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In my view, (Sampler & Short), I agree projects fail due to weak coupling
between reengineering project objectives, and firm’s general business and information
system planning agenda (1994). Sampler, Short and Earl published a journal with
evidence from field studies. One of their case studies was Property and Casualty
Insurance that illustrated the dependency of the business and IS professionals (Earl,
Sampler & Short, 1995). I was the development lead in a reengineering project, which
involved building a new application and installing a vendor supplied application with all
new business process built around the application for producing external communication.
My beliefs were that the project should have started with the business process, and then
The article did not address the question that the senior leaders never asked is “do
users needed to be computer savvy; they could not be paper pushers any more. They
needed to have training to look for error in reports, troubleshooting skills, create simple if
statements, create formulas, familiarize them with the tool, and comprehend the entire
new process with understanding the consequences of each step. The new tool put a lot
more responsibility back onto the business, but they were not ready for the object-
oriented software. The users were sent out for all kinds of training including some
Amy Anderson 3/31/2011
High Performance Management Module I Managing Internal Processes
programming and training on the new software. This created frustration with the users
Sampler and Short (1994), relates to the success of reengineering in terms of how
long a firms expertise and information is needed to meet the company’s competitive
position (p. 63). They divide all reengineering projects into four quadrants, long
expertise and information, short expertise and information, long expertise and short
information, and short expertise and long information. Long expertise and information is
the back office functions such as accounts payables, accounts receivable and general
ledger. Sampler and Short believe that reengineering projects involving these types of
functions are the popular success stories (Sampler & Short, 1994 p. 65). In my view, this
is true in every finance-reengineering project I have been involved in. I have been
was a success. The finance staff is very computer savvy and can handle change easily.
Ford Motor Company’s effectively reengineered their accounts payable system and
Short expertise and information happens when there is a high degree of autonomy
throughout the firm (Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 68). Sampler and Short do not say what
the success rate of this type of organization is because there is no structure to redefine in
this type of firm. I commend the authors for admitting they did not find any supporting
research for short expertise and information. They did say there would be future research
(Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 65). The increase of IT in this quadrant is very important to
reduce the time it takes to process large amounts of data in a short period of time. In this
quadrant the stakeholders have the decision rights; but the effect of IT has the potential to
destroy such positional derived authority (Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 67). I agree with
Sampler and Short (1994), I have experienced a reengineering project that failed due to
IT dictating the tools, software, data flow, server platform and database that should be
used to process the data quickly. The mission statements of the project read the
software that was chosen to create the documents was object-oriented, which means it
was re-usable. The software satisfied the re-usability objective, but IT complicated the
data flow process by building all the “what if’s” without really knowing if there would
ever be a need to re-use the data after it was delivered to the customer. The process to
deliver a simple letter to a customer took longer than the original process did; therefore
the sponsors are using the object- oriented software supplied by the vendor but not using
the process to get the data build by their internal IT department. I considered the project
a failure since the sponsors are not using the delivered process. Sampler and Short give
examples of stock trading firms that have invested in IT to improver their ability to
execute faster trades (Sampler & Short,1994, p. 66). In the successful example of
listening to the business needs and in my example IT came to the table with their own
according to Sampler and Short. (Sampler & Short, 1994, p. 68) The example of
reengineering in this quadrant refers to where employees are used to making decision
based on visual experience of production to now having to look at past results data to
make the same decisions. I believe this is a high risk because of two reasons. One
reason, you are taking the employees making the decision away from the workers who
are doing the actual work. This removes the bonding and trust between employees and
does not give the decision makers any environment feedback, such as worker experience.
The second reason, you are eliminating hands on skill that will be lost (Sampler & Short,
1994, p. 68). I have no experience of this type of reengineering but I have heard my
brother complain about the engineers at his company. The engineers estimate where,
when and what type of drill he should be using to get to the oil. When the project is
behind it is usually do to the fact he has inexperienced drillers and skill level of the boat
company. When he is included on the decision of the type of rig and drill to use he is a
did not include employees on the decision of reengineering her finance department (Class
In conclusion, I agree with Sampler and Short’s analogy of the four quadrants as
to where the risks of reengineering projects fall. Their article is based on interviews with
and archival data in fourteen firms (Sampler & Short, 1994, p.70), which coincide with
Earl, Michael J, Sampler, Jeffrey L, Short, James E. (1995). Strategies for business
Ryans, Cynthia C. (1995). Resources. Journal of Small Business Management. 33(4), 66-
70. Retrieved February 2, 2008, from EBSCO Host Business Source Premier
Belasen, Alan T. (2000). Leading the Learning Organization, Albany: State University of