Business process re-engineering (BPR)—a study of the software tools currently available

Abstract Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is a hot topic in industry today. Many firms see BPR as a means to attaining a competitive advantage. The goals and methodologies of BPR can be applied to firms in a large variety of industrial sectors ranging from manufacturing to financial and services sector. There are some software tools available which can be used to support business process re-engineering. These software tools have modelling and simulation capabilities which allow the performance of a process to be assessed. This paper starts by introducing Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and describing some of the goals of re-engineering. The next section gives an overview of four BPR tools — DECmodel, ProcessWise, Business Design Facility (BDF), Enterprise Modelling System (EMS — FirstStep). The paper continues with the description of a methodology that can be used to compare different BPR software tools. This methodology is then used to compare the four BPR software tools described earlier in the paper. This methodology should provide a basis for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of other software tools in the BPR domain while helping BPR practitioners to assess how a particular BPR software tool will “fit” a particular process or industry sector.