Imran ShaikhAniruddha Tulaskar

BPR Is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

It aims at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and across organizations.

The main proponents of reengineering were Michael Hammer and James A. Champy.

In 1990, Michael Hammer, a former professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published an article in the Harvard Business Review, in which he claimed that the major challenge for managers is to obliterate non-value adding work, rather than using technology for automating it.

Hammer&Champy (1993) define business process as “a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer”.

Examples of processes include: developing a new product; ordering goods from a supplier, creating a marketing plan, processing and paying an insurance claim, etc.

Hammer&Champy (1993) have promoted the definition of BPR to “the Fundamental rethinking and Radical redesign of business Processes to achieve Dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed”.

Hammer (1990) considers IT as the key enabler of BPR, which he considers as "radical change.“

Information Technology (IT) refers to “the capabilities offered by computers, software applications, and telecommunications”.

Shared databases, making information available at many places

Expert systems, allowing generalists to perform specialist tasks

Telecommunication networks, allowing organizations to be centralized and decentralized at the same time

Decision-support tools, allowing decision-making to be a part of everybody's job

Wireless data communication and portable computers, allowing field personnel to work office independent

We have examined the theoretical background of BPR. But what does reengineering look like in the real world? Here is how some mainstream companies such as Ford Motor and IBM Credit have done it.

Ford Motor Co. reengineering its accounts payable processes (adapted from Hammer, 1990)

In the early 1980s, when American automotive industry was in a depression, Ford’s top management put accounts payable –along with many other departments- under the microscope in search of ways to cut costs.

But the fact is, once out of the bottle, the reengineering genie quickly turned ugly.”

Michael Hammer similarly admitted that:

"I wasn't smart enough about that. I was reflecting my engineering background and was insufficient appreciative of the human dimension. I've learned that's critical."

It never changed management thinking, actually the largest causes of failure in an organization

Lack of management support for the initiative and thus poor acceptance in the organization.

Exaggerated expectations regarding the potential benefits from a BPR initiative and consequently failure to achieve the expected results.

Underestimation of the resistance to change within the organization.

Over trust in technology solutions.

Hammer (1999) states that with the advent of the Internet, a new wave of reengineering efforts have come up to the stage that exploit the power of communications, just as earlier reengineering efforts capitalized on the PC and shared databases. The Internet blurs the boundaries between companies by allowing work to be done wherever it is done best.

Finally, Champy (2002) argues that BPR was 1990s remedy for sluggish corporations that lacked customer focus and competitive ability. Today, he sees reengineering as only a beginning. In this decade, businesses will need to continue by using technology to add customers, suppliers, and other partners to the process redesign mix.

The concept of BPR has originated in the early 1990s and has achieved popularity amongst businesses in a very short period of time. Now it is going through its second wave with the great pace of the advent in telecommunications.

What is clear from the review presented in this paper is that although there seems to be confusion in the literature as to what constitutes BPR, there is a consensus on the fact that reengineering requires creative thinking. It requires a new perspective on the part of management—may be even a new philosophy…