ABSTRACT
The business process reengineering (BPR) movement of the 1990s emphasized technology as a key enabler of process management and process change. As a result, information technology (IT) has steadily gained prominence in the management suites of large enterprises. No longer do companies view IT as a back-office burden that adds overhead but does not contribute to enterprise competitiveness. As a direct consequence of the reengineering movement and the rise of IT, large corporations flocked to implement Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, such as Systems Analysis & Program Development (SAP), Oracle and Peoplesoft. Such was the demand for ERP systems that the number one ERP vendor, SAP, grew its revenue from
255 million in 1990 to
7.3 billion in 2001. These decisions were often dictated by corporate boardrooms. There are stories from the mid-1990s about customers seeking out SAP salespeople to buy SAP software. Despite its ubiquitous presence in the corporate world, ERP software was expensive to implement and difficult to change once implemented. ERP implementations often led to rigid, cookie-cutter business processes. However, they did accomplish the radical change concept espoused by the reengineering theorists. With the advent of new business process-and internet-based technologies, we have entered a new technological world with a new process-based design and implementation framework to employ business solutions. In this new technological world, business process designers are directly involved in systems design. The
closer working relationship between business process designers and IT helps to reduce the gap between the business requirement and the final deployed solution.
