Introduction Company and sector background

1. Introduction

The concept of business process reengineering BPR has received considerable academic attention with many case studies describing successful BPR projects. However, most of these cases are US-based, including the IBM Credit Corporation and Ford Motor Company Hammer and Champy, 1993, and the revisited American Hospital supply Corporation Baxter case described in Short and Venkatraman 1992. In the mid- 1990s, BPR concepts were also introduced in Europe. Currently in Belgium, many compa- nies and government agencies see Van Belle and Van Grembergen, 1997 are launching BPR projects. In this article, we consider the integration of the Corporate Credits process through information technology IT of the Ge´ne´rale de Banque of Belgium.

2. Company and sector background

Table 1 gives some key figures of three leading banks in Belgium. These figures reveal that, at the end of 1997, the Ge´ne´rale de Banque was by far the largest bank in Belgium with a balance total of nearly 6000 billion Belgian francs approximately US160 billion which is more than 40 higher than the nearest competitor. Its leadership was confirmed by the level of its deposits, credits, interest return, and commission return from investment funds. In absolute figures, the profit of the Ge´ne´rale de Banque was also greatest. However, in relative terms, the Banque was less profitable than the Kredietbank, because of the relatively high ratio of costreturn. During the presentation of the 1997 results, Fred Chaffart, chairman of the Management Committee of the Ge´ne´rale, declared that one of the main objectives for the coming years was to decrease the cost ratio to 55, a level which the Kredietbank has almost reached. As with most other major Belgian banks, the Ge´ne´rale de Banque was characterised by a three-level structure: the Office, the Zone and the Head Quarters. The Office was the smallest entity and comprised a number of Local Branches. The Zone coordinated a number of offices. Head Quarters in Brussels provided centralised decision-making. W. Van Grembergen, J.-L. Van Belle Journal of Strategic Information Systems 8 1999 63–81 64 Table 1 Key financial figures of major Belgian banks in 1997 in billion Belgian francs. Source: De Standaard, March 14–15, 1998 Ge´ne´rale de Banque Kredietbank Banque Bruxelles Lambert Balance total 5913 4168 4134 Deposits 3497 2250 2026 Credits 2242 1393 1629 Return 143.2 88.2 93.9 Interest 83.1 54.9 55.1 Commission 32.8 16.5 20.1 Profit 17.1 14.7 11.8 Costreturn 60.3 56.7 62.4 Profitequity 12.8 14.4 12.1 Important transactions such as the credit operations described in this case study mostly involved interactions between the three decision levels.

3. Launching the business process reengineering project