Business Process Reengineering: 6 Key Steps + Some Secret Sauce

This post presents a sound bite of the six key steps of BPR – important and useful content on its own. And, it
provides the context for the discussion at the end of the post of the relationship between BPR and organizational
strategy.

The Six Key Steps of Business Process Reengineering

1. Define Business Processes. Map the current state (work activities, workflows, roles and reporting
relationships, supporting technology, business rules, etc.). See my whitepaper, “10 Perilous
Misconceptions of Censuring Current State Mapping & Analysis” for additional insight.

2. Analyse Business Processes. Identify gaps, root causes, strategic disconnects, etc. in the context of
improving organizational effectiveness, operational efficiency and in achieving organizational strategic
objectives.

3. Identify and analyse Improvement Opportunities. Identify, analyse and validate opportunities to
address the gaps and root causes identified during analysis. This step also includes identifying and
validating improvement opportunities that are forward facing – often strategic transformational
opportunities that are not tethered to current state process.

4. Design Future State Processes. Select the improvement opportunities identified above that have the
most impact on organizational effectiveness, operational efficiency, and that will achieve organizational
strategic objectives. Make sure to select opportunities for which the organization has the budget, time,
talent, etc. to implement in the project timeframe. Create a forward-facing future-state map that
comprehends the selected opportunities.

5. Develop Future State Changes. Frequently overlooked (and a key root cause in failed BPR initiatives),
this is where the above opportunities are operationalized before implementation. New workflows and
procedures need to be designed and communicated, new/enhanced functionality is developed and
tested, etc. Changes and opportunities cannot be implemented until they are operationalized.

6. Implement Future State Changes. Classic implementation based on dependencies among

changes/opportunities, change management, project management, performance monitoring, etc.

Business Strategy and BPR – The Secret Sauce

The key point I want to make in this blog is the distinction between business-as-usual improvement
opportunities and strategic improvement opportunities. The distinction is essential in selecting the
opportunities to move forward into design, development and implementation.
Business-as-usual improvement opportunities are those opportunities that improve, but do not fundamentally
change current processes. These are the things that you do (typically incremental changes) to improve
operational efficiency and "lean" the process – i.e. reduce waste, errors, cycle time, etc.
To be clear, I am not diminishing the importance of business-as-usual opportunities. Business-as-usual
opportunities are ongoing and have significant impact on the bottom line, but they do not move the needle with
respect to enabling an organization to achieve strategic objectives. See my whitepaper “Lean – Getting Early
Wins from BPR” for a detailed discussion of business-as-usual improvement opportunities.
Strategic improvement opportunities, on the other hand, enable organization to do new (as well as existing)
things in new ways. Strategic opportunities enable and support an organization's strategic objectives – new
product lines, new approaches to customer service and engagement, speed and quality of fulfilment, etc.
It’s my experience (100% of the time) that in a BPR initiative we identify more high-value transformational
opportunities for improving business processes (in addition to business-as-usual opportunities) than an
organization has the time, budget and resources to implement in the short run. So, how do you shortlist from
a group of high-value transformation opportunities? An essential part of shortlisting is to identify which
opportunities move the needle the most toward enabling an organization to achieve strategic objectives. BPR
opportunities, unless clearly tied to strategic objectives, are untethered, and therefore open to subjective and
political shortlisting.

BPR Training Course

BPR requires new ways of thinking to achieve break-through results in organizational effectiveness and
operational efficiency.

Today’s rapidly changing business environment favours high-performing agile organizations capable of
delivering extraordinary customer and business value.
Meeting this challenge often requires transformative change - and sustainable on-going improvement in
business processes, organizational culture and supporting technologies.