Higher Education Institutions: A Case for IT-driven Business Process Re- engineering?

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) find themselves much like today’s businesses amidst a turbulent environment with significant opportunities, distinct threats and a role much broader than ever before. The paper aims to analyze the applicability and usefulness of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) principles and techniques in HEIs, and answer the question of the role of I.T. To set the scene right and tackle this question the paper examines the required (re)definition of a HEI’s business mission, strategic objectives, organizational structure and culture and proceeds with two strategic analyses: a situational and a SWOT analysis. The move to the process perspective is facilitated by adopting a coarse-grained approach for the examination of three processes: teaching, research and administrative support. The enabling role of Information Technology is then examined for these processes and a generic information systems strategy and information architecture are developed. In addition quantitative metrics are developed in order to facilitate benchmarking analyses. Finally, the paper outlines the major strengths and weaknesses the HEIs may face when embarking in the radical IT-enabled redesign of teaching processes.