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258 Chapter 9 • Organizational Change and Business Process Reengineering

The benefits of BPM are driven by the “Four Rs of Process”: 33

•Roles—establishing a set of defined user roles that will not change with employee
absences or departures
•Relationships—identifying the interactions necessary to complete a process
•Rules—developing a fixed set of process steps that will be followed in most situations
•Routing—electronically transferring forms and documents for review, approval, and so on.
BPM software does not want the user to write code and is very user friendly. It facilitates the
entire process-implementation life cycle and also interactive tasks like development of business rules
that are managed centrally, development of portals and flexible forms, and feedback provided for
process improvements. After the process models are developed, BPM software then works on auto-
mating, controlling, and recording new processes and also managing the allocation of resources to
the different steps. Automation has many benefits like staff time reduction and high-quality services.
BPM software also assists in tactical management by giving right information to the right people. It
tracks process performance by measuring the time taken for each stage in the process, the number of
unprocessed items, and the total time taken to finish the process. The BPM software sends e-mail
alert messages, points out bottlenecks at a step, and gives information for effective decision making.

Other Examples of Success Stories 34
Here are a few other examples of using BPM suite in different organizations like Facebook Inc, AT&T
Inc., and McDonald’s. The benefits of using the BPM suite by these organizations are also specified.
• Facebook Inc., the famous social networking Web site, uses Oracle E-Business Suite
Release to support the order-to-cash process. The suite helps in managing orders, sales
process, and also the financials. The suite is integrated with the other applications, thus
facilitating the information sharing throughout the organization. It also helps to improve
the efficiency and increase the visibility of the business processes. Revenue collection
process cycle is automated and also the SOX compliance is taken care of. The suite
enhanced the business reporting and forecasting functionalities in order to provide the
management with right information to make effective decisions.
• AT&T Inc.—The recent acquisitions have forced AT&T to upgrade to Oracle E-Business
Suite Release 12 in order to centralize the worldwide accounting operations and also
enable SOX compliance of all the global financial data.
• McDonald’s—It decided to upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 to improve
the business processes and productivity and also to reduce the downtime.

Role of ERP

ERP and BPM systems are not mutually exclusive. Implementation of BPM software does not need
revamping of the existing ERP components. Actually, they both interact with and complement each
other. The different hierarchical levels in the organization include corporate, functional, and
informational levels (lowest level). The corporate level is “big picture” of the entire enterprise;
functional level includes marketing, human resources, and other departments in the organization;

33 Four Rs of Processes (Adapted from “Business Process Management: A New Way to Conduct Operations.” by, Brenda
Boyle. Government Finance Review).
34 Customer Success Stories. (April 2010). Information for Success, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 and 12.1.