What Is Reengineering?

eengineering, or more specifically, business process reengineering (BPR), is a term that was launched into the forefront of the business world by Michael Hammer and James Champy in their 1993 book, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. In this book, Hammer and Champy define reengineering as:

"the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of the business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance ..."

At Business Architects, we believe this traditional definition of reengineering must be extended:

"... by leveraging proven models of process, organization, and technology to dramatically improve the pace of change and to compress the time to achieve measurable business results."

This definition features a number of key words:

Fundamental

Reengineering is "fundamental" insofar as we must ask the most basic questions about the company and how it operates. Before thinking about what we're doing (or what we're doing wrong), we must ask why we're doing it. Too often, effort is spent fixing a process without thinking why the process is there in the first place, and more importantly, whether it needs to be there at all. Only with the proper consideration for the fundamentals of an organization can we hope to succeed at reengineering.

Radical

Another key aspect of reengineering is that it is "radical." Contrary to common perception, this does not mean that reengineering must be revolutionary or violent. Rather, what it means is that we must focus on the "root" of the problems. (As Michael Hammer likes to point out, "radical" shares its etymology with the word "radish," one of the better known roots.) The important message is that reengineering is not about tweaking existing organizations and processes, but often involves a reinventing of those processes by focusing on their roots.

Dramatic

Reengineering is about dramatic improvements. Marginal improvements such as a 10% increase in sales or a 5% cut in expenses do not require reengineering. Techniques such as quality initiatives or process improvement will often suffice in those cases. Reengineering is required when you need dramatic improvements. So, reengineering isn't used if you want to improve response time to customer requests by ten percent, but rather when you want to improve it tenfold.

Process

Most importantly, reengineering is about "processes." Too often, strategic initiatives focus on tasks, jobs, or organizations. Ultimately, process redesigns drive reengineering efforts.

But what is a process? According to Hammer and Champy, a process is:

"... a collection of activities that takes one or more kinds of input and creates an output that is of value to the customer."

Historically, management focused on individual, narrowly defined tasks and jobs (for example, how to best capture a customer's merchandise order). We need to shift the emphasis towards a collection of these tasks that provide value to the customer. Continuing with our example, the real value to the customer is not necessarily how quickly we capture the order, but also how quickly and accurately we fulfill the order (which might include many separate tasks, such as order capture, inventory management, payment application, warehouse operations, and shipping).

This transition from tasks to processes is surprising difficult for many organizations to embrace. Too often, companies focus on the roles of specialists and how to make them better at their jobs. Unfortunately, regardless of the quality of the specialists, the more of them that are involved in a process, the more hand-offs that the process must endure. And unnecessary hand-offs are the enemies of any good process: Hand-offs cause delays (for example, time spent in the out-basket of one specialist and the in-basket of another) and introduce inefficiencies (because of the needed management and tracking of the process).

Reengineering's focus on processes ensures that we consider not only the tasks it takes to provide value to the customer, but also the delays and overhead that are introduced by the organization, processes, and systems. Only this way can we yield the dramatic benefits demanded of reengineering efforts.

hile these four key words capture the essence of reengineering, it is telling that success has eluded so many organizations. At Business Architects, we believe this is because although much has been said about what reengineering is, little has been said about how to do it. To bring clarity to this topic, we have extended the traditional definition of reengineering, adding three new key words that we believe are crucial to ensuring success in any reengineering effort:

Leverage

Too often, organizations misinterpret the fundamental and radical aspects of reengineering and believe that they need to start with a tabula rasa, a blank slate. At Business Architects, we believe that this is counterproductive and has contributed to the failure of many reengineering efforts.

To the contrary, rather than starting with a blank slate, we believe it is essential to leverage contemporary models of process, organization, and technology. It is crucial to leverage these best practices and use them for the strategic advantage of your organization. If you start from a blank slate, months can be spent reproducing the results of earlier efforts. The savvy organization uses the best practices found elsewhere as a launching point for moving forward.

Pace

Reengineering efforts must maintain a rapid pace and continually produce results to succeed. Efforts that move too slowly fail. Enthusiasm wanes, resistance builds, and an initial sense of urgency is replaced by indecision and second-guessing.

A company must evolve toward its reengineered organization. It should craft its vision, prepare an aggressive release strategy to reach that goal, and quickly begin to show results through small, manageable projects. The delivery of quick results allows the organization to learn as it goes and to produce significant benefits in months rather than years.

Consistent achievement of measurable results also prevents the loss of momentum, the greatest threat to any reengineering project. Successful reengineering requires that results be delivered sooner rather than later. A consistent focus on early, tangible results-rather than a "big bang" or "great leap forward" implementation--rewards the organization for its efforts and helps the project build momentum.

Results

Bottom line, the goal of every reengineering effort is to deliver measurable business results. Too often, reengineering discussions digress into theoretical debates and endless diagramming sessions. At Business Architects, we believe that the weeks or months spent documenting and modeling of existing processes are ill spent. A balance must be achieved between understanding the existing processes and moving forward with new designs. Without this balance the organization loses sight of the ultimate goal: results.

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