For Immediate Release
April 4, 1995

REENGINEERING THE CORPORATION: CENTER HELPS COMPANIES CHANGE BUSINESS PROCESSES & ADOPT INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Point-of-sale data capture and other advanced information technologies have given aggressive companies strong tools for gaining a competitive advantage. But before other firms seek to follow their example -- or are tempted to adopt technology as a "quick-fix" for business problems -- they should first "reengineer" their basic business processes to take full advantage of the new technology.

A new research and education center established at the Georgia Institute of Technology is helping companies do just that as it works to develop a better understanding of the business reengineering process.

"You can't just impose technology on your problems; you must first reengineer basic business processes," said Dr. Gary S. Tjaden, director of Georgia Tech's Center for Enterprise Systems. "Only after a company reengineers its basic processes will its managers be ready to make effective use of advanced information technologies."

This approach, known as "Business Process Engineering," has been championed in the best-selling book, "Reengineering the Corporation," and is now used by countless consultants to strengthen ailing companies. Many of the recommendations that these consultants make, however, are based on "anecdotal experience" rather than hard scientific data, Tjaden says.

Through the Center for Enterprise Systems, Tjaden and his faculty collaborators are building a more scientific foundation for designing basic business operations. In the process, they will transfer technology to clients from business and industry through activities such as the Senior Executives' Roundtable on the Business Impact of Information Systems (SERBIS).

"SERBIS is a forum for executives from both the information system (IS) and non-IS organizations of enterprises," explained Tjaden. "Its mission is to assist members in understanding and dealing with the strategic and operational impacts that the use of information systems can have on their businesses."

The day-long Roundtables are held twice a year, the next one scheduled for April 13 on "Positioning the IS Organization as a Strategic Partner." The Roundtables are administered by the center and sponsored by three Georgia Tech units: the School of Management, College of Computing and Georgia Tech Research Institute. Besides the Roundtable, the center maintains a benchmarking database for corporate IS expenditures and IS productivity, facilitates special projects for direct interaction between executives and faculty, and operates an industry advisory council to guide university efforts.

Though several large companies already have come to the center for assistance, Tjaden believes corporate executives still are not accustomed to thinking of universities as sources of expertise in business process engineering.

He believes that one of the center's most attractive advantages to private-sector clients is its access to state-of-the-art research in information management, technology and telecommunications. Since the downsizing of the Department of Defense, GTRI (the center's administrative home) has begun to place new emphasis on conversions of defense technologies to the needs of the commercial workplace. To cite just one example, telecommunication engineers used expertise honed on military-sponsored research to develop a software tool as an aid in designing personal communications systems for corporate buildings.

Of more direct interest to the clients of the center is GTRI's new Business Process Modeling and Simulation Computer Laboratory. At this facility, researchers are developing software for modeling and analyzing business processes.

"We hope to take these computer tools to client sites or have them use this software in our laboratory," said Tjaden.

Ease of use is a critical attribute being sought by the developers of these computer tools. User-friendliness, Tjaden explained, doesn't just mean that the software simply draws charts of business processes that managers can readily grasp. It also means that the software can analyze the processes, strengths and weaknesses, and even recommend improvements. This frees the executives to concentrate their energies on critical decisions.

To give the software this capability, Georgia Tech researchers are incorporating expert systems and neural networks.

The work done in this modeling and simulation computer laboratory will meet the direct needs of business clients, but it also fits into the center's second primary mission area: research and development for business process engineering. Other, more basic research is underway to develop precise measures of processes known as business process metrics. Researchers are trying to quantify normally unmeasured parameters such as the agility, complexity, or dynamism of an industrial process.

Faculty leaders in these studies are Professors Sridhar Narasimhan and Sabyasachi Mitra of the School of Management and Colin Potts, Shamkant Navathe and Michael McCracken of the College of Computing.

"This work is the equivalent of what's been going on in software engineering for the last 15 years," added Tjaden. "There, researchers have been developing metrics to predict the expense and performance of software."

The center's third mission area involves education and training. Here, the first major activity is an effort to strengthen Georgia Tech's academic offerings in business process engineering. Tjaden and several other Georgia Tech management and computing professors are teaching a graduate level course in Spring 1995. Through this course -- and others to follow -- Tjaden hopes to start a pipeline of graduates to industry who have strong backgrounds in the quantitative measurement of business processes.

Through all these activities, Tjaden hopes to stimulate industrial interest in the true potential of business processing engineering.

"We need more formalism to convince managers to use this approach," added Tjaden. "If we're going to call it a discipline, then let's make it a science."

RESEARCH NEWS AND PUBLICATIONS OFFICE
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 100
Atlanta, Georgia 30308

MEDIA RELATIONS CONTACTS:
John Toon (404-894-6986);
Internet: john.toon@edi.gatech.edu;
FAX: (404-894-4545)

TECHNICAL:
Dr. Gary Tjaden, (404-894-1303);
Internet: gary.tjaden@gtri.gatech.edu

WRITER: Mark Hodges