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Throughout the 1990s, most companies focused on IT initiatives that promised to bring order to the back-office giving rise to the process enterprise, using methods to streamline core processes, combine related activities from numerous departments and eliminate activities that didn't add value. The process enterprise was meant to replace the turf and hierarchy battles with new approaches to leadership, performance measurement, compensation, and training-all focused on customers and teamwork, all harmonized with integrated and streamlined processes. When the New Year's celebrations ended and companies got over the year 2000 (Y2K) hump, electronic commerce and web development stole the spotlight, as companies anxious to earn dividends on their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) investment focused on their front-office in an attempt
to develop new channels and reach new markets. However, as the late Michael Hammer emphasized in his 1999 seminars, perhaps this focus on the front office was too hasty saying, "Putting a website in front of lousy processes merely advertises how lousy they are." Indeed, a study by Deloitte Consulting (2008) titled "The Second Wave" projected that companies post Y2K would spend significant efforts in optimizing those
same back-office processes that they had spent time on integrating in the 1990s.
It is clear, now, that business operations have returned to the forefront of corporate strategy through various operations initiatives to squeeze out costs, increase efficiencies, and enable strategy and innovation.
Indeed, more so than ever, executives are being challenged to streamline, automate, integrate, and optimize business processes in a volatile global marketplace. Successful operations executives have turned logistics into a competitive advantage and purchasing into a growth engine through lean manufacturing, Six Sigma standards, real-time data analytics, and global sourcing as their operations specialists simultaneously are
facing heightened challenges from terrorist threats to regulatory hurdles.
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