Abstract
The aim of this study is to investigate the lack of communication and facilitation skills negatively affecting the success of business process improvement projects conducted by engineers within the financial institutions. Recent studies have shown that successful and sustainable process improvement initiatives partially dependent on stakeholder (all levels) support and buy-in within any service industry. Resistance by the stakeholders has become a major concern in implementing improvement initiatives because the project outcomes are not clearly understood. An organisations ability to constantly improve processes enables it to constantly meet customer expectations and protect or improve its competitive edge.
The first chapter provides insights on the certain causes and failures of business process improvement initiatives based on the research title. The chapter highlights certain information from past research conducted within the background and introduction. It further provides the significance of the study, brief introduction to each chapter and objectives the researcher wanted to achieve.
In chapter two, literature information is provided to further support the study conducted. The literature focuses on business processes, business process improvement, common best practise methodologies and how they relate to facilitation.
A survey was conducted by 21 experienced process engineers to analyse the process improvement projects failures researched. The outcomes indicated that most projects fail as a result of lack of leadership support, poor change management and project buy-in.
The researcher further provides recommendations on how to better manage, get support and implement successful business process initiatives using facilitation skills. The researcher perceives facilitation skills as the added catalyst to ensuring positive outcome for business process improvement initiatives. The researcher anticipates that information will provide readers with a different perspective of the challenges experienced by engineers in service industries and ideas for future development of business process improvement methodology.
M.Ing. (Engineering Management)