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Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)?

What is Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)?

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is a strategic approach to improve an organization’s

performance by rethinking and redesigning its business processes. The goal of BPR is to
achieve significant improvement in parameters like cost, quality, service, and speed.
1. The aim is to improve customer satisfaction by improving the quality and speed of
services delivered.
2. It involves questioning the basic assumptions and principles of current business processes.
3. It involves the collaboration of cross-functional teams to ensure all the aspects of the
processes are considered.
4. Its successful implementation requires effective change management strategies to handle
resistance to change.

WHAT ARE THE 3 PHASES OF BPR

1. Planning
In the Planning Phase, leaders identify the scope and goals of the reengineering initiative. They’ll
begin mapping and analyzing current business processes while identifying problems and areas
for improvement. The Planning Phase also involves developing a detailed implementation plan
that includes resource allocation, timelines, approval processes, etc.

2. Design
The Design Phase involves redesigning the evaluated processes to eliminate non-value-added
activities, optimize workflows, and leverage technology. During this phase, businesses will need
to develop a prototype of the new processes and test it with a small group of users.

3. Implementation
Once the prototype has been tested and approved, the redesigned processes can be implemented.
The Implementation Phase includes comprehensive training and clear communication across the
organization. It also involves monitoring the performance of the newly designed processes to
ensure they add value in terms of operational success and customer satisfaction.

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THE BENEFITS OF BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING IN ERP

Implementing BPR in ERP can offer numerous advantages to organizations, helping them
thrive in today’s competitive business landscape.

Enhanced Efficiency: BPR in ERP eliminates redundant tasks and automates processes,
resulting in improved operational efficiency. This translates to reduced lead times, faster
decision-making, and higher productivity.

1. Cost Reduction: By optimizing processes and reducing manual labor, BPR in ERP
can lead to significant cost savings. This is achieved through lower labor costs,
reduced errors, and better resource allocation. Also, check out our article on “ How
Does Business Automation Help In Cost Reduction?”
2. Improved Customer Satisfaction: BPR in ERP allows organizations to align their
processes with customer needs, leading to better customer experiences. Happy
customers are more likely to remain loyal and recommend your products or services
to others.
3. Better Data Management: ERP systems offer robust data management capabilities,
enabling organizations to gather, store, and analyze data more effectively. This data-
driven approach can lead to informed decision-making and improved business
strategies.
4. Competitive Advantage: Organizations that embrace BPR in ERP gain a
competitive edge by being more agile and responsive to market changes. They can
adapt quickly to evolving customer demands and industry trends.
5. Compliance and Risk Management: ERP systems often come with built-in
compliance features, helping organizations adhere to industry regulations and reduce
the risk of non-compliance-related penalties.
6. Strategic Insights: BPR in ERP provides valuable insights into business operations
through data analytics and reporting. This enables organizations to make data-driven
strategic decisions and plan for future growth. (A retail company can analyse
customer purchase history to identify popular products and trends)

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What is a Data Warehouse?

A Data Warehouse is a
collection of software tools
that facilitates analysis of a
large set of business data
used to help an organization
make decisions. A large
amount of data in data
warehouses comes from
numerous sources such that
internal applications like marketing, sales, and finance; customer-facing apps; and external
partner systems, among others. It is a centralized data repository for analysts that can be
queried whenever required for business benefits.

"Data Warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, and time-variant store of information

in support of management's decisions."

CHARACTERISTICS OF DATA WAREHOUSE

Subject-Oriented

A data warehouse target on the modeling and analysis of data for decision-makers. Therefore,
data warehouses typically provide a concise and straightforward view around a particular
subject, such as customer, product, or sales, instead of the global organization's ongoing
operations. This is done by excluding data that are not useful concerning the subject and
including all data needed by the users to understand the subject.

Integrated

A data warehouse integrates various heterogeneous data sources like RDBMS, flat files, and
online transaction records. It requires performing data cleaning and integration during data
warehousing to ensure consistency in naming conventions, attributes types, etc., among different
data sources.
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Time-Variant

Historical information is kept in a data warehouse. For example, one can retrieve files from 3
months, 6 months, 12 months, or even previous data from a data warehouse. These variations
with a transactions system, where often only the most current file is kept.

Non-Volatile
As the name defines the data resided in data warehouse is permanent. It also means that d ata is
not erased or deleted when new data is inserted Data is not updated, once it is stored in the data
warehouse, to maintain the historical data.

FUNCTIONS OF DATA WAREHOUSE:

Top-Down Approach
The initial approach developed by Bill Inmon known as the top-down approach starts with
building a single source data warehouse for the whole company. Merges and processes external
data through the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process and subsequently stores them in the
data warehouse. Specialized data marts for different organizations departments, for instance,
the finance department are then formed from there. The strength of this method is that it offers
a clear structure for managing data, however, this method can be expensive as well as time-
consuming and for that reason, it is ideal for large organizations only.

The essential components are discussed below:

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1. External Sources: External source is a source from where data is collected irrespective of
the type of data. Data can be structured, semi structured and unstructured as well.

2. Stage Area: Since the data, extracted from the external sources does not follow a particular
format, so there is a need to validate this data to load into datawarehouse. For this purpose,
it is recommended to use ETL tool.
 E(Extracted): Data is extracted from External data source.

 T(Transform): Data is transformed into the standard format.

 L(Load): Data is loaded into datawarehouse after transforming it into the standard
format.
3. Data-warehouse: After cleansing of data, it is stored in the data warehouse as central
repository. It actually stores the meta data and the actual data gets stored in the data
marts. Note that data warehouse stores the data in its purest form in this top-down
approach.

4. Data Marts: Data mart is also a part of storage component. It stores the information of a
particular function of an organisation which is handled by single authority. There can be as
many number of data marts in an organisation depending upon the functions. We can also
say that data mart contains subset of the data stored in data warehouse.

5. Data Mining: The practice of analysing the big data present in data warehouse is data
mining. It is used to find the hidden patterns that are present in the database or in data
warehouse with the help of algorithm of data mining.
This approach is defined by Inmon as – data warehouse as a central repository for the
complete organisation and data marts are created from it after the complete data warehouse
has been created.

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DATA MINING

 Data mining is the process of extracting knowledge or insights from large amounts of
data using various statistical and computational techniques. The data can be structured,
semi-structured or unstructured, and can be stored in various forms such as databases,
data warehouses, and data lakes.
 The primary goal of data mining is to discover hidden patterns and relationships in the
data that can be used to make informed decisions or predictions. This involves
exploring the data using various techniques such as clustering, classification, regression
analysis, association rule mining, and anomaly detection.
 Data mining has a wide range of applications across various industries, including
marketing, finance, healthcare, and telecommunications.

Data Mining Architecture
Data mining architecture refers to a system designed for memory-based data mining, a process
that involves extracting valuable knowledge from large volumes of data.

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Types of Data Mining

Data mining can be performed on the following types of data:

Relational Database:

A relational database is a collection of multiple data sets formally organized by tables, records,
and columns from which data can be accessed in various ways without having to recognize the
database tables. Tables convey and share information, which facilitates data searchability,
reporting, and organization.

Data warehouses:

A Data Warehouse is the technology that collects the data from various sources within the
organization to provide meaningful business insights. The huge amount of data comes from
multiple places such as Marketing and Finance. The extracted data is utilized for analytical
purposes and helps in decision- making for a business organization. The data warehouse is
designed for the analysis of data rather than transaction processing.

Data Repositories:

The Data Repository generally refers to a destination for data storage. However, many IT
professionals utilize the term more clearly to refer to a specific kind of setup within an IT
structure. For example, a group of databases, where an organization has kept various kinds of
information.

Object-Relational Database:

A combination of an object-oriented database model and relational database model is called an

object-relational model. It supports Classes, Objects, Inheritance, etc

Transactional Database:

A transactional database refers to a database management system (DBMS) that has the potential
to undo a database transaction if it is not performed appropriately. Even though this was a unique

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capability a very long while back, today, most of the relational database systems support
transactional database activities.

ONLINE ANALYTICAL PROCESSING (OLAP)

Online analytical processing (OLAP) is software technology you can use to analyze business
data from different points of view. Organizations collect and store data from multiple data
sources, such as websites, applications, smart meters, and internal systems.

OLAP ARCHITECTURE

Online analytical processing (OLAP) systems store multidimensional data by representing

information in more than two dimensions, or categories. Two-dimensional data involves columns
and rows, but multidimensional data has multiple characteristics. For example, multidimensional
data for product sales might consist of the following dimensions:

 Product type

 Location

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 Time

Data engineers build a multidimensional OLAP system that consists of the following elements.

Data warehouse

A data warehouse collects information from different sources, including applications, files, and
databases. It processes the information using various tools so that the data is ready for analytical
purposes. For example, the data warehouse might collect information from a relational database
that stores data in tables of rows and columns.

ETL tools

Extract, transform, and load (ETL) tools are database processes that automatically retrieve,
change, and prepare the data to a format fit for analytical purposes. Data warehouses use ETL to
convert and standardize information from various sources before making it available to OLAP
tools.

OLAP server

An OLAP server is the underlying machine that powers the OLAP system. It uses ETL tools to
transform information in the relational databases and prepare them for OLAP operations.

OLAP database

An OLAP database is a separate database that connects to the data warehouse. Data engineers
sometimes use an OLAP database to prevent the data warehouse from being burdened by OLAP
analysis. They also use an OLAP database to make it easier to create OLAP data models.

OLAP cubes

A data cube is a model representing a multidimensional array of information. While it’s easier to
visualize it as a three-dimensional data model, most data cubes have more than three dimensions.
An OLAP cube, or hypercube, is the term for data cubes in an OLAP system. OLAP cubes are
rigid because you can't change the dimensions and underlying data once you model it. For

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example, if you add the warehouse dimension to a cube with product, location, and time
dimensions, you have to remodel the entire cube.

OLAP analytic tools

Business analysts use OLAP tools to interact with the OLAP cube. They perform operations such
as slicing, dicing, and pivoting to gain deeper insights into specific information within the OLAP
cube.

How does OLAP work?

An online analytical processing (OLAP) system works by collecting, organizing, aggregating,

and analyzing data using the following steps:

1. The OLAP server collects data from multiple data sources, including relational databases and data
warehouses.

2. Then, the extract, transform, and load (ETL) tools clean, aggregate, precalculate, and store data in
an OLAP cube according to the number of dimensions specified.

3. Business analysts use OLAP tools to query and generate reports from the multidimensional data in
the OLAP cube.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)?

PLM refers to the management of data and processes used in the design, engineering,
manufacturing, sales, and service of a product across the entire lifecycle.
What is a Product Life Cycle?
The term product life cycle refers to the time period a product is introduced to consumers into
the market until it’s removed from the market. The product life cycle is the process almost every
product goes through from when it is first introduced into the market until it is removed from the
market.

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Some of the products may stay in a long maturity state, all products eventually phase out of the
market due to several factors including saturation, increased competition, decreased demand and
dropping sales.

This concept is used by management and by the marketing department of companies as a factor
in deciding when it is an appropriate time to increase advertising, reduce prices, expand to new
markets, or redesign packaging. The life cycle of a product has 4 stages- introduction, growth,
maturity, and decline stage.
4 stages of the product life cycle
There are four stages that are generally accepted in a product life cycle-

1. Introduction stage,
2. Growth stage,
3. Maturity stage,
4. Decline stage.

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1. Introduction stage
After successfully developing a product first stage is the introduction, where the product is being
launched into the market. When a new product is introduced, it is often a high-stakes time in the
product’s life cycle – although it does not necessarily make or break the product’s ultimate
success.

This stage basically includes a substantial investment in advertising and marketing focused on
making consumers aware of the product’s features and its benefits. The market for the product is
not competitive initially and also the company spends initially on the advertisement and uses
various other tools for promotion.

1. cost of the product is very high

2. slow sales volumes during this stage
3. little or no competition
4. demand has to be created by promotion
5. customers have to be promoted to buy the product
6. makes a little revenue at this stage
2. Growth stage
After successfully introducing the new product a gradual rise in its sales curve can be seen. At
some point in this rise, a significant increase in consumer demand occurs and sales started to take
off.

1. sales volume starts to increase significantly

2. profitability increases
3. awareness of the product increases
4. competition begins to increase with new companies in establishing market
5. increased competition leads to decreases in price
3. Maturity stage
This is the most profitable stage, as the production volume increasing, the costs of producing and
marketing decline. Also, its sales tend to slow – that indicating a largely saturated market. At
this point, sales can even start to drop. Companies will reduce the marketing and starts to
develop new or altered products to reach different market segments.
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Longer or shorter maturity stage depending on the product. For some brands, the maturity stage
is very drawn out, like Coca-Cola.
1. production costs are decreased as a result of production volumes increasing and experience curve
effects
2. sales volume at the peaks and market saturation is reached
3. increase in the number of competitors entering the market
4. prices of the product tend to drop due to competing products
5. industrial profits start to go down as sales go down
4. Decline stage
Although companies will hardly try to keep the product alive in the maturity stage as long as
possible, the decline stage for every product is unavoidable because of the deletion of the product
from the market. The product at this stage may be kept but there should be a fewer
advertisement.

Eventually, the product will be retired out of the market unless it have loyal customers or it is
able to redesign itself to remain in-demand.

1. product costs become counter-optimal

2. the number of sales declines significantly
3. prices, profitability diminishes
4. profit becomes more a challenge of production, distribution efficiency than increased sales

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The five phases of product development

There are many different ways to describe the phases of product development and no one
industry standard. However, the phases below represent a typical development cycle.

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1. Concept and design: The ideation phase, where a product’s requirements are defined
based on factors including competitor analysis, gaps in the market, or customer needs.
2. Develop: The detailed design of the product will be created, along with any necessary
tool designs. This phase includes validation and analysis of the planned product, as well
as prototype development and piloting in the field. This generates vital feedback on how
the product is used and what further refinements are needed.
3. Production and launch: Feedback from the pilot is used to adjust the design and other
components to produce a market-ready version. The production of the new product is
scaled – followed by launch and distribution to the market.
4. Service and support: Following the launch of the new product, the period of time when
service and support is offered.
5. Retirement: At the end of the product’s lifecycle, its withdrawal from the market must
be managed – along with any retrials or absorption into new concept ideas.
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BENEFITS OF PLM
o ‘Single Source of Truth’ (Centralisation)
o Reduced Development Cycle
o Decreased Compliance Risks
o Reduced Costs

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o Drive Innovation
o Enhanced Product Quality
o Increased Productivity
o Business Scalability
o Improved Customer Loyalty

Link Access Procedure (LAP)

Link Access Procedure (LAP) protocols are data link

layer protocols for framing and transmitting data across point-to-point links. LAP was originally
derived from HDLC (High-Level Data Link Control), but was later updated and
renamed LAPB (LAP Balanced).

LAPB is the data link protocol for X.25. Other related LAP protocols are:

 MLP (Multilink Procedure)

 LAPM (Link Access Procedure for Modems)
 LAPF (Link Access Procedure for Frame Relay)

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 Physical Layer.
 Data Link Layer. ...
 Network Layer. ...
 Transport Layer. ...
 Session Layer. ...
 Presentation Layer. ...
 Application Layer. ...

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