Towards a Methodology for the Pre-Stage of Implementing a Reengineering Project

Introduction The beginning of reengineering is traced back to the 1980s. For decades, many American firms have expressed dissatisfaction with their failure to gain a high rate of added value from information technology (IT). Though they made huge investments in developing IT, they could not increase their efficiency or improve performance. In order to tackle this problem, various theories are proposed by the experts and researchers, with Michael Hammer's theory being one of them (Hammer, 1990. Based on his theory, three forces lead to competitive advantage. These forces consist of customers, competitors and changes, known as the "3C"s. The principle of division of labor, developed by Adam Smith, which was an essential component in setting up organizations, is no longer applicable and effective. Firms should be arranged and organized in a process-oriented manner (Hammer, 1996). Almost all managers apply various mechanisms to boost internal efficiency in order to cope with the challenges of business competition. There are two key human factors that can highly affect the competition in organizations: the customers and the staff. The common prevailing belief in every organization is that accomplishing ultimate objectives depends on effective and efficient human resources. Human resources constitute the most significant factor in promoting the comprehensive quality and efficiency of organizations and are considered as the basis for economic, social, and cultural development of every country. The quality of the employees' work, the quality of their cooperation, and their role in decision making are the factors through which the superiority and the competitiveness of an organization are determined. According to developed essential reengineering concepts introduced by Davenport and Short (1990) and Hammer (1990), many organizations have reported on their significant advantages due to the gained experiences through successful implementation of reengineering projects. Despite the importance of Business Process Reengineering, either in theoretical, academic, or in real practice contexts, the obtained results have not been outstanding, and in some instances the failure rate in this practice is reported to be as high as 70% (Grint &Willcocks, 1995). The conclusions reached from the available studies indicate that the incompatibilities between expectations and Business Process Reengineering are practically ignored by the firms involved in reengineering projects (Yetton, Johnston, & Craig, 1994). Recently, due to the risks and costs involved in reengineering project implementation, the need for prior analysis of the subject organization has made the role of the analyst significant (Mohammad Ali, Tavakoli Moghadam, & Jafari Harandi, 2006). Without a doubt, the more Business Process Reengineering is explored, the more essential the analysis becomes. The multi-criteria decision making challenges which include lack of a standard rate in speed and accuracy of decision making, make process analysis greatly dependent on the decision-maker. According to the preliminary studies run at Neyriz White Cement Corporation, factors like organizational independence, outsourcing the activities, and the change in management standard editions highlight the importance of the issue and the necessity of the process review. In this study, after a review of the measures taken prior to the reengineering project implementation, attempt is made to introduce different aspects of the issue, identify the management sub-processes, and develop the organization's human resources. The reason why the organization selected the 6-stage methodology, and also the shift in management and staff attitude, will be explained. By applying the experiences of the organization's managers and the analysts, who are aware of processes and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), attempt is made to adopt an appropriate strategy. …