Summary of an article based on supply chain management related to Business Process Reeingeneering by Majed Al-Mashari and Mohamed Zairi in year 1999, published in Business Process Management Journal,

1. BPR IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS:
AN ANALYSIS OF KEY SUCCESS &
FAILURE FACTORS
Prepared By:
Sana Fatima
Anum Iqbal

2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
 Intense world-wide competition has forced organizations to
reengineer their old fashioned processes to achieve new
heights of success. However, business process reengineering
(BPR) implementation is a difficult task and many
organizations have failed to achieve the expected results.
Through reorganizing, eliminating some processes and finding
new ways of doing things, BPR helps organizations to change
their old fashioned structures into innovative processes.
Successful implementation of BPR brings many benefits to
the organization.
 Business process reengineering is dramatic change that
represents the overhaul of organizational structures,
management systems, employee responsibilities and
empowerment, performance measurements, incentive
systems, skills development, and the use of information
technology. BPR assists in increasing productivity through
reduces process time and cost, improved quality and
customer value. 2

3. BPR SUCCESS FACTORS
LEARNING POINTS

4. FACTORS RELATED TO CHANGE MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS AND CULTURE
 Establish positive attitude in adapting change and learning
organizational culture.
 As a part of BPR effort staff should be motivated through a
reward program.
 Communication is needed throughout the process; Effective
communication should be done inside and outside the
organization
 Responsibility and accountability should be defined
 All employees must have proactive approach and should be
actively involved.
 Training and development of skills is one of the most
important element of successful implementation of BPR
 Establish such culture where people share same goals, and
tends to do teamwork
 People should not be reluctant to change
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5. FACTORS RELATED TO MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
 Strategic and effective leadership is required
 BPR team must be able to persuade top
management to understand the need of change
and implement BPR
 Top management should continuously assess the
risk involved in acceptance of change and plan
strategies to handle risk
5

6. FACTORS RELATED TO ORGANIZATIONAL
STRUCTURE
 Organizations should follow process based approach,
Job and labor integration should be followed so that
series of task would be done effectively
 BPR team should have expertise, creative and
competent. They should be have the empowerment as
well
 After the implementation of BPR, management should
inform employees regarding new redesigned job duties
and responsibilities
 Carefully align corporate strategy with BPR strategy
 Proper planning should be timely done with efficient use
of project management technique
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7. SETTING PERFORMANCE GOALS AND MEASURES
 Adequate resources, knowledge and sufficient budget
should be effectively used.
 Disciplines approach and sound methodology should be
used.
 Assessment and measurement of customer changing
needs and competitive analysis is required.
 Consultant helps to bring skills expertise and experience
to organization. Though this activity is time consuming
but it is effective.
 Long-term, clear and creative vision for BPR by
management is needed.
 Continuous improvement like TQM is suggested to be
integrated with BPR to achieve drastic change.
 BPR value can be achieved by focusing in finding
opportunities 7

8. FACTORS RELATED TO IT INFRASTRUCTURE
 IT infrastructure and BPR should be aligned with each other
 Adequate understanding and identify enabling technologies
for redesigning business process
 While making the decision of sourcing IT, the level of
supplier’s IT expertise, skill and deployment cost should be
considered.
 Multi sourcing is effective if strategic IT components are
insourced and non critical components are outsourced
 Information should be timely , consistent, complete and
accurately shared.
 IT structure should support BPR effectively, Information
system (IS) should be effectively used to the fullest potential.
 To improve BPR productivity software tool contributes in
resulting higher quality
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9. BPR FAILURE FACTORS
LEARNING POINTS

10. FACTORS RELATED TO CHANGE MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS AND CULTURE
 Lack of communication, hiding uncertainties, poor and
inadequate communication between BPR teams and other cross
functional department cause hindrance in the implementation of
BPR.
 If the employees are reluctant to change and they fear about their
job security, losing the control and responsibility they currently
have, then they will resist towards the change of BPR.
 Lack of coordination from cross-functional departments, lack of
skills and determination by the management or if the employees
have not identified yet the need of change management.
 The management should not underestimate the role of politics,
tendency of copying others and organizational culture. Ignorance
of the value of employee’s, lack of trust between management
and employees can lead to failure.
 Though BPR is implemented but if the employees are not trained
and developed their skills, then the implementation will be
ineffective.
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11. FACTORS RELATED TO MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
 Commitment and support from top management to
line managers is needed.
 BPR require huge investment, viable sponsorship
from senior management is essential.
 Choosing the right BPR leader is itself a challenge
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12. FACTORS RELATED TO ORGANIZATIONAL
STRUCTURE
 Difficulty in identifying appropriate BPR team
members.
 Unless the BPR teams are properly trained and are
assigned with the responsibility they will not be able
to execute the BPR strategies.
 Inflexible organizational structure
 Lack of authority provided to BPR team
 Conflict between BPR team responsibilities and
functional team responsibilities due to unclear job
defined and insufficient communication between
them
12

13. FACTORS RELATED TO BPR PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
 Inability of management to control BPR efforts
 Management focus on incremental change rather than radical
process
 Problems faced due to improper planning and project
management
 BPR is long term procedure which requires time. If enough
time is not provided for planning, developing, and executing
BPR strategies it will ultimately lead to failure.
 If the employees are unclear about objective for BPR project
 Organizations are unaware or find it too difficult to measure
BPR project performance and tend to go for easy measures
no matter they are reliable or not
 Organization have narrow focus, emphasis on short term
goals rather than strategic view and lack of BPR vision
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14.  Emphasis on automation of existing process without
redesigning the processes
 If organization has unsound financial condition
 In sufficient resources for BPR project
 Inadequate determination of core process and scope of
change
 Organization is expecting too high or unreal scope by
implementing BPR
 Did not allow external consultants’ support
 Choose inappropriate consultants for BPR
 Organization holds insufficient knowledge regarding
methodologies of BPR
 Wrong sourcing decision made 14

15. FACTORS RELATED TO IT INFRASTRUCTURE
 Insufficient telecommunication, database
infrastructure, IT infrastructure
 Failure in developing right information system
 Inability to change current information system due
to lack of human and IT expertise
 Inadequate understanding by the employees
regarding IT infrastructure
 Reluctant to not to learn new technology
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