Deriving a Research Agenda for a Financial Service Industry’s Methodology for Carrying Out Business Process Re-Engineering

Abstract

Why do projects fail? This is a question that has been researched across various project disciplines, including that of Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). This paper introduces a different angle on why BPR projects fail. An analysis of a case study conducted within a financial institution revealed new factors that could influence BPR project outcomes, but that have not been identified in the literature. The Organisation Ring of Influence model was developed to indicate the impact that organisation behaviours and structures had on the outcome of an executed BPR project. This model also helps to highlight which factors were more influential than others. OPSOMMINGWaarom misluk projekte? Dit is ʼn vraag wat oor verskeie projekdissiplines nagevors is, insluitende dié van besigheidsprosesherontwerp. Hierdie artikel stel ʼn nuwe hoek bekend om die oorsaak vir projekmislukking te bepaal. ʼn Analise van ʼn gevallestudie, wat by ʼn finansiële instansie geloods is, het nuwe faktore wat die besigheidsprosesherontwerp beïnvloed, onthul. Hierdie faktore is nie in bestaande navorsing geïdentifiseer nie. Die Organisasie-Ring-van-Invloed model is ontwikkel om die impak wat die organisatoriesegedrag en -strukture op die eindresultaat van ʼn voltooide besigheidsprosesherontwerp projek gehad het, aan te dui. Die model help ook om die faktore wat meer invloed uitoefen uit te lig. INTRODUCTIONA Google search on the words 'latest percentage of failed projects' will yield more than 41,900,000 results. Failure percentages of projects, ranging from 62 per cent to 68 per cent, are prevalent across various blogs and journal articles. Why have these projects failed? Surely, if you follow a set and proven method of executing a project that is associated with many successes, such high failure rates should not occur? The hard truth, however, is that these failed projects do exist -and the percentage of failures exceeds the percentages of success.These project failures occur across various disciplines, including that of Business Process Reengineering (BPR). A range of literature has been focused on the failure of these types of projects and the factors that influence their success, such as culture, executive sponsorship and buy-in, suitable deployment teams, and organisation adaptability [3,6,8,20]. If so much has gone into understanding why business process improvement-type projects either succeed or fail, why do a huge number of them still fail? [20] This paper offers a view on why these types of projects fail. It aims to answer the following two questions by conducting a case study on BPR projects that are executed within a financial institution:

Improving the success rate of business process re-engineering projects: A business process re-engineering framework

“…The failure rate of BPR projects conducted in financial institutions indicates that the concept of BPR is not yet clear to employees. Therefore, there is a need for clearly defined methods and structures to ensure the success of BPR initiatives (Kader & Dwolatzky 2016). This is also applicable to financial institutions.…”

“…According to Kader and Dwolatzky (2016), South African financial institutions have not been succeeding with BPR initiatives because of the methodologies they have adopted.…”

“…The failure is caused by organisations resisting change (Swartz 2018). Kader and Dwolatzky (2016) postulated that the four major banks in South Africa use Lean and Six Sigma approaches to conduct process re-engineering. The Six Sigma approach focuses on ensuring that a strategic process reaches a particular performance level.…”

Analyzing a Cross-Functional Information Technology Project: A Real Application of the Multistage One-Shot Decision-Making Approach

“…A dedicated BPR project can improve efficiency and performance to a particular level and find potential areas for information technology solutions [51,52]. Another possible consideration in similar decision cases is abandoning or putting the project on hold.…”