The rôle of information technology in enterprise reengineering.

Abstract

Information Technology has often been argued to be central to the development and implementation of redesigned business processes from the first appearance of the term Business Process Reengineering . Yet, the contribution of IT to process redesign is not well understood. To add to the confusion in practice, IT has also been found to be the principal impediment to the realisation of redesigned processes. This paper examines the rôle of IT, both as a BPR project support tool and as an infrastructural enabler of realigned enterprise processes. It places IT firmly within the context of holistic BPR project methodologies and presents the results of a study on the features of automated process redesign tools. It discusses the process enactment capabilities of IT and explores the difficulties of developing process support systems, as well as strategies for migration from legacy systems platforms.