Role of HR in Business Process Re-engineering Programs: Changing Paradigms of Employee Expectations in the Banking Sector

Abstract

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is a radical and transformative means to help organizations rethink their existing processes from the fundamentals to completely re-engineer or to transform or to improve them. The aim is to achieve huge cost reductions and a strategically differentiating better customer service. Banking business processes are differentiated into three key elements: Customer inquiries or requests which form the Inputs, the Processing of data through some stages and various necessary internal channels and the delivery result as expected by bank and customer forming the Outputs. BPR principally mediates in the data processing part to alter it to become time and cost effective. Information technology has been regarded as the key enabler for the radical changes as seen after BPR exercises. Majority banks in India, particularly the large private sector lenders – HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and AXIS Bank are the biggest private sector banks in India by Market Capitalization and proud members of the Big 4 banks of India – the 4th being the State Bank of India (SBI). These banks have adopted technology advancements rapidly enough to be called the Market Leaders of BPR projects in the Indian banking sector. They have re-imagined and re-engineered their processes using the latest tech-tools viz. Chat Bots; Artificial Intelligence (AI) led engines and Robotics Software. Even though these may be in their embryonic stages, these technologies would fundamentally modify the banking scenario sooner than anyone expects. Numerous banking experts predict these technologies taking maximum five years to digitize all banking and trade eco-systems but they envision Block chain technology to be having the potential to be the real game changer which may disrupt the complete financial system. Of late, numerous Indian banks are feeling vulnerable and face a dangerous competition from the fresh bank licensees which are undeniably extremely digitally savvy competitors.