Imran Shaikh

Aniruddha 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…