Hi everyone,
I’ve been looking over my past blogs today and other blogs within the BPM and Re-engineering category and decided to recap on the definitions of both concepts having now carried out much more research on the topic. While doing so I came across a brief but very concise video clip (approx 7 minutes) which covers the relationship between BPM and Re-engineering, two practices which have a lot in common but ‘start in different places and differ in their execution.’ (Steve Wiseman, Principal Consultant at Holly Group)
Wiseman defines in very clear terms what each activity is and more importantly how they differ. This video may be particularly useful for people who have not studied the concepts of BPM and Re-engineering before.
To recap on the concepts, both BPM and Re-engineering are process oriented practices which aim to improve efficiency and effectiveness within an organisation. Re-engineering is about ‘big one time changes in how work gets done and decisions are made, while BPM is about making more smaller changes over time’. (Steve Wiseman). As Wiseman put it, ‘Reengineering is ‘an intensive, top down vision driven effort that requires non-stop senior management attention and support’ while in contrast BPM can be driven from the bottom or the middle levels of the organisation.
Both BPM and Re-engineering focus on how users do their work and in what way changes can be made to make it better. BPR goes one step further than BPM though, and has the potential to reorganise the organisation itself. (Steve Wiseman)
So Opinionated ... 
Very interesting blog. I have never heard of either of these concepts before. This has been informative. Thank you.
I found your blog very interesting and learnt alot from it and i hadn’t heard of these concepts either. but found that your simple language used helped me learn about the concepts.
Hi Siobhan, thank you for your comment and I’m glad you found it useful! 🙂
Hi cmcoughlan, great blog to lay out clearly the two so similarly named processes! As you stated BPM and BPR are “two practices which have a lot in common but ‘start in different places and differ in their execution””.
I was wondering do you think either is more relevant to any specific types of industries or are they both useful in all types of industries and just depend on the specific situation within an individual organisation as to which one should be used?
Re-engineering is a very interesting topic.. I once worked on a project where they were doing process re-engineering, ya its a very complex operation to undertake covering the whole organisation and takes a while to complete but definitely worth the efforts in the end. thats if it is done correctly. i’m sure you give plenty of info here about it anyway. What does BPM stand for??
Hi Esther, thanks for your comment. BPM stands for Business Process Management. You can check out my previous blogs which have some more information on this topic.
In relation to your question d112221671, it is difficult to say if one approach is better than the other in a particular industry as both have been carried out successfully in different industries. It really depends on how big a change a business wants to make to its processes. BPM is more for smaller, incremental changes and as such is a lot less risky and less expensive. Re-engineering on the other hand is a once off process which can completely change an entire organisation and how it operates and is a lot riskier, much more expensive and requires total management attention and support. It really comes down to each individual organisation and what they hope to achieve in terms of changing their processes.
Hi cmcoughlan. I found your blog to be very beneficial and it really cleared up for me what the difference between BPM and BPR is. I also found your video to to be very useful as sometimes it is easier for things to be explained through visual then just words on a page.
Thanks for the comment ah88rockybay…! Glad you found it beneficial! 🙂
Hi cmcoughlan, thanks for the reply! Thanks for clearing that up for me, for some reason I had it in my mind it would somehow work better with different industries! I think your statement of “It really depends on how big a change a business wants to make to its processes” is very true and shows that either can be applied to any industry- it just depends on the size of the change!
Good blog cmcoughlan, handy to have the two concepts explained out clearly and with the help of the YouTube clip you included it gave me a good grasp of what exactly BPM and Re-engineering are, very useful to someone who wasn’t exactly sure of the definition of each!
Thank you for the comment 04ac! I’m glad so many people have found it useful!