Concepts......

1.2BPR Characteristics......

1.3The Role of Information Technology in BPR......

2BPR PROCESS......

2.1Trigger for BPR......

2.2Tools and Techniques......

2.3How to Re-engineer?......

2.4Challenges Faced by Re-engineering Efforts......

3HELPDESK PROCESS AT TIETOENATOR......

3.1Company and Department Information......

3.2HelpDesk Process......

3.3Workflow of the HelpDesk Process......

4REDESIGN PRINCIPLES......

5FURTHER DEVELOPMENT SUGGESTIONS......

1INTRODUCTION

Business process re-engineering (BPR) or process improvement emerged as a significant business trend in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Companies were eager to re-invent the way they do business and improve their bottom-line performance. Some of the primary business objectives that were the basis for most BPR projects were to: improve customer service; increase market share; reduce the cycle time inherent in business operations and reduce the cost of operations.

The concept promotes radical change, focusing on processes rather than functions, and on the use of information technology as an enabler. Some firms have used BPR to change their strategic orientation, others to eliminate performance bottlenecks, and yet others have seen it as a more effective way to go about technological changes.

1.1General Concepts

Hammer and Champy (1993) define re-engineering as "the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed". BPR calls for the restructuring of the organization around important processes associated with fulfilling the company's mission and achieving its vision for the future. Processes are viewed as actions or tasks performed on inputs that create outputs valued by consumers. Hammer and Champy (1993) recommend a reorientation of the organization towards a stronger customer focus and the redesign (often through simplification) and/or obliteration of many existing processes within the organization. The redesign of processes is often necessary because in some cases the existing processes were never formally designed, but evolved through time. In other cases, existing processes have gone out of date because of the new technologies.

Business processes are a set of logically related tasks, which are performed to achieve a defined and measurable business outcome. Examples of business processes include: product development, order acquisition and fulfilment, merchandise returns, customer service, and many others. An important feature of business processes is that they typically cut across organizational boundaries. Because processes cross the boundaries defined by a company's organization chart, they can be very inefficient if the functions within the company don't communicate or work well together.

1.2BPR Characteristics

Although different perspectives to BPR emphasize different issues, there are a few common principles in BPR approaches (Pereira & Aspinwall 1997):

Top management sponsorship and commitment
Definition of BPR strategy
Selection of processes for re-engineering
Development of a vision for each selected process
Implementation of BPR cross-functional teams
Detailed study and understanding of existing processes
Design of alternatives for new processes and choice of the best alternative
Prototype of new designs
Implementation
Management of re-engineered processes

Also communication at all levels (internally, customers, suppliers and shareholders) is seen one of the critical success factors and it should be exercised from the outset throughout all the stages. Another important feature is the effective use of IT. It is generally agreed that IT plays an important role in BPR

In practice, BPR has a lot of similarities with various other approaches to business transformation. According to Natarajan (1998) these similarities include:

Emphasis on process more than on product.
Efficient use of technology.
Customer and competitors to drive all decisions.
Benchmark against best-of-breed companies and copy their best, practices less explicit in BPR but, nevertheless, the driver 'of many engineering decisions.
Focus on people with a view to creating skill disseminators.
Compensate for weaknesses in culture - implicit rather than specific focus areas of re-engineering, though there is a growing belief that the social design of a re-engineered business is as important as the technical design of the plan.
Measure key parameters for all activities.
To satisfy customers better than competitors do - the goal for any improvement activity.

1.3The Role of Information Technology in BPR

Hammer and Champy (1993) view information technology as an enabler in the BPR process. Improvements in the way information is created, stored and shared can facilitate the reinvention of work processes. New information technologies make it possible to reduce paper trails, increase the speed of information flows and change existing decision-making flows within organizations. According to Kleiner and Hertweck (1996), information technology can allow the organization to enjoy the benefits of centralization and decentralization. Top managers are kept informed of decisions being made elsewhere and thus they are able to have some control, while also making information available to individuals throughout the organization to make the right decisions.

2BPR PROCESS

This chapter describes the BPR process; what initiates it, how it can be implemented and what are the challenges faced by re-engineering efforts. Tools and techniques for the implementation are also shortly discussed.

2.1Trigger for BPR

According to MacDonald (1996), re-engineering efforts usually start when a company realizes that meeting the demands of the customers means that it needs to do better in one or more areas. The driving force, which sets this in motion, can come from external assessments or from internal examinations of the company's operations.

External assessments include tools such as benchmarking and customer surveys. Benchmarking involves comparing the company's performance to that of other companies. The companies used for comparison can either be competitors or world-class leaders in unrelated industries. Customer surveys open up a conversation between the company and its customers and can often reveal opportunities to re-engineer.

Re-engineering initiatives can also originate from internal reviews of the company operations. As the company conducts these reviews, there are a number of red flags that can indicate an opportunity to re-engineer. Some of these red flags are:

High proportion of non-value-added steps. Non value-added activities can be thought of as those activities the customers would not be willing to pay for. If "as is" process mapping efforts reveal a great deal of these, then there may be an opportunity to re-engineer.

Administrative and overhead costs growing at a faster rate than sales. As companies grow, their manual processes usually become slow and inefficient. Companies try to remedy this by hiring more staff. This occurs frequently in rapidly growing companies. These processes can often be streamlined and automated.

Excessive checks and reconciliation. The company should try to capture data once, at the source, and not downstream. Capturing data downstream usually results in wasted time spent verifying accuracy, reconciling, and re-keying the data

Processes, which take a long time relative to the competition. Competitors who can bring new products to market faster or who can deliver finished goods to customers faster are sure signs of the need to take a hard look at the company’s own processes and improve their performance.

Excessive fragmentation. Related activities spread across personnel in multiple departments usually represents significant opportunity to strengthen these activities. This typically results in greater efficiency and better accountability for results.

2.2Tools and Techniques

According to MacDonald (1996) there are several tools and techniques, which can be used in re-engineering efforts. Two techniques often used in practice are "as-is" process analysis and "to-be" process visioning.

As-is process analysis is the act of mapping, in strict detail, the way the process works today. This exercise almost always leads to a number of improvement items that an organization can implement almost immediately. It also helps to determine the degree of change required. Commonly used tools for as-is process analysis include flow-charting and performance measurement. Creating flow charts is a good way to describe the complexity of the process, including all of the decision points, rework loops and non-value-added activities. Performance measurement is especially useful for identifying opportunities by examining actual vs. expected results in key areas.

"To-be" process visioning is determining what the process could, or should, be. It involves creative, "out-of-the-box" thinking about what the business process could achieve if the old paradigms about the way the process works today are challenged. The focus of the to-be process vision is to set goals for the performance of the process and to re-design it to achieve these performance objectives.

According to Zairi and Sinclair (1995), BPR can be seen to represent a range of activities concerned with the improvement of processes. They point out that some authors appear to suggest that tools and techniques are the key and other authors suggest that a strategic approach to BPR, and the development of a BPR strategy are the keys to success. There seems to be little doubt that efforts on the scale of BPR must be strategically driven and supported by senior management if they are to succeed. BPR, as a strategic, cross-functional activity, must be integrated with other aspects of management if it is to succeed. These aspects are the following:

Process visualization. The key to successful re-engineering lies in the development of a vision of the process.

Operational research/method study. The tools of operational research and method study are ideally suited to the re-engineering task, but that they are often neglected.

Information technology. Information technology, including the use of systems analysis techniques as well as the design of new hardware and software, forms a core of the re-engineering effort.

Change management. Several authors concentrate on the need to take account of the human side of re-engineering, in particular the management of organizational change. Some authors suggest that the management of change is the largest task in re-engineering. Others incorporate the human element of re-engineering as an important consideration. People often perceive re-engineering as a threat to both their methods of work and their jobs.

Benchmarking. Several authors suggest that benchmarking forms an integral part of re-engineering, since it allows the visualization and development of processes, which are known to be in operation in other organizations.

Industrial engineering. Industrial engineers are in a unique position to perform the benchmarking operations required in BPR, due to their technical knowledge of processes.

Process and customer focus. The primary aim of BPR, according to some authors, is to redesign processes with regard to improving performance from the customer's perspective. This provides a strong link with the process improvement methodologies suggested by authors from the quality field. In some cases, the terminology is almost identical to that used by quality practitioners in the improvement of processes. The major difference, as outlined earlier, appears to be one of scale.

It should be noted that few authors refer to any single technique when discussing BPR. Most incorporate a mixture of tools from the above list, although the nature of the mix depends on the focus of the author concerned, whether it is technological or involving the management of people.

2.3How to Re-engineer?

Davenport and Short (1990) identify five steps in a reengineering exercise:

Develop a business vision and related objectives: this requires doing more than just rationalizing current processes. The vision helps identify a more global process at the heart of the organization, without referring to departmental boundaries. Most common objectives include cost reduction, delay reduction, product quality, work condition, training and empowerment.

Identify the process to redesign: practical limits may require choosing a small number of processes to focus on. Ideally the ones chosen are the most critical to the business vision.

Understand and measure existing process: these measures help understand the mistakes to be avoided and will serve as a basis to evaluate the new process.

Identify relevant information technology: technology can be used to discover the structure of the new process. For instance, communication technologies help coordinate geographically separated parties.

Design and construct a prototype of the new process: effectiveness at this step will mainly depend on the design team's creativity. Solutions can be evaluated with a variety of criteria, such as the probability of meeting initial objectives, simplicity, absence of intermediaries, degree of control held by an individual or department, resource balance and task generalizability. The prototype continues to be evaluated and modified after implementation.

The simplicity of the re-engineering approach is probably an important reason for its popularity. This simplicity, however, provides BPR project managers with very few guidelines as to how to avoid risky situations and achieve the promise of dramatically improved performance.

Armistead and Harrison (1995) present a list of eight rules to guide the improvement of processes:

Organize around outcomes not tasks.
Have those who use the output of the process perform the process.
Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized creating hybrid centralized/decentralized organizations.
Link activities in a natural order and perform them in parallel.
Perform work where it makes most sense, particularly, decision making, information processing, checks and controls making them part of the process.
Capture information once and at the source, minimizing reconciliation.
Combine several jobs into one possibly creating a case manager or case team as a single point of contact.
Create multiple versions of processes when appropriate.

2.4Challenges Faced by Re-engineering Efforts

According to Romney (1994), companies that begin BPR projects face many of the following challenges:

Resistance. Change, especially radical change, always meets a great deal of resistance. In many cases this is the most serious problem companies face in BPR.

Tradition. Traditional ways of doing things do not die easily; they are often a part of the organization's culture. This means the culture and beliefs held by individuals will also have to change.

Time Requirements. BPR is a lengthy process, almost always taking two or more years to complete.

Costs. It is costly to examine thoroughly the way business is handled and to question the way everything is done in order to find a faster and more efficient way to accomplish it.

Scepticism. Some people are sceptical about BPR. Some view it as traditional systems development, but in a new wrapper with a fancy name. Others don't believe it can be done. A big obstacle is outlasting those who say it cannot be done.

Job Losses. BPR often results in employees being laid off. Some estimates range as high as 25 million jobs being eliminated before BPR runs its course.

3HELPDESK PROCESS AT TIETOENATOR

In this chapter we will describe and model the HelpDesk process of TietoEnator’s Processing & Network Support Department in Jyväskylä. First we will give some background information of the company and the particular department. The chapter is based on the information gathered in two interviews. The other interviewee was the previous department manager and the other interviewee was a member of a team that is part of the HelpDesk process.

3.1Company and Department Information

TietoEnator is a leading supplier of value-added IT services in Europe. It has 11 000 employees and an annual turnover of 1.2 billion Euros. TietoEnator provides management consulting, systems development and integration, operation and support, communication solutions, software and product development. Their customers come from several business areas such as banking and finance, the forest industry, the public sector and telecommunications.

The business concept is to focus on high-value-added IT services as a partner of customers in certain segments of the market. Focusing is a key concept; they are concentrating on certain areas and not attempting to be fairly good in many fields. The business concept is based on the following: to have a high degree of expertise and solid technical know-how and to be in the forefront in the field of information technology.

Processing & Network Support in one of TietoEnator’s business areas. Its business idea is to supply e-business services, networked information management services, mainframe services and consulting and management services requiring special expertise to TietoEnator’s customers.

Processing & Network Support Department in Jyväskylä consists of three teams: Totalpro (hardware), Lotus Notes and HelpDesk teams, which employ altogether nearly 40 people. The teams together provide for the customers hardware and Lotus Notes environment services. The department has several large customers, for example Metso Corporation that has outsourced the hardware and the Lotus Notes operations to TietoEnator, which provides them administrational services.

3.2HelpDesk Process

HelpDesk is a central operation in the Processing & Network Support Department. Its purpose is to help customers in problem situations related to their information systems. It operates the services provided by the department and allocates the customer support away from the system administrators and developers.

The key challenge of the process is to manage the knowledge. The responsibilities must be carefully designed and the support functions must be defined in a detailed level. HelpDesk is also part of the company’s risk management. It reduces the risk by taking responsibility from other teams so that they can concentrate on their actual task and on the other hand, the customers are given better service. The reason we selected HelpDesk as the target of our study is because it provides visible value to the customer.

The HelpDesk team consists of three employees, who work in shifts. However, the HelpDesk process includes all three teams and brings together all the knowledge and the expertise of the department. The HelpDesk services are available from 6 am to 10 pm because of the customers’ geographical differences. For example, the Metso Corporation has offices and factories in Asia, Europe and Northern America. HelpDesk must be able to provide service to customers in all locations. In addition to this TietoEnator has it’s own global HelpDesk at Haaga, Helsinki which is used to receive customer calls during 10 pm to 6 am. If the customer’s service request requires an immediate respond, an expert from Jyväskylä’s HelpDesk is given a notice even in the middle of the night.