Re-engineering is neither easy nor painless. By forcing you to transform your processes, instead of merely tweaking them, will cause severe dislocation. However, it will successfully deliver extraordinary gains in speed, productivity, and profitability. But if it failsas many Chief Executive Officers complain that it hasn't worked for their companiesit could leave one even poorer than before.

Business processes have been re-engineered for several decades now by O&M (Organization and Methods) specialists and industrial engineers. With the advent of computers, the entire process, or a large part of it, has been computerised. Today, it is the buzzword among management professionals and academics. Michael Hammer and James Champy in their excellently written book Re-engineering the Corporation, have lucidly taken the readers through the concept and cases of re-engineering.

Re-engineering process is the only method to gain a competitive advantage. BPR was introduced in 1990. Hammer and Champy describe it as fundamental, radical and dramatic business process change. Davenport used the term `innovation', to distinguish it from incremental improvements. BPR generally redesigns processes and the organization that performs them, in order to reduce the number of boundaries crossed; since each time a process crosses an organizational boundary, additional work is created for communication, hand-off and coordinations boundary. BPR takes a holistic approach to business improvement, about both the technical and the social aspects. BPR is the most significant way in which organizations become more efficient and modernized. It transforms an organization in ways that directly affects its performance.

MBA Review Magazine, Business Processes Re-engineering, BPR, Michael Hammer, James Champy, Organizational Goals, Information Technology, Total Quality Management, Efficient Management, Change Management, Reengineering Management, Time Management, Organizational Goals, Enterprise Resource Planning, Sciencetific Management.