Business Process Redesign for effective e-commerce processes in the service industry

Many companies have found out the hard way that successful e-commerce 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 gives 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 best practices. Careful consideration in this paper is given to the description of the conceptual background, which is used to classify existing research and to position the contribution of this paper. The guidelines which are discussed are illustrated by process models, represented by UML Activity diagrams.