UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2017/2018
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF BUSINESS IN
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BBIT309 BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING
FULL TIME/PART TIME/DISTANCE LEARNING
DATE: APRIL, 2018 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE [30 MARKS]
a. Explain the philosophy behind BPR. [5Marks]
b. Briefly explain the differences between reengineering and TQM. [5Marks]
c. Discuss why BPR is seen as a process orientation from structure to process. [6Marks]
d. Describe the benefits of competitive benchmarking. [7Marks]
e. The use of collaborative tools can enhance any Business Process Reengineering/ Design effort. Discuss
[7Marks]
QUESTION TWO [20 MARKS]
a. Briefly explain the following approaches to operational change.
i. Process value analysis [2Marks]
ii. Focused restructuring [2Marks]
b. Give three reasons why BPR is considered as a radical change. [3Marks]
c. Discuss how organizational culture can affect the success of the BPR effort. [5Marks]
d. Reengineering requires looking at the fundamental processes of the business from a crossfunctional perspective. One way to ensure that reengineering has a cross-functional perspective
is to assemble a team that represents the functional units involved in the process being
reengineered. Describe the roles of each team member that play a key role in BPR.
[8Marks]
QUESTION THREE [20 MARKS]
a. Outline the relationship between Business Process Reengineering and Information
Technology. [4Marks]
b. Discuss the principles that underlie Business process reengineering. [5Marks]
c. A business enterprise which has not being doing well for a while, because it has not been able
to compete effectively with competitors, is at the brink of closure using the example of Ford
motors what are the steps you would recommend for it to gain competitive advantage and
survive. [5Marks]
d. Briefly explain how the function of IT has evolved from automation to business scope
redefinition. [6Marks]
QUESTION FOUR [20 MARKS]
a. Describe “partnering” as it relates to BPR. Why is it described as a “middle ground” between
outsourcing and “pure” BPR? [6Marks]
b. Discuss each of the various cooperative strategies and their relationships. [9Marks]
c. Briefly explain the seven architectural characteristics of a business process. [5Marks]
QUESTION FIVE [20 MARKS]
a. Reengineering offers a formal method for identifying and achieving radical performance gains.
With reengineering exercises routinely producing a hundred fold performance improvements.
Reengineering is key to unlocking performance improvements in all industries, but enterprises
can initiate a more powerful process of business transformation yielding a broader range of
benefits over time.
Research suggests that business transformations occurs in 3 interdependent phases each offering
its own challenges and benefits. Discuss [10Marks]
b. Describe the common total quality management mistakes that make it impossible for
organizations to achieve process quality improvement. [10Marks]
