Popular wisdom tells us “reengineering” has gone the way of the mullet and the Macarena, fads of the 1990s that are the targets of derision today. But if you look deeply enough into the vision behind today's business process management (BPM), you'll find the core tenets of reengineering–identifying, changing, and even eliminating processes–are a fundamental part of BPM.
Making sure this part of BPM (let's call it “process improvement”) is successful begins with understanding why reengineering, as a rule, wasn't. Essen-tially, the valid vision put forth by proponents of reengineering from Michael Hammer on forward was bastardized, used not as a route to excellence but as an excuse for otherwise-planned cost cutting and staff cuts.
“Business process reengineering was misinterpreted,” claims Laurent Lachal, senior analyst at Ovum consultancy's London headquarters. “It was implemented as a 'big bang' approach. You'd have an army of consultants descending on a company, recreating processes, then disappearing, leaving behind them pro-cesses that were not able to deliver what they were supposed to.”
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