85-118

• Kakouris, Andreas, P.

Corporate management is looking for ways to exploit organisational competences, to regain competitiveness, to achieve long-term sustainability and to focus the processes closer to the customer. It recognises the need for change and it searches for widely accepted execution plans or methods available to support such change. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) seems to have captured the imagination of corprorate management, as it is an important and powerful management technique for change and value creation, provided that the processes to be re-engineered have been carefully selected by establishing what will be the greatest impact on customer service, the company's strategic and marketing positions and its profitability. Information Technology (IT) through Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) systems plays an important enabling role. The scope of this paper is to help clarify and sort out the confusion surrounding BPR, through a literature survey. The approach used addresses the following topics: appearance of BPR, what it is and what it is not, definition of BPR, BPR tools and techniques, BPR and IT, current trend towards reengineering, identification of reengineering opportunities, how to develop, issue and evaluate reengineering and contract issues to avoid. Specific emphasis has been placed on the IT and BPR relationship, providing a summary of IT roles in initiating and sustaining BPR. The paper also addressees barriers to successful implementation of reengineering and identifies critical factors for both its success and its failure. Finally, it describes, through a case study, a successful implementation of SAP R/3 to re-engineer the business processes of a major manufacturer together with the lessons learned.

• Economics and Business

• Economics

Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Information Techonology (IT), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), SAP, Change, Processes, Management

JEL classification: M19