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Implementing business process re-engineering.

Article Excerpt
[check] This checklist provides an outline guide, as a synthesis of best practice, to the key stages in implementing Business Process Re-engineering (BPR).

Successful re-engineering requires a clear understanding that: a) organisations should be process- not function- driven; b) processes must be built around the customer; and c) staff involvement at all stages of design, planning, implementation and maintenance is a prerequisite for success--staff are the "cement" who bind everything together.

Although there have been many BPR-driven successes, there has also been criticism of the relatively high failure rate as well, where companies have not obtained the expected results. Reasons put forward for failure include: confusing downsizing with changing the way things are done; too much emphasis on reducing staff, poor redesign of processes; continuing with a departmental, rather than a process-driven, customer-focused culture; introducing new technology in isolation; and failing to involve staff at every stage.

Definition

Hammer and Champy, two of its leading exponents, have defined BPR as:

"The fundamental rethinking and radical design of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed." Re-engineering is, therefore, a way of initiating and controlling change processes through imaginative analysis and systematic planning.

A process can be defined as a series of linked activities that transform one or more inputs into one or more outputs.

In 2001, Hammer restated that BPR is just as valid today as it was ten years ago. He added, however, that in light of experience gained, re-engineering on its own is not nearly sufficient. It has to be complemented by a range of other changes, for example, to performance measures and pay systems that encourage a focus on corporate, rather than departmental, objectives, to putting customers at the...

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