BPM Not BPR

Janelle Hill (VP, Gartner) recently posted an article titled BPM is Not the Same as BPR on BPMInstitute.org.  I think she makes some key points that I wanted to reference here:

1. BPR (Business Process Reengineering) was about wiping the slate clean and rebuilding processes.  This was too radical for many people.  BPM is about iteration and moving towards optimization.
2. BPM adoption has been hurt by BPR type discussions around cost, quality, and personal productivity.  [I feel the opposite that especially in today's global economy people want whatever edge and embrace BPM because it offers them an easier way to get the BPR benefits.]
3. "BPM recognizes that improvements are only temporal and that today's business climate creates more pressure to reduce the cycle time between changes.  Rather than continuous improvement, it is better to deploy a less-than-perfect approach as long as it can be adjusted quickly."
4. She reinforce the people aspect of BPM - "not simply to eliminate manual efforts. After all, the obvious places have already been automated. Rather, the objective is to understand the interactions and dependencies among the people, the systems they rely on, and the information they require to do their tasks best."
5. A point a really like is how banking and other companies "use process modeling to help them identify where manual efforts significantly contribute to the quality of the consumer experience".  She goes on to point out that personalizing these interaction points can provide competitive differentiation.
6. BPM is about coordination of people and systems and understanding the value-add of each within a process.
7. She reinforces a point I have made several times that BPM drives innovation primarily around exceptions to the process.

I think it is a great article that hits a lot of key points.  As I am off to the Gartner conference tomorrow, I will look Janelle up to discuss.