It is essential to focus very strongly on customers and their requirements, so as to free the organisation from internal influences, especially functional and departmental boundaries, which might otherwise damage the result. The organisation's line mangers must be involved in all phases of the project, along with their end users, especially those not affected by it. A systematic process must be followed which allows proper planning and takes account of all relevant factors, including culture, integration of systems, etc. Targets should be set and performance measure against them to demonstrate progress. It is essential to achieve some tangible results early in the project, to prove the benefits of the process, build commitment across the organisation.
Organisations frequently make the mistake of working with estimated costs.
It is much better to carry out a proper activity-based costing exercise to generate the real costs of each activity in each process. This exercise will also identify non value added activities. The detailed cost model generated will form the basis of al design decisions and simulations. It is inherent in the BPR process that IT should be used as an enabler, allowing the organisation to add value to customers in ways which are not possible without new uses of computer systems. Computerised tools are an integral part of all BPR projects.