Description
This is a document describes about Educational Institute Reengineering strategy.
Reengineering an Educational Institute:
Contents
Company profile............................................................................................................................................ 3
Reasons for BPR initiative ............................................................................................................................. 3
Scope and Timeframe ................................................................................................................................... 4
Project Design ............................................................................................................................................... 5
Impact of the project .................................................................................................................................... 7
Solutions and Recommendations: .............................................................................................................. 10
2
Company profile
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ABC College provides high quality educational programmes to students from New Zealand and around the world. The services include teaching, consultancy and research. The company is registered with New Zealand Qualifications Authorities (NZQA) and the Ministry of Education (MOE). ABC was awarded ISO 9002 accreditation in 1999, thereafter ISO 9002:2002 standard. Company has a turnover of around $ 10 million; this has been attributed to growing demand for education in New Zealand and among the overseas students. The organisation has three campuses and a head office for all administrative purposes. 30 different qualifications (Certificate courses, Diplomas, Advanced Diplomas) are being offered.
Reasons for BPR initiative
? ? ? ? Need to change the processes to suit the high demand for the product and services offered by the ABC College. Higher workload pushed to look at the processes to enable them to manage and sustain growth. The prime reason for reengineering was increased complexity of systems and processes due to business growth. The driving factors were clearly to improve communication internally between the departments and the different campuses and externally with the suppliers and customers, better use of human resources and process time reduction.
3
Scope and Timeframe
? ? ? The project was launched at the end of 2001 and the first phase of implementation was undertaken over a period of fourteen months. The second phase is under implementation and expected to be completed sometime in the year 2004. The idea is to constantly review the industry and make required changes to the organisation after the second phase.
?
The project covered departments, namely - human resources, marketing, business development, registry- sales, accounts, academic department and across the three campuses (branches) and head office.
? ?
Since all the departments are interlinked and are customers to each other, the team believed that BPR processes should be studied and reengineered. The processes from handling student enquiries to student graduation were studied considering back office function.
Team involved ? ? ? The team comprised of 15 managers within the company. No involvement of any external consultant in the BPR effort. They were from various departments since the reengineering project involved all processes. These managers described the functions of their department and helped in developing flowcharts of existing processes. ? They assisted in studying the non-value activities to reduce duplication.
4
?
The processes were reengineered based on the objectives and interdepartmental requirements.
Project Design
Business reengineering involves a strategy driven, top-down reappraisal and redesign of the total business. There was impact on cross-functional activities, working practices, organization structure, performance monitoring and staff training and development. Future competitive success would be based upon a strong linkage between strategy, competence, core processes and architecture. Value Chain Analysis From the 1990s, “value for the customer” is emerging as the strategic imperative. While the firm’s shareholders are its right of existence, its customers give or refuse – right of passage. Top managers now effectively spend time on implementing a principle that has been obvious all along: only by creating value for the customer will the firm create value for its shareholders. The four areas identified for reengineering were as shown in the figure:
Strategic Structure
Supplier Relations
Customer Relations
Operations
These four areas were classified into chunks, which were inter-departmental. In the traditional system, there were discrepancies like non-coherent changes, duplication, time delays and
5
difficulty in planning and implementing changes due to inter-dependence between departments. This resulted in low efficiency, time consuming and expensive outcomes. To avoid these problems, ? ? ? ? The ultimate strategic goal was redefined All critical processes were mapped Non-value adding processes were removed Step-by-Step approach - All departments were involved but implementation was carried in small steps thus facilitating management of change
Benchmarking They used devices to gather intelligence about their competitors and compare their processes. This provided them with the knowledge of any feature or facility which was new or better offered by their competitor. They could also use it to understand their own systems and analyze their processes. Quality management The organization used internal systems to implement, monitor and evaluate their redesign. They put in place regular peer evaluation which facilitated them to understand any gaps in the delivery of customer service and thereby to recognize any shortcomings. Role of IT An IT system was installed to improve communication and hence avoid overlapping jobs within the departments. Restructuring of the website was also initiated. Computerization was done in 3 stages: 1. Connecting the departments and the three campuses, to facilitate a smoother line of communication between them, 2. New software was installed to link customer relations and operations divisions. New program for managing finance was also installed, 3. A database management system was implemented due to growth in business. It provided a better control system. Change management and Risk assessment The organization did not have the current profiles of the employees on their database causing problems in recruitment and training. Hence, they employed an HR consultantto analyze all the jobs and create profiles alongside. To ward off fears of downsizing and change, the exercise
6
wasn’t named as BPR. Appropriate training was given to several employees to fit them into newly created positions. As the reengineering progressed, new departments emerged and a totally new structure was formed with processes carefully aligned with respective departments so that there was efficiency and effectiveness, eliminating any duplication.
Impact of the project
? The BPR project has been very costly, but the management aims to recover costs and earn increased profits in 2004. ? The cycle time was reduced since the duplicate processes were deleted during the reengineered project thereby reducing operational costs also. The unique combination of the step-by-step change approach of the entire organisation and radical change approach with in the identified areas (chunks) ensured the smooth running of the business and the success of the planned process-reengineering project. Some of the processes improved during the project were standardising enrolment and dealing with enquiries. This resulted in improved customer satisfaction. ? Control processes such as regular evaluation and assessments as well as quality assurance systems were revisited to ensure the integrity of the new processes. ? Communication had improved between departments and with customers and suppliers. Streamlined processes were computerised to increase efficiency. The main areas of automation linked customer services and accounts. This new system enabled management to receive some critical financial, marketing and customer related reports and data on regular basis.
7
The structure was more defined after the process, with some activities merging and new departments emerging. The new structure was based on the strategies and replaced the old functional structure during the course of the project. This provided a more defined skeleton to the organisation and aims to manage new processes, as the ABC College embarks on future growth. Some redundancies arose due to the changes made, however new staff were employed in other areas where the jobs had been created. These also necessitated training programs for the existing staff. This new structure facilitates improved efficiency, reduced cycle time and increased control of the operations of the tertiary college. The second phase of reengineering has been recognised as a continual process. This was due to the hyper-competitive characteristic of the industry. To achieve defined goals they have to constantly monitor the changes in the environment and plan strategically.
8
The above figure shows the decrease in the number of students in the year 2003. There was a fall in number of international students who came to New Zealand this year due to several reasons such as SARS, and the growing strength of the New Zealand dollar, and increasing competition in the global market. Many medium-sized business are undergoing business losses and one institute closed (Perrott, 2003). By reengineering the organisational processes and becoming more efficient, the organisation has been able to withstand the pressures of the industry and has been doing well. Summary of the Impact of the BPR Initiatives at ABC College Positive Impact • Customer satisfaction was highly improved • Standardisation of enrolment and enquiries procedures • Reduction in cost of operation • Improved lead time • Greater efficiency • Greater control on the operations • Greater flexibility • Able to overcome and maintain profitability during industry downturn in 2003
9
Negative Impact • Heavy costs incurred due to the BPR effort
• Older Managers and other employees were not comfortable with the change.
Solutions and Recommendations:
A tertiary education system is dynamic and responds to influence. The problem is that it is difficult to anticipate thebehavior of such a complex system. There are few, if any system models available, and not many methodologiesto generate such models. Furthermore, institutions have transformed themselves to meet the operating environment with proliferation of programs, including expansion into academic areas formerly reserved forother institutions. Since the student’s enrolment decision carries the entire subsidy, institutions have had to focuson student needs before other priorities of the national good. The government intends to change the behavior oftertiary institutions and the mechanisms it intends using are critically reviewed. The NZ education system works well in most respects.The dominant failures are the destructive competitionand the financial insecurity of the organizations. The previous restructuring deliberately set out to create a competitive environment. This is not an easy optimization problem, especially as the variables are qualitative, the relationships betweenthem are interdependent but uncertain, and theoutcomes may even conflict with each other. It seemsdesirable, and perhaps even essential, to have somemechanism for assessing the current state of the system,and tuning it to move to more desirable operating states. The NZ tertiary education currently operates on highly financially competitive principles. This is aconsequence of the state distributing its entire teachingsubsidy according to the student enrolment, with noconstraints on where or what the student studied, andno other sources of state funding being available forcapital or special needs. Furthermore, institutions havetransformed themselves to meet the operatingenvironment with proliferation of programs,including expansion into academic areas formerlyreserved for other institutions. Since the student’senrolment decision carries the entire subsidy,institutions have had to focus on student needs beforeother priorities of the national good. Thus, Implementation of BPR in ABC College reveals that BPR efforts can yield better results and if they are complemented by supporting tools such as benchmarking, and human resources training. While information technology is recognized as an important factor to the success of this project, prior planning and understanding of the processes led to successful integration with the project goals. The study emphasizes the importance of the systematic selection of processes to be
10
reengineered even before the process is begun. Unlike many BPR initiatives, this study Showed dependence on an external agent is not a necessity for successful implementation; it can be undertaken even with internal staff if they have the required expertise and understanding of the project. Use of internal staff to drive the BPR efforts resulted in higher level of organizational commitment in managing the process, which played a critical role in its success. It also highlights the vision and leadership displayed by the management towards this project. Like any other business, tertiary education institutes too need to transform their organization in order to successfully face challenges in a competing environment. It requires careful planning and implementation of appropriate change management initiatives. An examination of BPR implementation in ABC College reveals that it can be a powerful tool to bring in necessary organizational changes to provide a competitive edge. This organization has clearly gained benefit through enhanced customer satisfaction, greater control of operations, improved flexibility to adapt to fluctuating number of student enrolments and increase profitability. Such positive impact through the BPR initiatives is similar the gains observed in other studies The study indicates that BPR is a tool that is available for the any tertiary education institute in its artillery to improve its efficiency and performance. Educational institutes desirous of implementing BPR can learn much from the experience of ABC College. Also, this work has provided a descriptive treatment of key characteristics of the NZ tertiary education system. Ithas integrated multiple sources of qualitativeinformation into a model that provides a plausibleexplanation of existing system behavior. It is readilyacknowledged that this model is a construct of theanalysts and is therefore subjective, and must beexpected to be constrained in predictive power. Thesuggested causality might be an artifact of the priorknowledge of the analysts rather than a product of themethodology itself. Thus no claim is being made thatsuccessful creation of a model necessarily validated themethodology or the model However, provided theanalysts identify all relevant inputs and outputs thencertain facets of system behavior become evident,such as organizations setting new strategic direction torespond to changes to the system introduced bygovernment. Organizational theory and basic laws usedin this area, such as the law of requisite variety (asuccessful system needs, in the complexity of itsinternal systems and its flexibility of response, to beable to match the complexity of its environment) willalways show organizations that survive and prosperresponding to work in a turbulent and competitiveenvironment by changing organizational behavior andbusiness strategy. If the model helps otherorganizations better understand and respond to theirenvironment, then it will have achieved what Ms. Manisha Balaji hoped.
11
doc_411522079.docx
This is a document describes about Educational Institute Reengineering strategy.
Reengineering an Educational Institute:
Contents
Company profile............................................................................................................................................ 3
Reasons for BPR initiative ............................................................................................................................. 3
Scope and Timeframe ................................................................................................................................... 4
Project Design ............................................................................................................................................... 5
Impact of the project .................................................................................................................................... 7
Solutions and Recommendations: .............................................................................................................. 10
2
Company profile
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ABC College provides high quality educational programmes to students from New Zealand and around the world. The services include teaching, consultancy and research. The company is registered with New Zealand Qualifications Authorities (NZQA) and the Ministry of Education (MOE). ABC was awarded ISO 9002 accreditation in 1999, thereafter ISO 9002:2002 standard. Company has a turnover of around $ 10 million; this has been attributed to growing demand for education in New Zealand and among the overseas students. The organisation has three campuses and a head office for all administrative purposes. 30 different qualifications (Certificate courses, Diplomas, Advanced Diplomas) are being offered.
Reasons for BPR initiative
? ? ? ? Need to change the processes to suit the high demand for the product and services offered by the ABC College. Higher workload pushed to look at the processes to enable them to manage and sustain growth. The prime reason for reengineering was increased complexity of systems and processes due to business growth. The driving factors were clearly to improve communication internally between the departments and the different campuses and externally with the suppliers and customers, better use of human resources and process time reduction.
3
Scope and Timeframe
? ? ? The project was launched at the end of 2001 and the first phase of implementation was undertaken over a period of fourteen months. The second phase is under implementation and expected to be completed sometime in the year 2004. The idea is to constantly review the industry and make required changes to the organisation after the second phase.
?
The project covered departments, namely - human resources, marketing, business development, registry- sales, accounts, academic department and across the three campuses (branches) and head office.
? ?
Since all the departments are interlinked and are customers to each other, the team believed that BPR processes should be studied and reengineered. The processes from handling student enquiries to student graduation were studied considering back office function.
Team involved ? ? ? The team comprised of 15 managers within the company. No involvement of any external consultant in the BPR effort. They were from various departments since the reengineering project involved all processes. These managers described the functions of their department and helped in developing flowcharts of existing processes. ? They assisted in studying the non-value activities to reduce duplication.
4
?
The processes were reengineered based on the objectives and interdepartmental requirements.
Project Design
Business reengineering involves a strategy driven, top-down reappraisal and redesign of the total business. There was impact on cross-functional activities, working practices, organization structure, performance monitoring and staff training and development. Future competitive success would be based upon a strong linkage between strategy, competence, core processes and architecture. Value Chain Analysis From the 1990s, “value for the customer” is emerging as the strategic imperative. While the firm’s shareholders are its right of existence, its customers give or refuse – right of passage. Top managers now effectively spend time on implementing a principle that has been obvious all along: only by creating value for the customer will the firm create value for its shareholders. The four areas identified for reengineering were as shown in the figure:
Strategic Structure
Supplier Relations
Customer Relations
Operations
These four areas were classified into chunks, which were inter-departmental. In the traditional system, there were discrepancies like non-coherent changes, duplication, time delays and
5
difficulty in planning and implementing changes due to inter-dependence between departments. This resulted in low efficiency, time consuming and expensive outcomes. To avoid these problems, ? ? ? ? The ultimate strategic goal was redefined All critical processes were mapped Non-value adding processes were removed Step-by-Step approach - All departments were involved but implementation was carried in small steps thus facilitating management of change
Benchmarking They used devices to gather intelligence about their competitors and compare their processes. This provided them with the knowledge of any feature or facility which was new or better offered by their competitor. They could also use it to understand their own systems and analyze their processes. Quality management The organization used internal systems to implement, monitor and evaluate their redesign. They put in place regular peer evaluation which facilitated them to understand any gaps in the delivery of customer service and thereby to recognize any shortcomings. Role of IT An IT system was installed to improve communication and hence avoid overlapping jobs within the departments. Restructuring of the website was also initiated. Computerization was done in 3 stages: 1. Connecting the departments and the three campuses, to facilitate a smoother line of communication between them, 2. New software was installed to link customer relations and operations divisions. New program for managing finance was also installed, 3. A database management system was implemented due to growth in business. It provided a better control system. Change management and Risk assessment The organization did not have the current profiles of the employees on their database causing problems in recruitment and training. Hence, they employed an HR consultantto analyze all the jobs and create profiles alongside. To ward off fears of downsizing and change, the exercise
6
wasn’t named as BPR. Appropriate training was given to several employees to fit them into newly created positions. As the reengineering progressed, new departments emerged and a totally new structure was formed with processes carefully aligned with respective departments so that there was efficiency and effectiveness, eliminating any duplication.
Impact of the project
? The BPR project has been very costly, but the management aims to recover costs and earn increased profits in 2004. ? The cycle time was reduced since the duplicate processes were deleted during the reengineered project thereby reducing operational costs also. The unique combination of the step-by-step change approach of the entire organisation and radical change approach with in the identified areas (chunks) ensured the smooth running of the business and the success of the planned process-reengineering project. Some of the processes improved during the project were standardising enrolment and dealing with enquiries. This resulted in improved customer satisfaction. ? Control processes such as regular evaluation and assessments as well as quality assurance systems were revisited to ensure the integrity of the new processes. ? Communication had improved between departments and with customers and suppliers. Streamlined processes were computerised to increase efficiency. The main areas of automation linked customer services and accounts. This new system enabled management to receive some critical financial, marketing and customer related reports and data on regular basis.
7
The structure was more defined after the process, with some activities merging and new departments emerging. The new structure was based on the strategies and replaced the old functional structure during the course of the project. This provided a more defined skeleton to the organisation and aims to manage new processes, as the ABC College embarks on future growth. Some redundancies arose due to the changes made, however new staff were employed in other areas where the jobs had been created. These also necessitated training programs for the existing staff. This new structure facilitates improved efficiency, reduced cycle time and increased control of the operations of the tertiary college. The second phase of reengineering has been recognised as a continual process. This was due to the hyper-competitive characteristic of the industry. To achieve defined goals they have to constantly monitor the changes in the environment and plan strategically.
8
The above figure shows the decrease in the number of students in the year 2003. There was a fall in number of international students who came to New Zealand this year due to several reasons such as SARS, and the growing strength of the New Zealand dollar, and increasing competition in the global market. Many medium-sized business are undergoing business losses and one institute closed (Perrott, 2003). By reengineering the organisational processes and becoming more efficient, the organisation has been able to withstand the pressures of the industry and has been doing well. Summary of the Impact of the BPR Initiatives at ABC College Positive Impact • Customer satisfaction was highly improved • Standardisation of enrolment and enquiries procedures • Reduction in cost of operation • Improved lead time • Greater efficiency • Greater control on the operations • Greater flexibility • Able to overcome and maintain profitability during industry downturn in 2003
9
Negative Impact • Heavy costs incurred due to the BPR effort
• Older Managers and other employees were not comfortable with the change.
Solutions and Recommendations:
A tertiary education system is dynamic and responds to influence. The problem is that it is difficult to anticipate thebehavior of such a complex system. There are few, if any system models available, and not many methodologiesto generate such models. Furthermore, institutions have transformed themselves to meet the operating environment with proliferation of programs, including expansion into academic areas formerly reserved forother institutions. Since the student’s enrolment decision carries the entire subsidy, institutions have had to focuson student needs before other priorities of the national good. The government intends to change the behavior oftertiary institutions and the mechanisms it intends using are critically reviewed. The NZ education system works well in most respects.The dominant failures are the destructive competitionand the financial insecurity of the organizations. The previous restructuring deliberately set out to create a competitive environment. This is not an easy optimization problem, especially as the variables are qualitative, the relationships betweenthem are interdependent but uncertain, and theoutcomes may even conflict with each other. It seemsdesirable, and perhaps even essential, to have somemechanism for assessing the current state of the system,and tuning it to move to more desirable operating states. The NZ tertiary education currently operates on highly financially competitive principles. This is aconsequence of the state distributing its entire teachingsubsidy according to the student enrolment, with noconstraints on where or what the student studied, andno other sources of state funding being available forcapital or special needs. Furthermore, institutions havetransformed themselves to meet the operatingenvironment with proliferation of programs,including expansion into academic areas formerlyreserved for other institutions. Since the student’senrolment decision carries the entire subsidy,institutions have had to focus on student needs beforeother priorities of the national good. Thus, Implementation of BPR in ABC College reveals that BPR efforts can yield better results and if they are complemented by supporting tools such as benchmarking, and human resources training. While information technology is recognized as an important factor to the success of this project, prior planning and understanding of the processes led to successful integration with the project goals. The study emphasizes the importance of the systematic selection of processes to be
10
reengineered even before the process is begun. Unlike many BPR initiatives, this study Showed dependence on an external agent is not a necessity for successful implementation; it can be undertaken even with internal staff if they have the required expertise and understanding of the project. Use of internal staff to drive the BPR efforts resulted in higher level of organizational commitment in managing the process, which played a critical role in its success. It also highlights the vision and leadership displayed by the management towards this project. Like any other business, tertiary education institutes too need to transform their organization in order to successfully face challenges in a competing environment. It requires careful planning and implementation of appropriate change management initiatives. An examination of BPR implementation in ABC College reveals that it can be a powerful tool to bring in necessary organizational changes to provide a competitive edge. This organization has clearly gained benefit through enhanced customer satisfaction, greater control of operations, improved flexibility to adapt to fluctuating number of student enrolments and increase profitability. Such positive impact through the BPR initiatives is similar the gains observed in other studies The study indicates that BPR is a tool that is available for the any tertiary education institute in its artillery to improve its efficiency and performance. Educational institutes desirous of implementing BPR can learn much from the experience of ABC College. Also, this work has provided a descriptive treatment of key characteristics of the NZ tertiary education system. Ithas integrated multiple sources of qualitativeinformation into a model that provides a plausibleexplanation of existing system behavior. It is readilyacknowledged that this model is a construct of theanalysts and is therefore subjective, and must beexpected to be constrained in predictive power. Thesuggested causality might be an artifact of the priorknowledge of the analysts rather than a product of themethodology itself. Thus no claim is being made thatsuccessful creation of a model necessarily validated themethodology or the model However, provided theanalysts identify all relevant inputs and outputs thencertain facets of system behavior become evident,such as organizations setting new strategic direction torespond to changes to the system introduced bygovernment. Organizational theory and basic laws usedin this area, such as the law of requisite variety (asuccessful system needs, in the complexity of itsinternal systems and its flexibility of response, to beable to match the complexity of its environment) willalways show organizations that survive and prosperresponding to work in a turbulent and competitiveenvironment by changing organizational behavior andbusiness strategy. If the model helps otherorganizations better understand and respond to theirenvironment, then it will have achieved what Ms. Manisha Balaji hoped.
11
doc_411522079.docx