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	Proponents of BPR claim that far too much time is wasted, passing on tasks from one department to another. They also claim that it is far more efficient to appoint a team who perform all the tasks in the process. Critics of the BPR claim BPR assumes that the factor that limits entity's performance is the ineffectiveness of its processes, also BPR assumes the need to start the process of performance improvement with a "clean slate." Furthermore, they claim that BPR does not provide an effective way to focus the improvement efforts on the entity's constraints

Business Process Reengineering

Information Systems Consulting
Process ReEngineering | Risk Management | Internal Control System

Process ReEngineering

The Business Process Reengineering method (BPR) is described by Hammer and Champy as 'the fundamental reconsideration and the radical redesign of organizational processes, in order to achieve drastic improvement of current performance in cost, services and speed'.

Rather than organizing a firm into functional specialties (like production, accounting, marketing, etc.) and to look at the tasks that each function performs, Hammer and Champy recommend that we should look at complete processes. From materials acquisition, towards production, towards marketing and distribution. One should rebuild the firm into a series of processes.

Value creation for the customer is the leading factor for BPR and information technology often plays an important enabling role. The use of BPR is applicable to the service industry as well as to commerce and manufacturing.

Davenport’s five step approach to Business Process Reengineering model:

Develop the business vision and process objectives: The BPR method is driven by a business vision which implies specific business objectives such as cost reduction, time reduction, output quality improvement.

Identify the business processes to be redesigned: most firms use the 'high-impact' approach which focuses on the most important processes or those that conflict most with the business vision. A lesser number of firms use the 'exhaustive approach' that attempts to identify all the processes within an organization and then prioritize them in order of redesign urgency.

Understand and measure the existing processes: to avoid the repeating of old mistakes and to provide a baseline for future improvements.

Identify IT levers: awareness of IT capabilities can and should influence BPR.

Design and build a prototype of the new process: the actual design should not be viewed as the end of the BPR process. Rather, it should be viewed as a prototype, with successive iterations. The metaphor of prototype aligns the Business Process Reengineering approach with quick delivery of results, and the involvement and satisfaction of customers.

Elements of Business Engineering
◊	Reexamination	Rethink existing business processes
◊	Simplification	Distill business functions into efficient models
◊	Reorganization	Search for new way to organize work
◊	Integration	Integrate all critical business processes
◊	Automation	Use technology to automate redesigned business processes
◊	Communication	Increase communication to assist new holistic business processes
◊	Adaptation	Constantly reconsider and improve business process

Organization Development vs BPR

Organization development provides for applying incremental improvements to a business processes, assuming that the process, principally can be improved. Retooling, training, and the support of existing IT for the improved process are the key factors used in organization development taking into account that radical changes and discontinuity must be avoided.

On the other hand, BPR approach is to radically change the existing processes assuming that very little, if any in the current process can be improved. BPR aims to alter the system as a whole in order to achieve improvements of significant dimensions. New IT processes have to be developed to supported the BPR approach.