Field testing of the proposed predictors of BPR success in manufacturing firms

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has been touted as necessary for drama tic improvements in organizational competitiveness. In practice, there have been successful and unsuccessful cases; thus, there is a need for systemat ic and rigorous assessment of the factors deemed important to project succe ss. This paper defines success in three ways: goals and objectives accompli shed by the project, benefits derived from the project, and the project's i mpact on company performance. Based on survey results, recommendations are made on the factors that are important to success and that minimize the ris k of failure. Contact persons at the companies participating in this study were internal auditing directors and comptrollers (collectively called IAs here). Questionnaires were mailed to the IAs of 586 randomly selected manuf acturing organizations. The usable sample of 135 questionnaires represented a 22% response rate. In general, the surveys showed that organizations are not emphasizing some of the most important activities and tasks recommende d in the BPR literature, such as changes to customer/market-related busines s processes, the value-added element of every business activity, and applyi ng the right innovative technology. Based on the findings as a whole, top m anagers should not engage in BPR before ensuring the presence of the import ant success factors. While the findings are based on manufacturing companie s, the results may be generalizable to other industrial sectors.