Key Points

• BPR is a radical means of revamping processes, often a last resort when all other options have been exhausted.
• BPR is driven by external influences, along with addressing core business concerns.
• It is a high-risk, high-reward strategy that presents significant challenges for successful implementation.

When processes are fundamentally broken, you aren’t left with many choices. You can try to tweak and improve them incrementally. However, this only serves to spin the wheels, wasting resources and manhours. If a process isn’t working, you have to make the change, and that often means leaning on BPR to make things work.

Business process reengineering is a complete overhaul of processes, often leveraging radical rethinking to get results. It can be a very high-risk, high-reward scenario leaning on BPR, but it could be just what is needed to see a breakthrough. Today, we’re going to cover some of the criteria where BPR might be appropriate, as well as address its core differences from other process improvement methodologies.

When Is BPR a Necessity?

The need for BPR arises when a process simply doesn’t respond to improvement initiatives. Dysfunctional processes are ones where incremental improvements are no longer taking hold, resulting in wasted time and effort. Now, given what we know of other approaches, you’d start from scratch and carefully navigate it with historical data, at least when considering something like Six Sigma.

However, that doesn’t address the underlying issues. At its core, BPR is used when the process is fundamentally broken. There is no need to find the root cause or bottleneck of the process, as it is simply the process itself. So, let’s cover a few of the more pressing criteria for using BPR.

Persistent Inefficiencies

With any modern business methodology, optimization is key. You’re steadily working toward continuous improvement, addressing bottlenecks, wastes, and defects as they arise. However, some inefficiencies in more troublesome processes are going to remain firmly in place. Wasted time, bottlenecks, and other inefficiencies can bring production grinding to a halt.

These aren’t likely to slip by unnoticed either. Management might start up a DMAIC cycle to address problems, yielding temporary results at best. Either way, the process is the cause of the problem with efficiency.

Declining Performance

Seeing significant declines in how you approach processes can be a cause for concern. KPIs like profitability, customer satisfaction, and market share start shrinking. Now, in some cases, this can be attributed to shifting market trends. However, a steep decline in performance is often indicative of more pressing problems lurking beneath the surface of a process. It isn’t enough to improve it, as that will barely make a dent in the current performance levels.

A Fundamental Mismatch with Strategy

Company-wide strategic goals might misalign with in-place processes. This comes about in a few different ways. You might be looking to corner the market with up-to-date services for an online marketplace. But instead of making use of cutting-edge systems, you’re running a fragmented, hodgepodge of equipment. This represents a massive misalignment with current strategic objectives and is a key reason to start looking into BPR.

Technological Obsolescence

Speaking of tech, an adherence to older methods can result in significant problems. I spent nearly a decade in the tech industry, and it was always astounding to see companies that were just doing things the worst way possible. Hacky workarounds, vulnerable systems, and a lack of centralization can spell disaster at any moment.

Major Market Shifts

Depending on your business sector, you’ve likely got to adhere to the guidelines set by some regulatory body. New regulations, laws, and so forth can serve to be a massive disruption. Further, the emergence of new competitors in the market space can serve to send your company reeling, especially as customers flock to the latest thing. It can be a struggle to stay relevant when operating with dysfunctional processes.

The Risks and Challenges of BPR

I’ve highlighted some of the worst-case scenarios where BPR is necessary, but it isn’t without risk. As previously mentioned, this is a high-risk, high-reward method of overhauling processes. You will face challenges, no matter how limited the scope of your project. So, let’s look at a few of the more likely candidates you’ll encounter.

High Cost and Time

It takes a considerable amount of time, resources, and manhours to get BPR initiatives rolling. You’ll want to invest in it as well. This isn’t simply a matter of starting a whole new process either. Any BPR initiative is going to require painstaking research and feedback to determine what is and what isn’t working with how you’re doing things before the implementation process starts.

You’ll likely see profitability drop for a time as well when going through the motions. Any initiative is going to require training, investment in new technologies, and potentially the hiring of new staff to get things rolling. Just a few technological components implemented on an organization-wide basis can be a substantial investment, and you might have to do things in stages as it stands.

Additionally, some organizations make use of third-party consultants to provide an unbiased perspective. These are individuals who are seasoned in process analysis, redesign, and change management, and services like this don’t come cheap. However, if you’re looking at a very real existential threat to your organization, it might be worth considering.

Resistance to Change

Change is always a difficult thing to get across, and that stands for anything you do in an organization. However, you’ll likely run into stiff resistance while trying to get any BPR project rolling from both your front-line employees and senior management. This is understandable to some extent, as BPR projects can result in a massive upheaval, with job security seeming somewhat tenuous as a result.

Further, if you’ve got long-time employees, it can be seen as a loss of status to have to reskill and take on an entirely different way of doing things. BPR is typically part of restructuring throughout most businesses, which means you may sadly have to terminate some personnel. However, the key to making a successful go of things means you want to employ solid change management strategies and maintain clear and effective communication as you go.

Potential for Failure

Despite all your best efforts, BPR projects can result in abject failure. This is often a result of poor planning, lack of leadership buy-in, and fundamentally opaque efforts to communicate with employees. If you can’t help your staff navigate such a monumental change in how work is done, you’re likely to see everything fizzle up in smoke.

Differences with Other Methodologies

We’ve talked at length about how BPR is called for in businesses, along with the risks it presents. That said, it has some fundamental differences from other common approaches. This is to be expected, as BPR is a far more drastic way of doing things, often disrupting organizational planning across the board.

BPI

Like BPR, BPI is very much aimed at improving processes, but it goes about it differently. BPI is usually laser-focused on specific processes or departments, with changes being localized, incremental, and generally far smaller in scope. Contrast that to BPR, where the entire organization might be turned upside down to see better results.

Six Sigma and Lean

Lean is very incremental, focusing on small changes to eliminate waste and improve processes. Six Sigma inherits some of this as well, but it makes use of data-driven decision-making to guide the process improvement approach. Both are focused on the removal of waste and the establishment of a culture of continuous improvement.

They don’t provide the clean slate approach that BPR champions. The scope of process improvement is often far narrower, focusing on single departments and making gradual changes to bring efficiency up to expected values.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

Ready to start the work week right? You might want to take a closer look at how Lean Six Sigma is pioneering healthcare. This hybridized approach isn’t just a great fit for manufacturing, but can improve patient care, optimize resource usage, and reduce costs when applied to healthcare.

Additionally, you might want to take a closer look at the differences between Hoshin Kanri and OKRs. Both of these approaches are great ways of establishing goals, but they have very different use cases. To get the best possible results, you might want to combine both.

Conclusion

BPR is a drastic change, and it is often for the better. However, it isn’t something to take lightly. If you’re considering using BPR, things are already going poorly. It’s just simply a matter of knuckling down and taking the next step towards righting your organization.