Prologue
The term "reengineering" surfaced as part of a management fad in the 1990's, which came and went, but has resurfaced under different terms: the term "new economy" seems to be in everyone's mouths lately, with the implication that the "old economy" thinking must be discarded and replaced - or, at the very least, completely reengineered in order to suit the present economic and competitive situation.
It's not even correct that reengineering is making a comeback: it never went away. Behind the scenes, with an absence of fanfare and publicity, real businesses have been using the principles of reengineering to transform vast segments of their operations. Wherever a firm looks to the way in which it accomplishes something, and finds a more effective and efficient way of achieving the same goal, it has reengineered its operations.
The pace of change has become constant, and the kinds of changes that were once considered revolutionary are happening so often that they go unnoticed. It is a driving force in the US economy and a source of competition in every industry. Though likely the leaps forward that have been made in operational effectiveness and efficiency have been smothered by external economic factors: it's difficult to recognize when an economy is sliding less than it otherwise might, when forces are working against one another.
Were in not so, the US economy would likely be much worse off than it presently is - but instead we seem to have been holding steady, with little fluctuation in prices and wages in spite of high unemployment and low demand for consumer goods. It is not incorrect to suggest that this is due to the Federal Reserve's steady hand on interest rates, but insufficient: if companies were still today operating as they were fifteen years ago, in terms of efficiency, stability would not be possible - and it is in part due to tremendous innovation that firms have been able to "merely" maintain and persevere.
The author suggests it is particularly ironic that information technology is being heralded as the force behind "the renaissance of US industry," as merely overlaying a new technology on old ways of doing business achieves very little - however, in the process of adopting technology, firms are reengineering business processes - and it doesn't always work out for the better. "Information technology allows us to make bad decisions sooner." That is to say that technology expedites change that can have a positive effect, but it cannot claim to be the origin of either. Reengineering capitalizes on technology, not the other way around.
The term "reengineering" was tarnished in the early 1990s, where the term was bandied about in the business press and pursued by many firms with scarcely a thought for what it meant. Companies were desperate for find some way to make a significant improvement in their business, and reengineering was one of many buzzwords tossed into the stew. Ultimately, the term became meaningless and anyone who used it was to be viewed (rightly) with suspicion.
Returning to information technology, IT has been a method by which reengineering could be attempted under a different label: the ability to focus on the benefits of a tool or system made it seem as if the product created improvement - when in reality the changes in business practices necessary to adopt the tool created greater benefits. The planning done for new systems often required changes within the organization to support the new system - and as a result, the organization was covertly reengineered.
But even then, it has not always been successful. For any given technology, some firms reap huge benefits and others reap none at all - and here, the cause of the benefit becomes clear: equal technology does not yield equal results. Merely owning technology does nothing unless it is used, and it can only be used effectively if the operations of the business are reengineered. Otherwise, "automating a mess creates an automated mess."
The adoption of the Internet demonstrates this as well: when a poorly-run company puts up a website, it merely advertizes how poorly they are run. Ecommerce has been an unfulfilled dream, and sometimes even a nightmare, for firms whose operations were sloppy in the first place. But for other companies, adding an "e" to their products caused them to rethink their ways of doing business - "the internet requires new ways of working," but the reengineering went well beyond their online operations.
The author calls attention to the fact that this is the second edition of this book - the first was written in 1992 - and since then, some things have changed while others have not.
The first generation of reengineering questioned internal boundaries and cut across silos to focus on the customer value that is delivered by the whole organization, and then suggests that the next generation involves considering the boundaries between corporations, given that many organizations work together to deliver the ultimate value to the customer.
Even so, most of the content of the first edition remains germane in the present business environment On the whole, they made only minor editorial changes to maintain the accuracy and relevance, refresh the case studies and update others.
The "reengineering agenda" is not only incomplete, it's not a once-and-done agenda. Continuous improvement requires continuously examining the way that organizations work and making improvements in business processes. "Reengineering is here to stay."