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What Is BPR?

BPR involves redesigning business processes to eliminate waste and inefficiency and improve competitiveness. It aims to radically redesign processes using information technology to achieve dramatic improvements in areas like cost, quality, and speed. BPR was introduced in the 1990s and involves identifying processes for redesign, reorganizing work around outcomes not tasks, treating dispersed resources as centralized, linking parallel activities, and building controls into processes. The methodology typically involves envisioning new processes, initiating change, diagnosing existing processes, redesigning processes, reconstructing with new IT solutions, and ongoing monitoring of performance.

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151 views3 pages

What Is BPR?

BPR involves redesigning business processes to eliminate waste and inefficiency and improve competitiveness. It aims to radically redesign processes using information technology to achieve dramatic improvements in areas like cost, quality, and speed. BPR was introduced in the 1990s and involves identifying processes for redesign, reorganizing work around outcomes not tasks, treating dispersed resources as centralized, linking parallel activities, and building controls into processes. The methodology typically involves envisioning new processes, initiating change, diagnosing existing processes, redesigning processes, reconstructing with new IT solutions, and ongoing monitoring of performance.

Uploaded by

Anil Barolia
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is BPR?

Generally the topic of BPR involves discovering how business processes currently
operate, how to
redesign these processes to eliminate the wasted or redundant effort and improve
efficiency, and how
to implement the process changes in order to gain competitiveness. The aim of BPR,
according to
Sherwood-Smith (1994), is seeking to devise new ways of organising tasks,
organising people and

redesigning IT systems so that the processes support the organisation to realise its goals

Definition of Business Process Reengineering:


Different definitions are available. Following are the definitions provided in notable publications in the world:
Hammer and Champy (1993) define BPR as "... 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."

Concept of BPR
The concept of BPR was first introduced in the late Michael Hammer's 1990 The
authors promoted the idea that sometimes-radical redesign and reorganization of
an enterpriseis necessary to lower costs and increase quality of service and that
information technology is the key enabler for that radical change.
Hammer and Champy suggested seven reengineering principles to streamline the
work process and thereby achieve significant levels of improvement in quality,
time management, speed and profitability:
1. Organize around outcomes, not tasks.
2. Identify all the processes in an organization and prioritize them in order of
redesign urgency.
3. Integrate information processing work into the real work that produces the

information.
4. Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized.
5. Link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating their results.
6. Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the
process.
7. Capture in

Methodology of BPR:
Although the names and steps being used differ slightly between the different methodologies, they share the
same basic principles and elements. The following description is based on the PRLC (Process Reengineering
Life Cycle) approach developed by Guha et.al. (1993). A more detailed description can be found here.

Simplified schematic outline of using a business process approach, exemplified for pharmaceutical R&D:
1. Structural organization with functional units;
2. Introduction of new product development (as cross-functional process);
3. Re-structuring and streamlining activities, removal of non-value adding tasks.

A.Envision new processes


1.Secure management support
2.Identify reengineering opportunities
3.Identify enabling technologies
4.Align with corporate strategy

B.Initiating change
1.Set up reengineering team
2.Outline performance goals

C.Process diagnosis
1.Describe existing processes
2.Uncover pathologies in existing processes

D.Process redesign
1.Develop alternative process scenarios
2.Develop new process design
3.Design HR architecture
4.Select IT platform
5.Develop overall blueprint and gather feedback

E.Reconstruction
1.Develop/install IT solution
2.Establish process changes

F.Process monitoring
1.Performance measurement, including time, quality, cost, IT performance
2.Link to continuous improvement
3.Loop-back to diagnosis

Also within the management consulting industry, a significant number of methodological approaches have been
developed. A set of short papers, outlining and comparing some of them can be found here, followed by some
guidelines for the companies considering contracting a consultancy for a BPR initiative which involves:
1.Overview;
2.Framing the requirements;
3.Various facets of reprocessing;
4.Guide lines for Changes / comparison;
5.Guide lines for BPR consulting clients.
5. BPR - a rebirth of scientific management:formation

once and at the source.

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