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buSinESS PRoCESS REEnginEERing (bPR) 107

Figure 3.6 bPR advocates reorganising (reengineering) processes to reflect the natural
‘end-to-end’ processes that fulfill customer needs

Functionally based processes
Function 1 Function 2 Function 3 Function 4

End-to-end process 1
Customer needs End-to-end process 2 Business processes Customer needs fulfilled

End-to-end process 3

that a BPR ‘solution’ will be radical when it seeks to redesign processes on an end-
to-end basis, as described above. Traditional organisational and functional bounda-
ries will have to be reconfigured and individuals’ jobs and responsibilities redefined.
Furthermore, the use of new information technologies is likely to promote previously
unexplored process designs. In fact, Hammer and Champy discussed the role of what
they termed ‘disruptive technologies’ that would directly challenge the orthodoxy of
process design.

Have those who use the output from a process, perform the process
Check to see if all internal customers can be their own supplier, rather than depending
on another function in the business to supply them (which takes longer and separates
out the stages in the process). In process design this idea is sometimes referred to as a
‘short fat’ process, as opposed to the more conventional, multi-stage, ‘long thin’ process.

Put decision points where the work is performed
Do not separate those who do the work from those who control and manage the work.
Control and action are just one more type of supplier–customer relationship that can
be merged.

Criticisms of bPR

BPR has aroused considerable controversy, mainly because BPR sometimes looks only
at work activities rather than at the people who perform the work. Because of this,
people become ‘cogs in a machine’. Many of these critics equate BPR with the much
earlier principles of scientific management, pejoratively known as ‘Taylorism’. Gener-
ally, these critics mean that, like some forms of early scientific management, BPR is
overly harsh in the way it views human resources. Certainly, there is evidence that
BPR is often accompanied by a significant reduction in staff. Studies at the time when

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