Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a complex process that calls for almost a radical redesigning of the core business

processes inside an organization in order to achieve rapid developments in terms of productivity, quality as well as cycle times (McAdam and Donaghy, 1999). In this process, companies start with an open mind without any presumptions and rethink the whole process in an effort to deliver better value to the clients. They bring about revolutionary changes in their value system and put extra emphasize on the customer needs. They also restructure the organization and do away with unproductive activities especially in two important areas. Firstly, the functional organizations are redesigned into different cross-functional teams. Second, modern technologies are used to improve dissemination of knowledge as well as decision making. Business Process Reengineering proposes five major steps to be taken by the managers to achieve dramatic changes in their organizations. These steps include, refocusing on the company values based on customer needs, redesigning the core processes using modern information technology, reorganizing the teams across function by attributing end-to-end responsibility to them for a whole process, rethinking existing organizational as well as people issues, improve business processes across the organization (Peppard and Fitzgerald, 1997). Business Process Reengineering is used by the companies in order to achieve certain results that reduce costs as well as cycle time. Business Process Reengineering reduces costs and cycle times by eliminating the activities as well as the employees who obstruct productivity (Ranganathan and Dhaliwal, 2001). When the teams are reorganized, it decreases the layers in management and removes hierarchical boundaries thus accelerating information flows which reduce defects and errors in the whole process. It also helps in improving overall quality by decreasing fragmentation of work by establishing clear responsibilities as well as ownerships of processes. So, the workers at every level get responsibility for respective outputs and can also measure their own performances based on regular feedbacks. For this particular study, UK based retail chain Argos is being used as the subject upon which the principles of BPR will be tested. Argos is a fully owned subsidiary of Home Retail Group, UK. Argos is the pioneer of Multi channel business retail. With 33,000 employees working to support over 700 stores in UK and Ireland, Argos is a 4.3 billion company. The intention is to see how operational efficiency can be improved within the organization through BPR and for this purpose a certain Argos store was picked up for the preliminary study. It was done with active support from Argos' side and for last few weeks I have worked with close cooperation with the store manager. The retail industry is a business that is fast moving, complex, and constantly changing. It is an industry where only the most innovative and well managed organisations can survive and succeed (Ranganathan and Dhaliwal, 2001). The retail industry generates revenues through the sales from supermarkets, cooperatives, convenience stores and nowadays even through online stores etc. Traditionally, there were various marketing strategies that allowed the retailers to continually promote their companies by attracting new customers. But the fierce competition in the contemporary markets has necessitated better consumer relationships and the capacity to follow up with them (Peppard and Fitzgerald, 1997). The increase in disposable income as well as the changes in lifestyle of these consumers have opened new vistas in retailing and have also increased

competition. The managers in the retail sector must be innovative as well as prudent enough to survive in this cut throat environment making sure that every necessary step towards managing change has been taken and they should be ensuring delivery of quality standards in customer service so that the firm builds strong brand loyalty among the consumers towards them. Here, we have to see that the process of BPR is closely associated with project management and hence we should also take an overview of project management before getting into further details. A project is a temporary business activity, one having a well defined beginning and ending. They are undertaken to accomplish particular goals and objectives (McAdam and Donaghy, 1999). The temporary nature of a project, as against the more repetitive functions like operations, requires a different management approach. Project Management is a management discipline concerned with the planning, organization and managing resources for successful implementation of a business strategy which meets all its goals and aims. This particular study is also a project that has been undertaken to see the impact of the business process reengineering process on the supermarket chain Argos. The primary objective of Project Management is to achieve all the project goals within the pre defined resource constraints. As such, it shares many tools and techniques with Business Optimization and Modelling (Peppard and Fitzgerald, 1997). The generic constraints of any project are time, scope and cost; also referred to as the project triangle. For my project, the constraints are time: 3 months, scope: a specific utility within the operations function which is yet to be allocated to me by the company and cost: I would have to work incurring no financial costs for the company; as such the only costs incurred are my time and efforts. I would be working under these constraints to optimise the reengineering project. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a management approach that aims at implementing improvements by elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business processes. The fundamental strategy adopted by organizations in this area by looking at their operations from 'a clean state'. More specifically, they are looking at what can be done in a better way if the whole process function were to start from scratch. Reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and the radical redesign of business processes to achieve dynamic improvements in the areas of cost, speed and quality of service (McAdam and Donaghy, 1999). Many of the recent developments in the management sphere can be attributed to reengineering. The cross functional team is one such illustration, developed out of an effort to reengineer the separate functional departments to a mutually coordinating and interdependent process utilities. The Management Information Systems, ERP, Supply chain management, Knowledge management and many others have been developed by reengineering (Ranganathan and Dhaliwal, 2001). BPR derives its existence from various interdisciplinary components, though the four most affecting areas are: Strategy, Technology, People and Organization (Peppard and Fitzgerald, 1997). A process is viewed as common framework, considering these dimensions. Michael Hammer and James A Champy were the first proponents of this concept. They began by criticizing the rigid departmental approach in many organizations. In a series of publications: The Agenda, Reengineering the Corporation, Reengineering the management, they argued that a single team that works under diluted responsibility and

reporting structure would be more useful to the organizations. The result was the development of Cross Functional Teams. They later expanded their arguments to include Suppliers, Customers and distributors. Reengineering is very difficult to implement in an organisation. It causes widespread discomfort among the employees and usually experiences a strong resistance to change. The primary reason being that, over the years, BPR has been used effectively by organizations, however, the first thing that BPR results in is the layoffs. BPR, though a powerful organizational thinking, has not been able to achieve the expectations for the following treasons: The primary assumption of the BPR system is that the single most factors affecting an organizational performance is the inefficiency of its operations. True, processes can always be improved at any level, but that doesn't mean that they are inefficient. It disregards the 'status quo' by looking at an organization from a 'clean state'. It is not an effective tool to focus the improvement strategies on the organizational constraints. As a matter of fact today most organisations are facing great challenges in this regard and they are feeling the need to become more and more competitive through a special focus on organisational design, knowledge management, hierarchical structures performance management as well as quality control. It has always been difficult to find a strategy that encompasses every aspect of this issue. Experts have suggested a number of strategies to manage changing times in organizations. The concept of BPR is one of the latest in this league. We have seen various facets of BPR earlier. Collectively, we can now define BPR as the fundamental rethinking as well as radical redesigning of the business processes that intends to achieve revolutionary improvements in critical aspects of the business with contemporary measures to improve various aspects of performance such as quality, service level, cost and speed (Hammer and Champy, 1993). As this definition suggests, it is desirable on part of the organisations to do away with their archaic practices as well as processes, policies, principles as well as structures that negatively affect the performance of the organization. That is why BPR is primarily about redesigning the processes within an organization (Balle, 1995). BPR can also be defined as the re evaluation or redesign of the firm's business processes as well as organisational structures in an effort to achieve marked improvements in certain critical success factors namely cycle time, quality, productivity as well as customer satisfaction (Tapscott and Caston, 1993). This particular definition differs from the previous one as it makes a specific reference to the process (Poh and Chew, 1994). It can also be defined as the analysis as well as design of workflows and processes inside the organizations. BPR is basically a tool for planning as well as controlling change (Morris and Brandon, 1993). It offers redesigning and improvement both in depth (i.e. organizational roles and responsibilities, organisational structure, use of technology, appraisal and incentives, shared values as well as skills) and in breadth (i.e. activities that are performed with long term goals in mind) (Hall et al., 1993). Some of the experts take it a step further and explain that BPR is just a part of the necessary steps in the radical alteration of processes (Davenport, 1993). So, there is a need for "process innovation" in BPR that can lead to new strategies and designs and mobilize both people and technology

towards a singular objective (Poh and Chew, 1994). So, we can see that definitions of BPR vary for person to person but overall it involves a renewal of existing processes and involvement of technology as well as strategic thinking.