A contingency model for selecting a BPR planning approach

Business process re-engineering (BPR) describes the application of information technology (IT) to support broad structural change, both within an organisation, and in its external linkages. The popularity of this movement masks the real-world difficulty of planning for it. Organisations must select the most useful sets of business processes for study and redesign, then integrate the actors, information, and decision processes needed for a successful outcome. This paper explores the BPR movement from theoretical and empirical perspectives, differentiates the BPR phenomenon from related models, adapts a framework from strategic information systems planning (SISP), and applies a contingency model (grounded through field research) to identify the approach to planning for BPR most likely to succeed in a given context. It identifies essential elements of the BPR toolkit, and proposes a simple model to help process improvement teams select tools appropriate to specific contexts.<>