Business Process Redesign (BPR) - Davenport & Short (1990)

Theory Publication Information

Citation Information

Why Was the Model Created?

During the 1980s, information technology investments were accelerating dramatically. Organizations were spending billions on computer systems, enterprise software, and IT infrastructure. Yet many organizations were disappointed with returns on technology investment. Systems often automated existing processes without delivering the transformational performance improvements technology promised. A manufacturing company installed a new inventory system but failed to achieve expected cost savings. A bank deployed sophisticated technology but experienced minimal improvement in customer service or operational efficiency. Financial services firms invested heavily in IT yet competed primarily on cost and service quality rather than technological capability.

Davenport and Short recognized a fundamental problem: organizations were using technology to automate existing processes rather than to enable fundamentally different ways of operating. Industrial engineering had historically focused on optimizing and efficiency-improving existing processes. Modern IT offered much greater potential: the ability to reimagine processes from first principles, create entirely new ways of operating, and transform organizational competitiveness. Yet organizations were squandering this potential by treating technology as tool for incrementally improving legacy processes rather than as enabler of fundamental redesign.

The authors argued that the industrial engineering paradigm itself required reimagining. Classical industrial engineering sought to optimize existing processes through time and motion studies, efficiency improvements, and waste reduction. Information technology offered capability to fundamentally redesign processes from first principles: questioning why work was performed in current manner, whether all steps were necessary, and how information technology could enable entirely different operational approaches. Davenport and Short sought to establish Business Process Redesign framework providing conceptual approach and practical methodology for organizations to reimagine processes rather than merely automate them.

What Does the Model Measure?

Source note:Davenport & Short (1990) is a Sloan Management Review article on business-process redesign enabled by information technology; the PDF in the project’s Zotero library is scanned (image-only), so text-level quote verification on this page is limited to what is visible in page renderings. Claims below match the paper’s structure and illustrative cases but are not all direct quotations.

Davenport & Short (1990) is a conceptual framework paper, not a measurement model. It does not propose scales or psychometric instruments. Its analytical contribution is:

• A definition of “business process”:“A set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome” (Davenport & Short, 1990, p. 12), drawing on Pall (1987).
• A recursive framing of IT and BPR: Figure 1 of the paper posits a two-way relationship: IT capabilities can shape business-process redesign possibilities, and business-process redesign can guide how IT is deployed.
• A five-step methodology for IT-enabled process redesign (see Describe the Model below).
• Illustrative case studies: Ford accounts-payable invoice-less matching; Mutual Benefit Life Insurance case worker redesign. These are worked examples, not an empirical data set.

Core Concepts and Definitions

Business Process Redesign centers on fundamental concepts about how organizations can transform performance through technology-enabled process change:

• Business Process: Set of logically related tasks performed to accomplish specific business objective. Processes span organizational boundaries, involve multiple functions, and produce customer value. Examples include order processing, product development, customer service, financial reporting.
• Process Redesign: Fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical performance measures such as cost, quality, service, and speed. Redesign is not incremental process improvement but rather fundamental reconceptualization of how work is performed.
• Information Technology Enabler: Technology capability that enables process design alternatives previously impossible. Examples include shared databases enabling single entry of information used by multiple functions, communication systems enabling remote collaboration, decision-support systems enabling front-line employees to make complex decisions.
• Substantial (not incremental) improvement:Davenport & Short frame BPR as enabling substantial performance improvement (cost, quality, speed, service) rather than incremental optimization. The often-cited “50% or greater” rhetoric is more strongly associated with later BPR writers (notably Hammer & Champy, 1993) than with the 1990 Davenport & Short article; the 1990 article uses more measured language while still emphasizing that the goal is redesign rather than automation of existing processes.
• Cross-functional Process: Processes spanning multiple organizational functions or departments rather than contained within single function. Redesign often involves restructuring how functions interact and work together.
• Information Flow: The way information moves through organizations and processes. Information technology often enables different information distribution patterns and decision-making approaches.
• Customer Value: Benefits created for customers through organizational processes. Redesign should enhance customer value through improved quality, responsiveness, or reduced cost passed to customers.

Preceding Models or Theories

Business Process Redesign synthesized insights from prior process improvement and information technology management research:

• Industrial Engineering and Scientific Management (Taylor, 1911; Gilbreth, 1911): Established tradition of analyzing work processes for efficiency improvement through time and motion studies. BPR extended this tradition by applying information technology to enable more radical process transformation beyond classical industrial engineering optimization.
• Quality Management and Continuous Improvement (Deming, 1982; Juran, 1988; Ishikawa, 1985): Established continuous improvement mindset and quality management discipline. While continuous improvement seeks incremental improvement, BPR complemented continuous improvement by enabling breakthrough improvements.
• Information Technology Management and Strategic IS (Porter & Millar, 1985; Rockart & Treacy, 1982): Established concept that information technology could provide strategic competitive advantage through enabling new business models and process capabilities.
• Organizational Design Theory (Mintzberg, 1979; Galbraith, 1977): Examined how organizational structures, information systems, and decision mechanisms determine organizational performance. BPR incorporated organizational design insights by examining how redesigned processes require aligned organizational structures.
• Change Management Theory (Lewin, 1947; Kotter, 1995): Established change management principles for organizational transformation. BPR emphasized that process redesign requires managing significant organizational change.
• Systems Thinking (von Bertalanffy, 1968; Senge, 1990): Emphasized understanding organizations as systems with interconnected components. BPR incorporated systems perspective by recognizing process interconnections and avoiding isolated process improvements.

Describe The Model

Business Process Redesign provides framework for organizations to fundamentally reimagine business processes using information technology enablers to achieve dramatic performance improvements. Rather than viewing information technology as tool for automating existing work, BPR views technology as enabler of fundamentally different ways of operating. The methodology involves analyzing current business processes, identifying information technology opportunities, redesigning processes from first principles, and implementing redesigned processes.

Core Methodology: Five Steps

• Step 1: Develop Business Vision and Process Objectives: Establish compelling organizational vision and specific process performance objectives. Define what success looks like. What customer needs are most important? What performance improvements are critical? Does the organization seek cost reduction, quality improvement, speed enhancement, or improved customer service? Vision provides direction and motivation for fundamental redesign effort.
• Step 2: Identify Processes to Redesign: Prioritize processes for redesign based on strategic importance, improvement potential, and feasibility. Which processes most directly support competitive strategy? Which processes offer greatest improvement opportunity? Which processes are best suited for redesign? Focus limited redesign resources on highest-impact processes.
• Step 3: Understand Existing Processes: Thoroughly understand current process performance, activities, information flows, and organizational involvement. Document how work currently gets done: what steps are involved? Who performs what activities? Where are bottlenecks? What information is created and used? Understanding current state is essential baseline for radical redesign.
• Step 4: Identify Information Technology Levers and Redesign Possibilities: Identify information technology capabilities that could fundamentally change how processes are performed. How could databases enable single data entry shared by multiple functions? How could communication technology enable remote collaboration? How could decision-support systems enable different decision-making? How could technology eliminate non-value-adding process steps? Technology capabilities inspire process redesign possibilities.
• Step 5: Design and Prototype New Process: Design fundamentally redesigned process using identified technology levers. What would ideal process look like unconstrained by legacy practices? Prototype new process with limited implementation to test and refine design. Evaluate redesigned process impact on customers, employees, and organizational performance before organization-wide implementation.

Key Technology Enablers

• Shared Information Databases: Enable single data entry shared by multiple functions. Instead of each function maintaining separate data requiring reconciliation, shared databases enable real-time access to consistent information across organization.
• Telecommunication and Remote Collaboration Technology: Enable work to be performed from any location. Instead of requiring co-location or sequential process steps, technology enables distributed, parallel work streams.
• Decision-Support and Expert Systems: Enable front-line employees to make complex decisions without escalation to management. Instead of decisions routing through management hierarchy, technology provides information and decision support enabling front-line decision authority.
• Transaction Processing Systems: Enable rapid, error-free transaction processing. Instead of manual transaction processing requiring multiple verification steps, technology enables high-volume transaction processing with minimal human involvement.
• Workflow and Process Automation Systems: Enable automated process step sequencing and task routing. Instead of manual coordination of process steps, technology routes work based on rules and business logic.
• Data Analytics and Business Intelligence: Enable analytical decision-making based on operational data. Instead of decisions based on incomplete information, technology provides comprehensive data analysis enabling better decisions.

Expected Process Characteristics After Redesign

• Unified information and decision-making: Single information systems shared across organizational functions. Decisions based on comprehensive, real-time organizational information rather than fragmented departmental data.
• Increased process autonomy: Front-line employees empowered to make decisions and control process flow. Fewer escalation levels and management layers required for decision authority.
• Parallel process activities: Process steps performed in parallel rather than sequential, reducing total process time. Work streams enable simultaneous activities instead of waiting for completion of previous steps.
• Reduced non-value-added activities: Elimination of verification, reconciliation, and administrative steps that do not directly create customer value.
• Integration across organizational boundaries: Process spanning multiple functions operating as unified system rather than separate departments with handoffs.

Illustrative Examples

Davenport and Short provided case examples of Business Process Redesign in action. At Ford Motor Company, accounts payable processing was transformed using process redesign. The original process involved multiple departments: accounts payable received supplier invoices, purchase orders department provided purchase order information, goods receiving reported receipt of goods, and payment processing verified that invoice matched purchase order and goods receipt before payment. This three-way matching involved significant coordination, verification, and administrative effort. Ford’s redesign eliminated the invoice step entirely: when goods were received, goods receiving entered information into shared database, and payment was automatically initiated based on matching purchase order and goods receipt. Elimination of the invoice and the three-way matching verification reduced costs and accelerated payment processing.

At Mutual Benefit Life Insurance (MBL), the individual life insurance underwriting process was redesigned. As described by Davenport & Short (1990, p. 17), MBL’s original underwriting process involved 40 steps with over 100 people across 12 functional areas and 80 separate jobs. To streamline this lengthy and complex process, MBL undertook a pilot with the goal of improving productivity by 40 percent. To integrate the process, MBL created a new role, the case manager, designed to perform and coordinate all underwriting tasks centrally, utilizing a workstation-based computer system capable of pulling data from throughout the company. After a brief start-up period, the firm learned that two additional roles were necessary on some underwriting tasks: specialists such as lawyers or medical directors in knowledge-intensive fields, and clerical assistance. With the new role and redesigned process, senior managers at MBL were confident of reaching the 40 percent goal in a few months (Davenport & Short, 1990, p. 17).

Main Strengths

• Challenges automation mind-set: Established critical insight that information technology should enable fundamentally different processes, not merely automate existing processes.
• Ambitious performance improvements: Pursues breakthrough improvements rather than incremental optimization, justifying significant investment and organizational change.
• Customer-centric approach: Emphasizes improving customer value and customer experience rather than merely reducing internal costs.
• Cross-functional perspective: Recognizes that many business processes span multiple organizational functions and require integration rather than function-isolated improvement.
• Practical methodology: Provides five-step framework enabling practitioners to conduct process redesign.
• Technology-enabled possibilities: Identifies specific technology capabilities enabling process alternatives.

Main Weaknesses

• Implementation difficulty often understated: While process redesign methodology seems straightforward, actual implementation frequently encounters organizational resistance, technical challenges, and unintended consequences.
• High failure rate: Subsequent research found many Business Process Redesign initiatives failed to achieve promised benefits. Organizations often encountered implementation problems, underestimated change management requirements, or faced unanticipated challenges.
• Employee displacement and morale concerns: Process redesign often eliminates jobs and reduces organizational layers. While presented as performance improvement, redesign frequently creates employee anxiety and organizational disruption.
• Limited attention to change management: Early BPR literature emphasized process design but underemphasized organizational change management required for implementation success.
• Technology determinism:Framework emphasizes technology-enabled possibilities but may overstate technology’s role relative to other change factors including organizational culture, leadership, and employee capability.
• Measurement challenges: While framework promises breakthrough improvements, measuring actual performance improvement and identifying sustainable benefits remains challenging.
• Short-term cost focus: Some BPR initiatives focused narrowly on short-term cost reduction rather than long-term competitive advantage, resulting in damaged organizational capabilities or customer relationships.

Key Contributions

• Challenged automation paradigm: Articulated the argument that organizations should not simply automate existing processes but should redesign them in light of information technology capabilities.
• Helped launch the BPR movement:Davenport & Short’s 1990 article is commonly cited alongside Hammer’s 1990 HBR article and Hammer & Champy (1993) as a founding text of the Business Process Reengineering movement that was widely influential through the 1990s and 2000s.
• Provided a practical methodology: Offered a five-step process redesign methodology that practitioners could apply to systematic process transformation.
• Identified key technology enablers: Specified information technology capabilities enabling process redesign: shared databases, communication technology, decision-support systems, process automation.
• Emphasized radical improvement potential: Argued that information technology could enable substantial performance improvement when used to redesign processes rather than automate existing ones, framing the argument with author-selected case examples.
• Integrated technology and organizational change: Recognized that process redesign requires both technology implementation and organizational change management.
• Customer-centric reframing: Shifted focus from internal cost reduction to customer value creation and customer experience improvement.

Internal Validity

As a conceptual framework paper illustrated through case study examples, Davenport & Short’s BPR is not subject to construct-validity testing in the psychometric sense. Considerations typically raised about its internal consistency include:

• Synthesis of observed best practices: The framework synthesizes successful process redesign examples (Ford accounts payable, Mutual Benefit Life insurance underwriting, Westinghouse/PGE interorganizational EDI, Xerox/RXUK, and others) into a coherent methodology.
• Logical coherence: The argument that information technology enables fundamentally different process designs is logically sound. Technology capabilities can eliminate non-value-adding steps, enable parallel activities, and distribute decision authority.
• Integration with organizational theory: The framework incorporates established organizational design and change management insights about how organizational structures, information systems, and decision mechanisms affect organizational performance.
• Addresses documented organizational challenges: The framework explains well-documented phenomena: why organizations struggle to achieve technology returns on investment when merely automating existing processes, and why some process redesign initiatives achieve dramatic improvements.
• Realistic assessment of technology potential: The framework acknowledges that technology enables but does not determine process redesign. Redesign requires organizational judgment about which technological capabilities align with customer value and competitive strategy.
• Comprehensive case examples: The Ford and Mutual Benefit Life examples provide concrete illustration of concepts and demonstrate practical feasibility.

External Validity

External validity considerations concern generalizability of Business Process Redesign framework across diverse organizational contexts and processes:

• Cross-industry application: BPR has been applied across manufacturing, services, finance, insurance, healthcare, government, and other industries, demonstrating broad applicability.
• Cross-process application: While initial examples focused on administrative processes, BPR has been applied to manufacturing processes, product development, customer service, and numerous other process types.
• Organizational size variation: BPR has been attempted in both large enterprises and smaller organizations, though large organizations with greater resources may find implementation more feasible.
• Implementation success variation: While some BPR initiatives achieved promised breakthrough improvements, many faced significant implementation challenges, cost overruns, and failure to realize expected benefits.
• Technology context evolution: The framework was developed in 1990 when information technology capabilities were more limited. Contemporary technology (cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain) may enable process alternatives not envisioned in original framework.
• Organizational culture variation: Organizations with change-averse cultures may struggle to implement radical process redesign. Implementation success may depend heavily on organizational readiness for change.
• Process type constraints: Some processes may be constrained by regulatory requirements, customer expectations, or operational characteristics that limit redesign possibilities.
• Change management intensity: Radical process redesign typically requires more intensive change management than incremental improvement, increasing implementation cost and complexity.

Relevance to Technology Adoption

Business Process Redesign reframes technology adoption from selecting technology to implement existing processes more efficiently into strategic question of how technology enables different ways of working. Rather than asking “How can we automate current operations?” BPR asks “What fundamentally different ways of operating would create greater value?” This reframing shifts technology adoption focus from efficiency improvement to strategic capability enhancement and competitive advantage creation. Organizations adopting BPR perspective pursue adoption of technologies that enable process transformation, customer value creation, and competitive differentiation rather than merely reducing internal costs.

Barriers to Technology Adoption Identified

• Automation paradigm thinking: Organizations default to automating existing processes rather than asking how technology enables different processes. Legacy thinking constrains technology utilization.
• Function-specific viewpoint: Organizations optimize individual functions separately without recognizing process integration opportunities. Cross-functional perspective required for most significant process improvements remains underdeveloped.
• Limited technology imagination: Organizations lack understanding of technology capabilities enabling process alternatives. Investment in technology awareness and capability exploration is needed.
• Change management underestimation: Organizations underestimate organizational change requirements for radical process redesign, leading to implementation problems and failed initiatives.
• Employee resistance: Process redesign frequently eliminates jobs or dramatically changes work, creating employee anxiety and organizational resistance that impedes adoption.
• Implementation complexity: Complex process redesign often encounters technical difficulties, organizational obstacles, and unintended consequences requiring extended implementation timelines and increased costs.
• Customer or regulatory constraints: Some processes are constrained by customer expectations, regulatory requirements, or operational characteristics that limit redesign possibilities.

Leadership Actions the Framework Prescribes

• Establish compelling vision: Create clear organizational vision and specific process redesign objectives. Define what customer value redesign should create.
• Identify high-impact processes: Prioritize processes for redesign based on strategic importance and improvement potential. Focus on processes most directly supporting competitive strategy.
• Thoroughly understand current processes: Document existing process performance, activities, bottlenecks, and information flows. Understanding current state is essential for identifying improvement opportunities.
• Explore technology possibilities: Identify information technology capabilities that could enable fundamentally different process designs. Invest in understanding technology potential.
• Question fundamental assumptions: Challenge conventional thinking about how work must be performed. Ask why each process step is necessary and whether alternatives are possible.
• Design from first principles: Rather than incrementally modifying existing processes, design fundamentally different processes unconstrained by legacy practices.
• Prototype and test: Conduct limited-scope process redesign testing before organization-wide implementation. Use prototypes to test design assumptions and refine approach.
• Manage organizational change rigorously: Allocate significant effort to change management, employee communication, training, and managing employee concerns about job displacement.
• Focus on customer value: Ensure redesigned processes create customer value and improve customer experience, not merely reduce internal costs.

Following Models or Theories

Davenport & Short’s BPR sits at the start of a broader stream of process transformation and organizational change work that developed through the 1990s and beyond. Frameworks commonly discussed alongside or after it include:

• Business Process Reengineering Expansion (Hammer & Champy, 1993): Extended BPR concepts and established BPR as major organizational transformation movement. Hammer & Champy’s work popularized BPR and provided additional case examples and implementation guidance.
• Critical BPR Implementation Research (Kettinger, Teng, & Guha, 1997): Examined BPR implementation challenges and identified factors predicting BPR success versus failure. Found many BPR initiatives failed to achieve promised benefits.
• Process Mining and Analytics Research: Applied data analytics to process understanding and optimization, enabling empirical process analysis and improvement identification.
• Lean Process Improvement (Womack & Jones, 1996; George & George, 2003): Applied lean manufacturing principles to business process improvement, emphasizing waste elimination and value creation.
• Process Capability Maturity (Paulk et al., 1993; Osterweil, 1987): Examined how organizations develop process management capability and maturity in process execution.
• Digital Transformation Frameworks: Extended BPR concepts to broader digital transformation initiatives examining how digital technologies enable organizational transformation.
• Organizational Capability and Agility Research: Examined how organizations develop capability for continuous process improvement and rapid adaptation to market changes.
• Change Management and Organizational Culture Research: Examined organizational change management practices required for successful process transformation initiatives.

References

1. Davenport, T. H., & Short, J. E. (1990). The new industrial engineering: Information technology and business process redesign. Sloan Management Review, 31(4), 11-27.
2. Taylor, F. W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. Harper & Brothers.
3. Deming, W. E. (1982). Out of the crisis. MIT Press.
4. Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations. Prentice-Hall.
5. Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: Concept, method and reality in social science. Human Relations, 1(1), 5-41.
6. Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59-67.
7. Paulk, M. C., Curtis, B., Chrissis, M. B., & Weber, C. V. (1993). Capability maturity model for software. CMU/SEI-93-TR-024. https://doi.org/10.1109/52.219617
8. Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art & practice of the learning organization. Doubleday/Currency.
9. Porter, M. E., & Millar, V. E. (1985). How information gives you competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review, 63(4), 149-160.
10. Kettinger, W. J., Teng, J. T., & Guha, S. (1997). Business process change: A study of methodologies, techniques and tools. MIS Quarterly, 21(1), 55-80.
11. Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (1996). Lean thinking: Banish waste and create value in your corporation. Simon & Schuster.

Further Reading

1. Hammer, M., & Champy, J. (1993). Reengineering the corporation. HarperBusiness.

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