| |September 201719CIOReviewBy Damodar Mantri, Director IT and BPE, Dr. Reddy's Laboratoriesusiness process is al-ways considered as next to Information technology in most of the companies. But truly speaking we can-not leverage IT if business process is not well defined. Further, Business process once defined is not the end of the game, it has to be revisited pe-riodically because the first definition may be engineered keeping the cur-rent business dynamics and custom-ers in mind.Any business process which is not adding figures to organisation's bot-tom or top line is redundant. Busi-ness Process engineering, defining or re-engineering all make the same sense if the business is into delivering service or manufacturing. Business Process Management is viewed as a systematic approach to improve an organization's business processes, be it on manufacturing floor, in supply chain or in the product development area. Business Process Management also empowers employees closest to the business -- the plant floor man-ager or procurement specialist.Small and medium industry fol-low manual processes which are dis-jointed. By eliminating manual pro-cesses, business organizations not only reduce costs but also optimize their product development depart-ments for more successful product introductions, more closely link supply to demand, and improve on-time delivery and quality of products or services.Generally, we find two types of IT projects1. Business users initiate the IT solu-tion ­ The risk in this type of project is the users come with a predefined solution in mind and want exactly what is being done in the legacy system. The legacy system may be right but may not be the best, as time changes everything! If we try to map the current system on to an IT platform, it is like automating what is being done manually. With this approach, we do not get any value addition.2. IT initiating the IT solution ­ The risk in such projects is the solution may not be close to ground re-ality. Unless process engineers apply their mind and map the process, the IT solution defined will not be of any use and the IT application/solu-tion will be redundant and useless.What is important in such scenario is, to treat IT only as a leveraging tool. The process that is being defined to run the business is important. The process will give the measurable points on benefit realization. Now the question is how to balance the above two approaches? Involve the users' community right from the initiation by conduct-ing workshop and note down the expectations and suggestions. Define the TO BE process and publish the derived results.Again, conduct the workshop, take feedback/suggestions and final-ize the process.Set the business benefit realiza-tion points and target as the goal of the project.Once design and realization phase is complete, training and hand holding is very important to increase the comfort level of users. Handle the change management in terms of changes with process, peo-ple, and system. Do not start measuring the business benefits imme-diately after going live as sta-bilization needs time.Once the new sys-tem is stabilized, measure the ben-efits with intended IT is enabler, the crux is BUSINESS PROCESSBDamodar MantriCIO INSIGHTS
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