Are you wondering why business process reengineering is a term popping up everywhere you turn? Here’s a refresher: the term, “business process reengineering,” was coined in the early 1990s. It is defined as the radical restructure of organizations by focusing on the ground-up design of their business processes. It’s the full-scale recreation of processes as opposed to an iterative optimization of sub-processes. Since inception, it’s been a wildly popular methodology, and it hasn’t lost any steam in 2018.
Technology plays an enormous role in the implementation of business process reengineering. In fact, emerging technologies that automate labor and resource-intensive processes or eliminate obstacles for swift delivery or customer service have propelled business process reengineering into even greater popularity.
In the ’90s, we were waiting for technology to catch up! But with machine learning, AI, workflow automations, and cloud technologies taking over core processes, business process reengineering is no longer just a concept.
Why is business process reengineering so popular? Because of the bottom line benefits it produces. So let’s talk about those benefits—keep reading for just a few examples of how companies across the globe are seeing the results of business process reengineering.
Improving quality
Business process reengineering technologies are designed to increase the collaboration and sync the relationships of core work processes. For example, an enterprise content 
management (ECM) system facilitates collaboration across teams and automates areas where there could be human error, like task management, roles and responsibility assignment, information exchange, and QA—even access to critical documents.
Reducing costs
Reengineering sounds expensive, doesn’t it? Overhauling the core processes of your operations and introducing brand new technology solutions sounds even more expensive. If you’re a small business, or a startup with under 10 employees, business process reengineering will likely be easier to implement without too much disruption.
But for medium-to-large organizations, it will take more of an investment to plan and execute. But then, ask yourself, can you afford to continue the way your core processes and workflows are running today? Throughout the past 30 years, countless large companies with complicated business processes have been forced to make the shift. In the end, their decisions typically resulted in a greater ability to compete in a crowded marketplace, improve speed and quality of delivery, and even cut substantial costs to business.
Integration enhances overall productivity. When your systems are integrated, only then can unproductive activities in your workflows and unnecessary labor be virtually eliminated. This ultimately reduces wasted time across every department, greatly minimizing associated costs.
Staying ahead of the competition
Business process reengineering has become synonymous with business growth. By completely rethinking your business goals and your capacity for delivering efficiently and effectively, you’ll realize an incredible competitive advantage.
The core concepts of business process reengineering rely heavily on continuous change and growth—staying stagnant or inflexible to change is the downfall of many companies these days.
To give your business the competitive edge, follow these six steps and repeat:
- Envision new processes
- Initiate change
- Diagnose your current process
- Redesign
- Reconstruct
- Monitor
Business process reengineering isn’t just a buzzword. It’s here to stay, and it’s gaining in popularity every day. The benefits are clear, so perhaps it’s time to take an honest look inwards at the quality you’re producing, the costs associated with wasted time and resources, and how competitive you are in your industry.