58.6% of all respondents (68 out of 116 surveyed IT managers) are familiar with the term BPR, while 73.5% consider that BPR projects can influence company competitiveness and solve key business processes. According to the surveyed respondents, key business processes are: integration and control of all business processes (average score 4.44 on a 1-5 scale), IT as a strategic tool for decision making process (4.34), IT efficiency (4.3) and level of efficiency related to competitive companies (4.18). Furthermore, 94.4% of surveyed IT managers stated that IT plays a key role in BPR project success (as compared to only 80% in the 2000 survey). This finding implies the strategic role of IT in business, which is far from being true. Recent research suggested that in Croatian companies, IT is still considered no more than a tool for the automation of present business processes, completely neglecting the challenging role of IT as a competitive resource. This research identified that the source of the problem is lack of knowledge and interest in IT among top management structures and suggested that the IT manager position should be promoted to the strategic decision making level and IT departments should be in a position to perform cross-functional activities in order to gain strategic advantages from IT. As illustrated in Table 2, in 2002 only 4 BPR projects have been completed in the surveyed companies (or 6.4%), 14 are still in progress, while 7 (11.3%) are to be conducted in 6 months’ time, 20 (32.3%) are planned for the next 2 years and 6 projects (9.7%) will be conducted in 5 years or so. These findings indicate positive planning trends: more than half of the surveyed companies (53% cumulative) have planned BPR projects in the near future (6 months), mid-term future (2 years) or long-term future (5 years), while the number of companies not considering any is dropping (from 29% in 2000 to 17.7% in the 2002 survey). Indifference and a lack of support from top management, in addition to the high cost of BPR project implementation are considered to be the major barriers to the initiation of BPR projects or business process innovation projects. Current operating results in the majority of Croatian companies are far from ideal in making their management highly successful and to excuse them for having a reactive and passive attitude towards business process innovation efforts. Only 10 completed BPR projects from first (2000 survey) and final (2002 survey) part of the research are insufficient for an in-depth investigation or analysis of their characteristics. Nevertheless, research findings indicate that Croatian companies are making more efforts regarding BPR than in the 2000 survey.
|
