Information technology-enabled change: the risks and rewards of business process redesign and automation

Information technology-enabled business process redesign is a means of levering the power of information technology to change organizational processes radically resulting in substantial improvements in corporate effectiveness and efficiency. Some of the greatest opportunities for organizational improvement using IT are associated with the support of processes that cross functional boundaries. In this search for improvement, it is important to recognize that there are both process risks associated with business process redesign and structural risks associated with crossing functional boundaries. This paper proposes a model that relates the risks and rewards of IT-enabled change and reports on the experience of 59 organizations. The study found that organizations tend to emphasize either cross-functional business process redesign or intrafunctional automation projects. The results suggest that corporations that wish to take advantage of the rewards available from information technology-enabled change should recognize the risks associated with cross-functional change and process redesign.