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Business process reengineering (BPR) is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of an end-to-end business process to achieve major improvements in measures such as cost, quality, service, and speed. It changes how work flows across tasks and departments—not merely how an existing workflow is automated or fine-tuned.
What business process reengineering means
The National Research Council attributes the widely used definition to Michael Hammer and James Champy: BPR is “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.” The definition appears in the Council’s 1997 account of organizational performance.
The key unit of analysis is the end-to-end process: connected work that produces an outcome. A customer order, for example, may pass through sales, finance, and fulfillment. BPR examines the whole flow, including handoffs and dependencies, rather than optimizing one task or department in isolation.
How BPR differs from related approaches
| Approach | What changes | How it differs from BPR |
|---|---|---|
| Incremental improvement | Small adjustments to an existing process | BPR aims for fundamental, radical redesign rather than gradual refinement. |
| Automation | Technology performs or speeds up existing work | Automation alone can preserve the old workflow. The National Research Council notes that automating a process is not the same as reengineering it. |
| Organizational restructuring | Reporting lines, organizational units, or management layers | BPR focuses on how work flows across tasks and functions, regardless of the organizational chart. |
Technology can enable a redesigned process, but process analysis comes first. The California Department of Technology’s framework covers tools for documenting both current and future processes while treating redesign—not technology installation—as central.
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When BPR may be appropriate
BPR fits a problem that calls for a substantial change in how an outcome is produced, not just a local fix. Before starting, establish the business case and clarify the problem, desired result, and performance measures. The California framework recommends tailoring the project’s methods and rigor to its size, type, and complexity.
- Consider whether the performance gap is large enough to justify radical change.
- Define the intended outcome and how improvement will be measured.
- Look across the complete process, including handoffs between teams.
- Assess implementation needs, including leadership, resources, employee engagement, and change management.
BPR is not defined by layoffs, outsourcing, or downsizing. Those associations have drawn criticism, but the approach itself concerns redesigning work to improve performance.
Typical stages of a BPR effort
The California Department of Technology organizes its framework around lifecycle management, business analysis and future definition, process design, and performance measurement. A practical project commonly moves through these stages:
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- Set targets. Choose meaningful performance measures and establish the results the redesigned process should achieve.
- Document the current process. Gather and validate facts about the existing workflow, its performance, and its constraints.
- Design the future process. Model how work should flow, then implement the agreed process and any supporting organizational or technology changes.
- Measure and monitor. Compare results with the baseline and targets, then continue tracking performance after implementation.
IBM’s overview describes a similar sequence—set goals, assess the current state, identify gaps, develop the future state, implement, and evaluate—and emphasizes leadership, resources, change management, and employee engagement as implementation considerations.
What to measure
Set a baseline before implementation so the organization can assess whether the redesign changed performance. The California framework lists measures such as:
- Cycle time and backlog
- Errors and exceptions
- Cost, scrap, or other waste
- Handoffs and process volume
Use measures that match the stated goal. A project intended to improve service speed, for instance, should track relevant timing measures alongside any other critical targets; a single metric may not capture trade-offs in cost or quality.
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Historical examples—and what they do not prove
The National Research Council’s 1997 account reports several examples of reengineering. These figures describe particular historical cases, not typical outcomes or guarantees for another organization.
| Organization and process | Reported change | Source and qualification |
|---|---|---|
| IBM: receiving a customer order and producing a sales agreement | Seven days and six steps became four hours and two steps. | Historical example reported by the National Research Council in 1997. |
| Ford Motor Company: accounts payable | The number of employees fell from 500 to 125 after work was reconfigured. | Historical staffing figure reported by the National Research Council in 1997; it is not a general measure of BPR success. |
| Taco Bell: kitchen and customer areas | The account describes a shift from 70 percent kitchen area to 70 percent customer area, with lower costs and faster service. | Historical example reported by the National Research Council in 1997. |
These cases illustrate different kinds of process redesign, but they do not establish a general BPR success rate or predict the results of a new project.
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Sources and further reading
- National Research Council, Enhancing Organizational Performance through Operational Reliability and Safety (1997), for the canonical definition, distinctions, and historical examples.
- California Department of Technology, Business Process Reengineering Framework, for project activities, process modeling, and performance measurement.
- IBM Think, Business Process Reengineering, for an overview of implementation sequence and organizational considerations.
- Google Books bibliographic record for Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution by Michael Hammer and James Champy.
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