Business Process Re-Engineering and Operational Excellence in Telecommunications Firms in Lagos

This study investigates the relationship between business process re-engineering (BPR) initiatives and operational excellence in telecommunications firms in Lagos, Nigeria's South West geopolitical zone. Nigeria's telecoms sector has undergone significant transformation driven by subscriber growth, data service competition, and technology infrastructure investment, creating imperatives for fundamental process redesign. This research adopts a survey research design with data collected from 105 operations managers, IT directors, and process improvement specialists through structured questionnaires. Analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics and multiple regression. The study evaluates BPR dimensions including process mapping comprehensiveness, change sponsorship quality, employee involvement in redesign, technology enablement, and performance measurement post-implementation. Findings reveal that change sponsorship quality and technology enablement are the most significant BPR success factors predicting operational excellence, measured through network uptime improvement, customer complaint resolution speed, and cost-to-revenue ratio changes. Employee involvement in redesign showed a significant moderating effect, with firms that engaged frontline staff in process redesign recording higher implementation success rates. Poor communication of BPR rationale was identified as the most common failure factor. Recommendations include top executive sponsorship of all BPR initiatives, structured employee co-design workshops, and robust post-implementation monitoring frameworks. Keywords: business process re-engineering, operational excellence, telecommunications, Lagos, process improvement.