Business process redesign: an action research

Abstract

Abstract: The improvement of business processes is considered important to support companies’ competitiveness and sustainability, therefore, being highlighted in the academic community. In this way, the improvement of the organizational processes can be achieved through the business process redesign (BPR), which is considered the most value-added phase in a business process management (BPM) project. However, despite the existence of an extensive literature on the subject of BPR, methodologies or structured procedures that aim to understand the transformation from the “as-is” to the desired “to-be” processes are still scarce. Within this context, to fill this gap in the literature, this study presents the empirical findings and the lessons learnt from an action research with the objective of redesigning the logistic processes of a cultural production enterprise. The empirical study lasted nine months. A synthesis conceptual model for redesigning organizational business processes was proposed based on the literature. This model incorporated three levels (i.e., organizational, business processes and implementation) and provided guidance for conducting the empirical study. Different critical success factors and barriers have been identified and analysed with a focus on organizational, social, and technical dimensions, resulting in contributions to scholars and to practitioners in redesigning business process approaches.