By Louis Balla, Chief Revenue Officer, Nuage. Updated October 2026.
Business process reengineering (BPR) is the fundamental rethinking and redesign of a process to achieve large gains in cost, quality, service or speed. Business process redesign is the same work at smaller scope, and digital process reengineering designs the new process around what current technology allows. The method starts by asking why each step exists.
What is business process reengineering?
Michael Hammer set out the idea in a 1990 Harvard Business Review article titled “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate.” His argument was that companies had spent heavily on information technology to speed up old processes, and that the better use of technology was to redesign the process around it. He described reengineering as using modern information technology to redesign business processes radically in order to get dramatic improvements in performance.
Two ideas from the article still apply to any redesign. The first is to look for the unwritten rule behind a process and ask whether it still holds. The second is to look at the whole cross-functional process, since a redesign confined to one department often moves the problem to the next one.
Business process redesign, reengineering and improvement: which one do you need?
| Approach | Starting point | Size of change | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business process improvement | The current process | Small, repeated adjustments to existing steps | The process works and has identifiable waste |
| Business process redesign | One process, or a few linked ones | New steps and handoffs for a defined process | The process has structural problems but the business model is sound |
| Business process reengineering | The business outcome the process exists to produce | A new design that discards the old steps | Improvement has stopped helping, or the process rests on rules that no longer hold |
| Business process management | All processes | A standing discipline of ownership, measures and reviews | You want gains to be kept after a project ends |
Most operations teams need redesign of one or two processes. Choose reengineering when you can explain what the process is for and show that the current steps do not serve it.
What does digital business process reengineering look like?
Hammer’s article describes two companies that redesigned a process around technology. Both reported their results as headcount reductions.
Ford accounts payable. Ford’s accounts payable operation in North America employed more than 500 people, and management first aimed for a 20% reduction by tightening the existing process. Mazda’s accounts payable organization had 5 people. Ford found that its clerks spent most of their time on mismatches between the purchase order, the receiving document and the invoice, and it replaced the process with “invoiceless processing.” The purchase order went into an online database, receiving checked goods against it, and payment followed automatically. Under the old procedure, accounting matched 14 data items before paying. The new one matched three: part number, unit of measure and supplier code. Ford reported a 75% reduction in head count where the new process was in place. It also found that redesigning accounts payable alone was futile: the process to redesign was goods acquisition, which includes purchasing and receiving.
Mutual Benefit Life. An insurance application passed through as many as 30 steps across 5 departments and 19 people, with typical turnaround of 5 to 25 days. The company created a case manager role responsible for an application from receipt to policy issue, supported by shared databases and an expert system. Hammer reports turnaround of as little as four hours, an average of two to five days, and case managers handling more than twice the volume of new applications. The company also eliminated 100 field office positions.
In both cases the redesign removed handoffs and matching steps by capturing information once, at the source. Because both were reported as cuts in staff, say in advance what happens to the capacity a redesign frees.
How to redesign a business process: eight steps
| Step | What happens | Output | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Choose the process and the goal | Pick an end-to-end process and a measurable goal, such as days to complete or touches per order | A one-page charter | Executive sponsor |
| 2. Map it as it actually runs | Walk the process with the people who do it, including the workarounds | A process map with the real steps | Process owner |
| 3. Ask why each step exists | For each step, decide whether it is a control, a decision or a habit | A list of steps to keep, change or remove | Cross-functional team |
| 4. Measure the baseline | Record cycle time, handoffs, rework and cost today | A baseline you can compare against | Process owner |
| 5. Design the future state | Organize around the outcome, let those who need the output do the work where possible, capture data once | A future-state map and a list of system changes | Cross-functional team |
| 6. Pilot | Run the new process on a limited scope | Pilot results against the baseline | Process owner |
| 7. Build, train and roll out | Configure the system, train by role and move over | A working process and trained users | Project manager |
| 8. Measure and adjust | Compare results to the baseline on a set date | A results review and a list of fixes | Executive sponsor |
Steps 2 and 3 take the most care. Hammer’s advice is to ask why a step exists, since a report that nobody reads may still be sent regularly. In his article, regional offices had sent reports to the home office for years that were simply filed.
Fix the manual process before you automate it
When a client has been patching a process by hand, the request often reads like this: “It is difficult for the team to do this manually,” or “He has to have them sign on paper instead.” In our classification of 3,241 requests, 815 (25.1%) traced to business-process design, the second-largest root cause after configuration. Even when a client asked for something new to be built, 244 of 431 requests were resolved with configuration and 141 with process changes.
A professional services firm asked for a quote to rebuild its mass invoice-sending script. In the scoping call the client’s ERP program lead put the rebuild on hold until the underlying problems were fixed (expense receipts not carrying over to invoices, and attachment size limits), on the principle that a script can only automate a process that already works by hand. The goal was rewritten from recreating the send script to automating both invoice creation and sending, with scoping hours used to define requirements before any development.
Before redesigning its bills of materials, a security hardware manufacturer asked us for a step-by-step walkthrough of its outsourced manufacturing process: what is created first, how the records link, and which pages are used. The team moved the walkthrough up its priority list because the BOM work depended on it, and one question from it changed the design discussion: whether items coming back from the outside processor should be received with an item receipt or an inventory transfer, which decides how quality inspection works.
Redesigning business workflows in an ERP
A redesign often finds a workaround that was built for a reason that has since gone. An industrial automation firm had been creating two sales orders for every fixed-fee project since its 2023 implementation, one to bill the customer and a second zero-dollar order to carry fulfillment, purchasing and project work, so that billing percentage and fulfillment percentage did not collide. Our 2026 assessment found 604 of more than 980 open sales orders sitting in Pending Billing, many of them those zero-dollar orders, which distorted order and receivables metrics. The client ranked it second on their list, and the next step is to scope whether NetSuite’s project milestone billing can replace the two-order setup.
For the steps that follow a redesign, see our guides to NetSuite process automation, approval workflows and project management in NetSuite.
What software supports business process reengineering?
Settle the design decisions in steps 3 and 5 before choosing software.
| Category | What it does | Useful at |
|---|---|---|
| Process mapping and modeling tools | Draw and document the current and future process | Steps 2 and 5 |
| Process mining | Analyzes event data from your systems to show how work actually moves | Steps 2 and 4 |
| Workflow and automation tools | Run the new process, with routing, approvals and notifications | Step 7 |
| ERP and CRM systems | Hold the transactions and the data the process creates | Steps 5 to 7 |
Ask of any tool whether it reads from the systems where the work happens. A hand-drawn process map goes out of date as soon as the process changes, while data pulled from the systems reflects how work moves now.
Why business process reengineering projects fail
Hammer’s article calls reengineering an all-or-nothing proposition with an uncertain result. In practice, projects stall on five points:
- No sponsor with authority across departments. A process crosses department lines, and someone must be able to decide across them.
- A process boundary drawn too narrowly. Ford found that accounts payable alone was the wrong scope.
- No baseline. Without cycle times and rework counts from before the change, nobody can show what it achieved.
- Change left to the end. People need to hear what the redesign means for their work before the pilot.
- Scale before proof. A pilot on a limited scope finds the problems while they are cheap to fix.
How Nuage approaches process redesign
On NetSuite accounts, our team works through these steps. The details depend on the client.
- Hold automation until the manual process works. On the invoice-sending request, the rebuild waited until the receipt and attachment problems were fixed.
- Use scoping hours to define requirements first. The goal was rewritten before any development began.
- Get a step-by-step walkthrough of the current process before redesigning records. On the bill of materials work, the walkthrough came first.
- Question the workarounds built years ago. On the two-sales-order setup, the next step is to scope a built-in feature that could replace it.
Our NetSuite ERP implementation guide covers where process design fits in a NetSuite project, and Nuage’s NetSuite experts can help with the redesign.
Business process reengineering FAQ
What is digital business process reengineering?
Digital business process reengineering redesigns a process around what current technology allows, so that information is captured once and the old handoffs and checks fall away. Ford’s accounts payable redesign is a classic case: payment followed the receipt of goods, and the system matched three data items where the old process matched 14.
What is the difference between business process redesign and reengineering?
Redesign changes the steps and handoffs of a defined process. Reengineering starts from the outcome the process exists to produce and discards the existing steps when they do not serve it. In practice the two overlap, and operations teams more often need redesign of one or two processes than a company-wide reengineering effort.
When should I choose reengineering over process improvement?
Choose improvement when the process works and you can see waste to remove. Choose redesign or reengineering when improvements have stopped helping, when workarounds have become the process, or when the process rests on a rule that no longer applies. Measure the baseline first so the choice rests on numbers.
What software do I need to reengineer business processes?
You need a way to map the process, data on how it actually runs, and a system to run the new version. Process mapping tools, process mining, workflow tools and your ERP each cover one part. Settle the design first, then choose the tools that carry it out.
How do I reengineer business workflows in an ERP?
Map the workflow as it runs today, including the manual workarounds, and decide which steps are controls, decisions or habits. Fix the manual version before automating it, then configure the new workflow in a test environment and run a pilot. Measure results against the baseline on a set date.
About the author
Louis Balla is Chief Revenue Officer at Nuage, a NetSuite optimization partner that has served 250+ clients since 2011 and holds a 4.9 out of 5 rating on Clutch. The client work described in this article is our team’s.
