Business Process Reengineering
Rosemarie A. Fisher, CPA
May 2007

Business process reengineering (BPR) has also been called business process redesign, business transformation or process change management. BPR was fashionable during the 1990s when the implementation of technology within organizations caused companies to take a hard look at existing business processes.

In 1990, Michael Hammer, a former professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 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 use technology to automaate it. This statement implicitly accused managers of having focused on the wrong issues, namely that techology in general - and more specifically information techology - has been used primarily for automating existing work rather than using it to make non-value-adding work obsolete.

Many management consultatns embraced the trend and built methods of implementing BPR, while some organizations used it as a tool for downsizing staff. The mere mention of a BPR project sent ripples of dissention among employees. Over the next 10 years, several quality improvement programs were born that utilzed BPR methods.

There are hundreds of case studies and documented methods and processes to design and implement a successful BPR program. These methods can be used in any size organization to improve processes and define workflow, and they all focus on the following five key elements:

• Define a project objective.
• Determine key participants.
• Outline a project plan.
• Define and implement a solution.
• Measure and report success.

Let’s follow a typical BPR consulting engagement through these five stages. The hypothetical FOB Manufacturing is a closely held, medium-size company in the third generation of family management. Some of the key management team members are nearing retirement, and the next generation is in the process of learning the ropes and transitioning into the key roles of the CFO and vice-president of operations over the next several months.

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