BPR to BPM

Business process reengineering in 1990s created a hype which was as far

reaching as the concept it self was. But was reengineering successful? The
answer is both yes and no. No, because the number of companies that
attempted and failed to reengineer their processes was much more than
those who were successful at it. Yes, because, BPR in general has put the
emphasis on organizing work around processes, rather than around tasks.
Also automation got prominence as a means to improve business
performance and not IT performance. This shift in focus was the real gain for
the industry.
BPR gained popularity during times when the industry was in a fix in the face
of constantly changing environment. More or less the companies found their
backs to the wall. Breakthrough improvement was the bare requisite of the
day for established companies in corporate America to survive against the
nimble startups and competitively superior overseas firms. Lack of end-toend process perspective and style of working which suited times of a bygone
era provided the platform from which the breakthrough improvements can
be launched. And the evolving power of IT, which was only inadequately and
superficially being used in the industry, provided the fuel to embark on
reengineering journey. The promise of discontinuous improvements also
required discontinuity in the way work is conducted anything less than a
perfect score on this account is a sure road to failure - and this was the
general experience of the industry.
BPM tools have taken the advantage of the BPR experience and conceptually
are more flexible in terms of expanse and intensity. Unlike BPR which targets
end-to-end process by radically redesigning it, BPM tools can be applied part
by part to the whole enterprize at a time, by adopting much more
manageable and smaller changes in the process. This way the investments,
risks and amount of change are minimized but at the same time the tangible
impact is much more modest than what was a possibility with BPR. Yet BPM
tools for automating processes have their basis on the fundamental concepts
that were emphasized by BPR, such as:

Simple processes delivering on the metrics of quality, service,

flexibility

Focus on eliminating non-value adding activities

Decisions becoming integral part of the process

BPM unifies discrete tools through extension of technologies like BPR, EAI,
Workflow automation and any other business application package in such a
form where the implementation and upgradation is much easily handled and
underlying business process are efficiently managed. In addition to the
strength inherited from BPR that BPM is built around business processes and
not business applications per se, yet another promising feature of BPM is that
it is based on mathematical process models. Which means that business
process performance can be continuously improved and optimized during the
operations.
Key aspects on which BPM differs BPR is shown below:
Marked difference between BPR and BPM
Aspect
BPR
BPM
Level of
Radical, one
Evolutionary &
change
step change
continuous
Time taken for
Short time and
implementatio
Long
smooth takeover
n
Current processes and
Starting point Drawing board
automation levels
Huge effort
Implementatio required for the
Incremental
n
disruptive
change
Flexible
One major
simultaneously across
Expanse
process at a
one or more / small or
time
major processes
Redesigning of
Process and decision
Methodology
business
models
processes
Enabling
Primarily process
Primarily IT
technology
technology
Business and Process experts and
Involvement
process experts all related people
Risk
High
Low
Incremental
Outcome
Drastic
improvement
Cultural issues Major concern
Not much concern
Implementatio
n stress and
High
Low
concern