Best practices in business process redesign: use and impact

Purpose – This paper seeks to provide business process redesign (BPR) practitioners and academics with insight into the most popular heuristics to derive improved process designs. Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was carried out in the years 2003‐2004 among a wide range of experienced BPR practitioners in the UK and The Netherlands. Findings – The survey indicates that this “top ten” of best practices is indeed extensively used in practice. Moreover, indications for their business impact have been collected and classified. Research limitations/implications – The authors' estimations of best practices effectiveness differed from feedback obtained from respondents, possibly caused by the design of the survey instrument. This is food for further research. Practical implications – The presented framework can be used by practitioners to keep the various aspects of a redesign in perspective. The presented list of BPR best practices is directly applicable to derive new process designs. Originality/value – This paper addresses the subject of process redesign , rather than the more popular subject of process reengineering . As such, it fills in part an existing gap in knowledge.