Revisiting BPR: a holistic review of practice and development

This paper presents a holistic review of the literature related to business process re‐engineering (BPR). It reviews some definitions of BPR and clarifies confusion around its concepts, traces the evolution of BPR and identifies its main drivers, and discusses issues of integrating BPR with TQM, benchmarking and change management. It then provides a strategic view of BPR implementation, conceptualises the major role of IT in BPR, reviews BPR approaches, methodologies, techniques and software tools, and discusses the scope of BPR and level of radicalness as indicators of degree of change. Aspects of improving business through BPR and the impacts of IT‐enabled change on organisations are identified and, finally, current and future development of BPR concepts and practice are also reviewed.