Although, BPR has its roots in IT management, it is primarily a Business Initiative that has broad consequences in terms of satisfying the needs of customers and the firm's other constituents (Davenport & Stoddard 1994). The IS group may need to play a behind-the-scenes advocacy role, convincing senior management of the power offered by IT and process redesign. It would also need to incorporate the skills of process measurement, analysis, and redesign. The CIGNA IS group had to develop a new set of basic values that reflected a change in focus from technology to a focus on business processes and results (Caron et al. 1994). The specific business divisions led the BPR initiatives; IS groups served as partners in enabling the radical changes.
BPR: Insights from CIGNA
At CIGNA BPR meant "breakthrough innovation focused on customer needs" (Caron et al. 1994). BPR was essentially driven by the senior management's strategic planning process that had concluded that the mix of business in its portfolio needed to change. It was viewed as a vehicle to realign strategy, operations, and systems to deliver significantly increased financial results. Caron et al. (1994) argue that the real life story of BPR at CIGNA represents a contrast to the general prescriptions of "radical" "all-or-nothing" organizational transformation. At CIGNA, BPR started out as an experimental pilot. The knowledge from the success of this initiative was disseminated for implementing other BPR projects. The BPR initiative was sustained "from the bottom up, with learning transferred "across."" At CIGNA, the prerequisite for BPR success was a corporate environment that promotes learning, especially learning from failure. Although, the process was initiated from the top, the ownership was moved down to the people who actually had to implement the changes and were affected by those changes. The BPR effort took into consideration the differences in management cultures in different countries. The BPR initiative started at the operational levels and was later moved to "higher forms" (strategic) of reengineering over time.
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