META ANALYSIS ON BUISNESS

PROCESS REENGINEERING
APPROACHES AND APPLICATION

BY
ADDISU ABEBE

December 2015
Adama, Ethiopia
Abstract
Introduction: Business Process Reengineering is a paradigm shift that is used by many
organizations to survive in the competitive era.
Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the approaches and application of Business
Process Reengineering

Methods: Meta-analysis was used as a methodology for synthesizing qualitative studies. Meta-
analysis is „research of research‟ which incorporates analysis of the theory, methods and findings
of existing qualitative research studies and subsequent synthesis of these insights to provide new
understandings of the phenomenon.
Result: The implementation approaches of BPR in many organizations have its own histories.
Besides, both private and service giving organizations‟ concern is to redesign business processes
that will help them achieve simultaneous significant improvements in customer satisfaction,
quality, cycle time, cost, service, productivity, flexibility, and competitive advantage.
Conclusion: Top management commitment, staff training, smooth working structure and
different resources are important during BPR implementation. Besides, it has been discussed in
different literatures BPR is a back bone and remains an effective tool for both public and private
sector organizations striving to operate in a highly competitive business environment for
organizational success.
Recommendations:
o Both public and private Organization which operates in a highly competitive business
environment should implement BPR in order to succeed.
o During BPR implementation Organizations should give attention to top management
commitment, staff training on BPR, smooth working structure and avail resources needed.

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Table of contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... i
Table of contents ................................................................................................................................. ii
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1
2. Objectives.................................................................................................................................... 2
2.1. General objective .................................................................................................................. 2
2.2. Specific objectives ................................................................................................................ 2
3. Methods....................................................................................................................................... 3
3.1. Study type ............................................................................................................................ 3
3.2. Literature search: .................................................................................................................. 3
3.3. Inclusion criteria: .................................................................................................................. 3
3.4. Exclusion criteria: ................................................................................................................. 4
4. Result .......................................................................................................................................... 5
4.1. Approaches of BPR................................................................................................................ 5
4.2. Application of BPR ................................................................................................................ 5
5. Conclusion................................................................................................................................... 7
6. Recommendations ....................................................................................................................... 7
7. References ................................................................................................................................... 8

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 1. Introduction
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a much overused term today. Reengineering
represent a language of change and indicate a desire by organizations to improve their
productivity and /or maintain global competitiveness. There is an increasing confidence
that process reengineering of organizations is the best long-term approach in achieving
these goals (1). The dramatic changes in business environment have drastically enforced
enterprises to increase organizational awareness and responsiveness in internal and
external environments (2). BPR is said to be a new approach for the process management
that brings radical change (improvement) in organizational performance (2).

Four common keywords in BPR definitions are “fundamental”, “radical”, “dramatic” and
“process”. BPR determines what a company must do and how to do it to improve
productivity and quality (3). Radical changes (not superficial changes) are made to create
dramatic improvements. Through radical changes old fashioned processes will be thrown
away. The word dramatic concern with achieving best performance. Process refers to a
collection of activities which gets a set of input and creates a set of outputs that gives
value to customer (3, 4). Because of this BPR is widely recognized as a foundation for
contemporary management approaches, as it goes via the analysis of business processes to
the roots of an organization (4).

Generally, BPR is a paradigm that is used by many organizations to survive in the

competitive era. However, creative design of the business processes is a critical phase and
the organization should prepare the ground for innovation since, Innovation helps
organizations to use the BPR concept efficiently. Hence this paper reviews the BPR
approaches and applications done by different scholars. So, this will bring innovation
concepts to the world of business process reengineering.

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2. Objectives
2.1. General objective
Assess the Approaches and application of Business Process Reengineering

2.2. Specific objectives

Assess Approaches of Business Process Reengineering
Assess applications of Business Process Reengineering

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 3. Methods
3.1. Study type
Meta-analysis is the most well developed methodology for synthesizing qualitative studies. Meta-
analysis is „research of research‟ which incorporates analysis of the theory, methods and findings
of existing qualitative research studies and subsequent synthesis of these insights to provide new
understandings of the phenomenon (5).
In this study, the investigator is interested in the approaches and applications of BPR. Most of
these papers are qualitative studies without quantitative data. Therefore, meta-synthesis is an
appropriate method for me to achieve a comprehensive synthesis of primary qualitative studies.
This paper includes two sections: in first section, qualitative meta-synthesis was conducted to
extract approaches to BPR implementation and the second is identifying application of BPR in
organizations. In doing so three steps were followed; the first is selecting the studies, synthesizing
translations, and presenting the synthesis.
In the first step, selecting studies, In order to identify the approaches and applications of BPR, a
literature study of 20 articles from different data bases were selected. In the second step,
synthesizing translations, I first assembled all the studies together and determined how they are
related to each other. I then translated the studies with each other based on a comparative
approach. In the last step, expressing the synthesis, I presented my expressions to facilitate
understanding

3.2. Literature search:

A literature search was conducted to identify published and unpublished studies that have been
conducted on the approaches and application of BPR. Two literature search strategies were used
to search the relevant literatures. First a Google search was done using the key words of approach,
application and BPR in order to find all literatures done on the approaches and application of
BPR. Second, a Google search was conducted in order to get sources cited in the reference section
of literatures found in step one using the Author name, title and year published as a key word.

3.3. Inclusion criteria:

All studies done regarding the approaches and application of BPR and written in English were
included.

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 3.4. Exclusion criteria:
Studies written in languages other than English and studies done before 1990 G.C was excluded.

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 4. Result
4.1. Approaches of BPR
The approaches in implementation of BPR in many organizations have its own implementation
histories. Accordingly as it has been discussed in different literatures the following parts should
be involved during BPR implementation.

I. Top management involvement in BPR implementation

Top management of the respective organization involvement in the implementation of BPR is

crucial and this is supported by different studies (6, 7, 8). The involvement of top management is
needed since BPR is a change strategy that needs the commitment of every staff.

II. Staff Training

Since BPR is the change instrument that needs the involvement of every departments and
processes in the organization; staffs from every corner of the organization should take training
regaring what BPR is and how to implement it (9, 10).

III. Smooth working Structure

Organizations implementing BPR should establish more flat structure that allows employee to
communicate each other easily (11).

IV. Resources needed

Since BPR is a new change strategy it will need a significant financial and material fulfillment
(11).

4.2. Application of BPR

The reality of the current business environment, whether it is in service giving or manufacturing
organization, is expressed by marked competition, globalization, liberalization and privatization.
The business environment has no mercy for inefficiency and weakness unless you re-engineer
your business and shape up to the demands of the global situation or you go out of business (12).

In practice, reengineering projects do not necessarily involve the entire organization. They may be
limited to specific processes or departments. Based on the scope (narrow vs. broad) and scale
(limited vs. extensive), there are four types of BPR projects. These are functional refinement,
functional integration, process redesign, and business redefinition (13).

In order to help the user in choosing the correct best practice when dealing with the
implementation of BPR, it is important to do clearly a framework for it. The idea behind a

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framework is to help practitioners by identifying the topics that should be considered and how
these topics are related [14].

In study done in UK (United Kingdom), applications of BPR project both in private and public
sectors has been examined (15). The study has identified in both private and public sector the
cross-departmental interaction and increasing value for end user since applying the BPR project
(15). In a qualitative study done in Australia in order to identify why we implement BPR 69 % of
respondents stated that decision of reengineering process is taken for cost reduction, 46% of
respondents replied to increase worker productivity while 45% and 36 % of respondents replied
the implementation of BPR is to increase customer satisfaction and cycle time reduction
respectively(16).

Similarly Ray, Barney and Muhanna contend that organizational performance is a highly
aggregated concept that the performance of the various business processes contributing to overall
organizational performance. As a result, they recommend that organizational performance be
measured at both the process and overall organizational level. Business process efficiency is an
important determinant to measure how well a process performs, that is, it represents the
performance of a business process (17, 18). So, Process efficiency can be improved by
minimizing cost, reducing variability and improving cycle time. The cost indicator involves
minimizing resources in terms of money, time, material and human resources (17). Therefore,
both private and service giving organizations‟ concern is to redesign business processes that will
help them achieve simultaneous significant improvements in customer satisfaction, quality, cycle
time, cost, service, productivity, flexibility, and competitive advantage.

Furthermore, several empirical studies have been conducted to establish the link between BPR
effort and organizational performance. The results of these studies indicated that most
organizations that have undertaken BPR achieved numerous benefits, including cost savings
through elimination of redundant activities and reducing duplication of work across functions,
improved customer focus, better integration across the organization, quality, lead-times, speed,
flexibility, innovation and improve competitive advantage (19, 20, 21).

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 5. Conclusion
In s
Top management commitment, staff training, smooth working structure and different resources
are important during BPR implementation. Besides, it has been discussed in different literatures
BPR is a back bone and remains an effective tool for both in public and private sector
organizations striving to operate in a highly competitive business environment for organizational
success.

6. Recommendations
o Both public and private Organization which operates in a highly competitive business
environment should implement BPR in order to succeed.
o During BPR implementation Organizations should give attention to top management
commitment, staff training on BPR, smooth working structure and avail resources needed.

7
 7. References
1. Michael Hammer & James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation, A Manifesto for
Business Revolution, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993
2. Raymond L. Manganelli & Mark M. Klein, The Reengineering Handbook, A Step-by-Step
Guide to Business Transformation, New York: AMACOM, 1996
3. C. D. Beugré, “Implementing Business Process Reengineering: The Role of Organizational
Justice,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 347-360, 1998
4. C. Temponi, “Scalable Enterprise Systems: Quality Management Issues,” International
Journal of Production Economics, vol. 99, pp. 222-35, 2006.
5. R. Bernie, S. Marlene, B. Owen, F. Dobbs, G. Crealey, “A meta synthesis of pregnant
women‟s decision-making processes with regard to antenatal screening for Down syndrome,”
Journal Social Science & Medicine, PP. 1561–1573, 2009).
6. G. Hall, J. Rosenthal, and J. Wade, “How to Make Reengineering Really Work,” Harvard
Business Review, vol. 71, no. 6, pp. 119-131, 1993.
7. A. R. Dennis, T. A. Carte, and G. G. Kelly, “Breaking the Rules: Success and Failure in
Groupware-supported Business Process
8. N. Abdolvand, A. Albadvi, and Z. Ferdowsi, “Assessing Readiness for Business Process
Reengineering,” Business Process Management Journal, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 497-511, 2008.
9. S. L. Mansar, F. Marir, and H. A. Reijers, “Case-based Reasoning as a Technique for
Knowledge Management in Business Process Redesign,” Electronic Journal on Knowledge
Management, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 113-124, 2003.
10. H. R. Ahadi, “An Examination of the Role of Organizational Enablers in Business Process
Reengineering and the Impact of Information Technology,” Information Resource
Management Journal, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 65-72.35-50, 2004.
11. H. Ahmad, A. Francis, and M. Zairi, “Business Process Reengineering: Critical Success
Factors in Higher Education,” Business Process Management Journal, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 451-
469, 2007.
12. Martin A. Ould, Business Process Modeling & Analysis for Reengineering &Improvement,
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2003.
13. Sethi & King (1998): Organizational transformation through business process reengineering.
Prentice Hall, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

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14. Alter S. Information systems: a management perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ. ; Harlow :
Addison Wesley, 4th ed 2002.
15. MacIntosh, R. (2003). BPR: alive and well in the public sector. International Journal of
Operations & Production Management, 23(3), 327-344.
16. Grint, K., & Willcocks, L. (1995). Business process re-engineering in theory and practice:
business paradise regained? New Technology, Work and Employment, 10(2), 99-109.
17. Ray, G., Barney, J. & Muhanna, W. (2004). Capabilities, business processes, and competitive
advantage: choosing the dependent variable in empirical tests of the resource-based view.
Strategic management journal, vol. 25, pp. 23–37.
18. Zaheer, A., Rehman, K., & Saif, M.(2008). Development and testing of a business process
efficiency scale. European journal of social sciences, 7(2), 179-188.
19. Ahmad, H. Francis, A. & Zairi, M. (2007). Business process reengineering: Critical success
factors in higher education. Business process management journal, 13 (3), 451-469.
20. Abdolvand, N. Albadvi, A. & Ferdowsi, Z. (2008). Assessing readiness for business process
reengineering. Business process management journal, 14 (4), pp. 497-511.
21. Khong, K. & Richardson, S. (2003). Business process re-engineering in Malaysian banks and
finance companies, managing service quality, vol. 13, pp. 54–71.