What are the Basic Rules for Re-Engineering Your Business?

There are basically 6 steps to totally redesigning your business.




One buzzword in business for this, is ‘re-engineering’.

But it’s more than just a word. More often than not it leads to a total overhaul of the whole organisation.

Primary Aim

It involves completely re-engineering the basic processes of your business in order to make major gains in time or cost.

The attitude behind it should be “We have a product and we have customers. Now let’s throw everything else up in the air and see where it lands.”

This streamlining is essential if you want to remain competitive and successful.

Many companies launch into re-engineering because the business is threatened, and if they do nothing the result will be lay-offs in the company.

The point is that business processes, evolve and adapt, and very often retain features which are no longer needed.

Perhaps the process itself is no longer needed, but no-one ever stands back and sees which processes, or functions, have become redundant.

The key to reengineering is to look at the objective of each process in the business and ask yourself one question:

If we were starting from scratch, how would we do this?

There are 6 basic rules:

1. Look at the business from the customer’s point of view. Consider what objective the customer needs you to achieve and think in terms of the end result you want.

2. Establish what your corporate strategy is. There is little point in pouring money into redesigning your customer service operation. For example, if your customers are more interested in price.

3.Re-engineering must be led from the top of the process. One process might move across several departments, so the reengineering must be overseen by someone with authority to make changes in all those departments.

4.Create a sense of urgency. Re-engineering is not something you do piecemeal when you have the time. It must be treated with firmness and urgency. Constantly remind everyone involved of the result of not doing it. Dropping market share, customers leaving, and so on.

5.Use a consultant if necessary. You will need them, especially when it comes to implementation, which will be the hardest part.

But they can be expensive. Try telling them that each reengineered process must generate enough savings to pay for the next.

6.Combine re-engineering with some form of Total Quality Management.

Remeber, although it has to be led from above, you will never be able to implement your new, improved systems effectively unless the people operating them have helped design them.

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