Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes

"A great deal has been written about process improvement and business process reengineering, most before its presumed demise and recent resurrection. Much has been written about the Internet and e-business, most before the tech bubble. This book is "post-bust"; it is the first book to thoroughly discuss the critical link between "process," information technology, and the Internetall things that managers must understand if they are to develop and manage sound internal operations that will provide legitimate profits. And it is the manager's job to do that. Some of the technical work must be done by business process consultants and IT staff, but the setting of the direction and requirements, the management of the integrating efforts, must be done by managers. That critical role cannot be delegated to the "techies." Meeting that management challenge will be made easier by this book." From the foreword by Geary A. Rummler, Founder and Chairman, Performance Design Lab; Co-author, Improving Performance. Every company wants to improve the way it does business, to produce goods and services more efficiently, and to increase profits. Nonprofit organizations are also concerned with efficiency, productivity, and with achieving the goals they set for themselves. Every manager understands that achieving these goals is a part of his or her job. In the wake of the dot-com collapse, managers are trying to figure out how they can take advantage of email, the Internet, and the Web to improve their business process. At the same time, managers are interested in developing business process architectures and measurement systems that align business processes with corporate goals. Managers face many options in approaching these problems. Business Process Change provides an overview of the options and describes a variety of business process techniques proven by successful companies over the course of a decade. Features *Focuses on the process change problems faced by today's managers. *Summarizes the state of the art of business process analysis & improvement, including the basic vocabulary of modeling. *Presents a methodology based on the best practices available that can be tailored for specific needs and that maintains a focus on the human aspects of process redesign. *Offers detailed case studies showing how these methods are implemented.