Best practices in business process redesign: use and impact

Abstract

PurposeThis paper seeks to provide business process redesign (BPR) practitioners and academics with insight into the most popular heuristics to derive improved process designs.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was carried out in the years 2003‐2004 among a wide range of experienced BPR practitioners in the UK and The Netherlands.FindingsThe survey indicates that this “top ten” of best practices is indeed extensively used in practice. Moreover, indications for their business impact have been collected and classified.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors' estimations of best practices effectiveness differed from feedback obtained from respondents, possibly caused by the design of the survey instrument. This is food for further research.Practical implicationsThe presented framework can be used by practitioners to keep the various aspects of a redesign in perspective. The presented list of BPR best practices is directly applicable to derive new process designs.Originality/valueThis paper addresses the subject of process redesign, rather than the more popular subject of process reengineering. As such, it fills in part an existing gap in knowledge.