W5 - BPR Basic

Over the past decades there has been an increasing interest in Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). So what is this BPR, which has been talked about so much in these last years? BPR is:
The critical analysis and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic, breakthrough improvements in performance of the organization. (combination of definitions)


BPR is about evaluating the several processes, which comprise an organization, searching for possibilities to improve the overall performances of these processes and implementing these changes successfully within an organization. BPR thus can be seen as a change effort with the main purpose of improving the execution of processes. 


Because of the importance of successfully implementing the changes in an organization, BPR methodologies have been developed to make sure that the change effort does not bring the organization in danger of continuing their operations. Several methodologies have been more or less successful in recent years but there still seems to be room for improving methodologies, because a lot of BPR efforts still fail.


A business process is often considered to be an essential part of an organization. It is that around which an organization revolves. A definition of a business process is a set of activities, which are related to each other and must be executed in some order, to accomplish a business objective. A process consists of something that goes in (input), which is transformed to get the desired outcome (output).


Re-engineering can be seen as the redesigning of the business processes, usually with the goal of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of those processes. It is not something new, since organizations always have sought to improve efficiency and effectiveness. If done incorrectly, the re-engineering of a business process can bring the existence of an organization into jeopardy. Thus re-engineering has always been something much spoken about, but only recently methodologies have been developed to be more successful in the process of it.

Source / Reference:

1)  "Hammer, M., 1990, "Re-engineering work, don’t automate, obliterate", Harvard Business Review, Vol. 68, No. 4, pp. 104-112

2)  Teng, J.T.C. et al., 1994, "Business process re-engineering: charting a strategic path for the information age", California Management Review, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 9-31