Many companies have found out the hard way that successful ecommerce requires more than a flashy web presence. Existing business processes must be seamlessly integrated with the new, electronic form of interaction with suppliers and customers. Despite this insight, little research has focused on the transformation of doing business to achieve the presumed benefits of e-commerce. This paper elaborates on both qualitative and quantitative support for redesigning business processes in the context of e-commerce. First, we give directions on how processes may be reengineered with this aim, particularly within the service industry. The presented views are based on existing research into Business Process Reengineering (BPR) best practices and applied in two case studies: one broad and qualitative case study to show the applicability of the best practices, and one small quantitative case study to show the benefits in terms of lead time reduction due to the application of best practices. Categ...
Monique H. Jansen-Vullers, Mariska Netjes, Hajo A.