Business Process Re-engineering Vs Business Process Management

Please do not be misguided; the following discussion is not focused on the difference between the Business Process Re-engineering and Business Process Management but on aligning various schools of thoughts.

Business Process Management is considered to be comprised of four distinct stages:

1. Process Identification and Information gathering
2. Process Mapping
3. Process Analysis
4. Process Improvement

Now we have one school of thoughts which says BPR is a part of TQM, as it is involved in the improvement of the processes just like TQM. This means that already existing processes are considered as important and useful, and improvement is based upon the current “as is” process.  Thus BPM focuses more on continuous improvements.

However the other school of thoughts suggests that BPR is entirely different philosophy, as it considers the existing processes as useless and generates innovative process design with dramatic results. Also because BPR is a risky proposition and involves high agility, an organization could not be in “BPR” stage throughout. BPR focuses on breakthrough innovative approaches.

I feel that both of the above thoughts could be combined in figure 3

BPM supersedes both BPR and TQM without a doubt as BPM is more a strategic orientation but BPR and TQM both have strong operational view of process improvement. Though, TQM and BPR both have different approaches towards process improvement but as mentioned that they both have strong operational view of process improvement so they can be separated but will still be inside the superset BPM.