ASSESSMENT OF THE CONTRIBUTION OF BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING IN THE GROWTH OF SACCOS IN NAIROBI

Abstract

This research explored the contribution of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) in the growth of SACCOS in Kenya. It explored the extent to which SACCOs have embraced BPR as a very important tool of management. Currently most businesses or organizations are re-engineering as they would wish to gain competitive advantage in the ever changing business market. They therefore have to shed off their old ways of doing work by adopting new ones and revising their business processes to achieve improvements in areas such as value of money, faster service delivery and quality of service offered. The study outlined the background of BPR by explaining its origin and why firms are undertaking the same. The study also sought to identify the gaps and explain the importance of reengineering. This helped to dig deeper into the variables that constitute BPR in SACCOs namely information technology, organization culture, organization structure and human resource and how these variables have helped these organizations to be successful. The study used descriptive research design so as to find out the characteristics of Business Process Reengineering and also the SACCOs. This research design was also employed to compare the relationship between BPR initiatives and the growth of SACCOs. The accessible population was 33 deposit-taking SACCOs that had been licensed by Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority in Nairobi as at December 2013. Out of these SACCOs, 5 were picked purposively. Twelve members of both management and non-management were selected from each SACCO as respondents. Data was collected through the use of structured questionnaires which were analysed using the Statistics Package for Social Science computer software. Quantitative data was analysed using cumulative frequencies, percentages and presented in form of graphs. The results of the study indicated that BPR is a tool that has been used by SACCOS to improve their performance. These performance indicators include financials performance, throughput time, increased SACCO membership and improved services. The results also showed that SACCOs that have adopted BPR have been able to beat the odds and record improvement in quality and speedy delivery of services to their members. They have also been able to record increased savings due to increased membership.