BPR

BPR, from Thomas Davenport and Michael Hammer, appeared in the early 90s with the aim of redesigning whole processes, even whole organisations

BPR was said to be needed when a dramatic and perhaps unexpected change highlighted an organisation’s weaknesses e.g. a hostile take-over bid, the loss of a major contract, market share suddenly decimated – major change was urgent, hang the risks

BPR was ‘the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve quantum leaps in critical measures of performance’

BPR started with current products or services offered and asked how you would provide them if you were to start from scratch

You had to ask ‘why do we do what we do at all’ and identify wasteful activities, especially those that had nothing to do with meeting customers’ needs

BPR tended to focus on core operational processes leaving other corporate and supportive processes to continue as before, efficiently or inefficiently

BPR could involve major organisational upheaval and result in job losses, even though that was not its stated aim, so it was generally unpopular with workforces

Some organisations, like direct insurance companies, made great gains by employing new processes and technology to drastically reduce order cycle times and administration costs

But most judged BPR to take too long (like TQM) so they lapsed into their ‘old ways’ and/ or to be too much for them, so they looked elsewhere for improvement

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