I. INTRODUCTION

Business process reengineering (BPR), a recently popularized management change strategy, promises radical improvements in the business processes of an organization. This paper describes and analyses one of Pacific Bell’s successful reengineering initiatives, the Centrex reengineering project. The reengineering project describes the redesign and rollout of the new order-fulfilment process for a flagship product at Pacific Bell, Centrex.

Background
In late 1990, Pacific Bell, a subsidiary of Pacific Telesis Group and one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies, initiated reengineering. Due to the advancements of technology, the competitive environment for regional Bell operating companies was becoming increasingly complex. In 1990, Pacific Bell's CEO and President announced a long-term initiative called Competitive Readiness. The initiative called for 3 "R"s: restructuring, refocusing, and reengineering: * Restructuring led to breaking the once monolithic company into seven decentralized regional business units that served customers within specified geographic regions; statewide business units which focused on public and corporate customers with points of service throughout the state; and a product and technology support group composed of product and systems technology that permeated all facets of the firm's operations. * The refocusing program led to organizing the firm's priorities and resources around vision, values, and bold goals. Bold goals were established for a number of key areas, including maintenance, provisioning (order fulfillment), revenue, job fulfillment, and customer complaints. * Reengineering was seen as a more targeted and focused program than restructuring and refocusing. Reengineering was to apply many of the techniques of Total Quality Management, but result in quantum improvement.
Centrex Provisioning