Abstract

Many organizations are undergoing major restructuring efforts in order to be viable in today's changing economic environment. Business process redesign (BPR), which involves the radical redesign of age-old business processes, represents one such effort. Information technologies (IT) play an important role in BPR. This article presents a framework for examining business processes based on two process characteristics -degree of mediation and degree of collaboration-to show how IT may be applied to improve process performance by altering these process characteristics. Based on the framework, guidelines are provided for selecting strategic paths in reengineering specific processes.