Business Process Re-engineering is considered as an obsolete subject as it was based on processes optimization without considering humans. Business Process Management is now a days a broader concept, integrating processes, humans and IT.

In my opinion, BPM as a concept is a management discipline created for the purpose of analyzing, designing, improving, automating, re-engineering etc the business processes within organizations.  It is a broader term definitely, and created as more and more importance was given to processes as roadway for success. BPA, BPI and BPR are just methods used to enhance, or better said the to show the degree of change in the processes where with the first one (BP Automation) only small incremental changes are made; the second one ( BP improvement) usually for optimization and the third one (BPR) for major changes, mainly as a result of the endeavors of the organization to streamline processes for accuracy, better decision making, competitiveness etc.

It looks like there are a lot of terminology issues nowadays. 

Hope this helps!

Perhaps BPM concept has not yet reached organisations? BPR was implemented a very long time ago but still there are many organisations will crappy business processes. This was mainly due to not allocating enough effort to change those processes in the first place. Now we have BPM, and yet, those organisations today with crappy processes, still need to go through a BPR exercise, to get to BPM. Again, I'm wondering whether they will allocate enough resource to make the needed changes for either BPR or BPM.

D.P., In order to answer your question as to what drives the confusion between BPR and BPM, one needs to start by reflecting on both as methodologies for improving business processes and performance as well as how practitioners have utilized these methodologies.

As I discovered while completing my DBA dissertation, in methodologies (as opposed to methods, techniques and tools) there is an underlying philosophy as to what drives business and, particularly, business process improvements. In this vein, BPR and BPM are similar in that their philosophies center on the use of current technology (particularly IT) and an axiom of process optimization before automation. Having such similar philosophies is a major driver that links BPM with BPR and, therefore, enables confusion.

Once enabled, confusion between similar methodologies is driven by how practitioners (business management and consultants) have utilized those methodologies. Initially, BPR was practiced as a holistic approach to integrating processes, humans and technology (IT). These are the same attributes attributed by Norberto to BPM. The differentiator is that, over the 25 years since BPR was introduced, technology, human resource management and the knowledge pertaining to process optimization has developed significantly. This enables BPM practitioners’ performance to excel far beyond that of the BPR practitioners in the early 1990s. This differentiation in obtained results, coupled with the improved methods, tools and techniques, are drivers for BPM practitioners not wanting their methodology to be associated with BPR. However, an even stronger desire for disassociation comes primarily from how BPR was applied.

Hammer and Champy initially proffered BPR as a holistic approach requiring radical (your “clear slate”) application. (Note: In later years they toned down this radical orientation in favor of a more incremental one.) BPR practitioners however, soon lost sight of the holistic approach and applied BPR to sub processes and functions. This morphism was driven by business management seeking short-term cost reduction opportunities rather than long-term process optimization and improvements in the business culture. As Paul pointed out, these managers had “crappy business processes” and were not willing to “allocate enough effort to change those processes in the first place”. As a result, BPR became associated with headcount reduction, outsourcing and automation (often done without applying the basic axiom of process optimization before automation). In turn, this gave BPR the reputation of not considering humans (Norberto’s comment). BPR’s misuse, tarnished reputation and association with “resizing the organization” are the major reasons why BPM practitioners want to delineate their methodology from the BPR one.

D.P., the wording of your query and the content of your comments appear to indicate a desire to differentiate (or at least distance) BPM from BPR. I suggest that the best way to do this is to first recognize the commonality of philosophy between those methodologies and then to elaborate on the differentiation in terms of maturity and holistic application. It may help to note that the lean management methodology is starting to suffer from much the same problems with misapplication and reputation. As was with BPR, lean initiatives are increasingly spot solutions rather than holistic process optimization and cultural improvements. This, coupled with lean’s focus on waste elimination and exasperated by people interpreting the word “lean” as meaning fewer people, is resulting in lean management methodology’s reputation being degraded. I can easily envision that future practitioners of a “yet-to-be-developed” methodology that shares a similar underlying philosophy with lean will strive to delineate the two methodologies. Those practitioners will also have to deal with confusion created in the marketplace by two methodologies based on the same philosophy as to what drives process improvement and cultural change.

Let me address this from the perspective of someone who had a 30-year career in consulting and corporate management before joining the academic world.  As with any business fad/ panacea du jour, there are multiple interpretations of a catch phrase like business process engineering/ re-engineering/ management/ architecture.  How the executive refers to it is a reflection of their sense of the outcome they need to achieve and the fastest way to get there. 

While I don't have the empirical evidence to back it up, I would bet that most executives think of BPR as figuring out how to do more (increase output) with a diminished input of corporate dollars, people, technology, and knowledge.  BPM - determining the most effective and efficient way to apply a business process - is what you figure out after going through BPR.  Effective management of business processes can't happen until you have the right processes working optimally.  That thinking is a reflection of a lesson that many organizations learned the hard way from I/T outsourcing - outsourcing a mess just gets you an outsourced mess.

Those definitions may lack the precision of an academic theorem, but I think you'll find they're reflective of corporate perception.

I agree that the terms are trying to put a boiler plate on how we do business.  BPR was part of the overall process optimization movement but before you can optimize a process you need to have a process in place.  The re-engineering was after you did the process discovery part of your analysis.  What I am finding to be an interesting topic these days but hasn't been mainstreamed is a term called Enterprise Architecture (EA).

Lots of folks are looking into Knowledge Management or Knowledge Engineering but even that has to have some kind of framework.  EA actually takes into account the boundaries within an organization and the crossing of those boundaries with customers, suppliers and stakeholders outside the organization's control.  What we are finding is that we need a mix of 20% innovation, which is where we look at the boundaries and determine where we can inject new ideas and groups to help in diversifying the overall business plans to incoprate new products or new methods or materials, etc.  We still have to look at processes the same way: people, methods, materials (expendables), policies (this is more important for government organizations) and machines.  How they all work together to give us a capability and how that capability contributes to the success of the organization has to be part of the EA design.

The other 80% of the mix is what is called transformation, which is really where the BPR comes into play.  You cannot transform what you don't have; therefore transformation is optimization of your current processes which leads you to change things internally within the organization's boundaries.  This is more the inner management and not the strategic management where the organization's exterior boundaries have to be addressed.  This mix is very important for any organization to survive and it also relates to modern physics where we are discovering that in natural design, networks are formed and need to survive within changing environments.

there are too many acronyms in the world of management, BPA, BPI, BPR, TMQ, BPM, BPMs, BPMN ... it is like in the world of sex, most do not study it, but they all have their own hypotheses.

the reengineering of processes is not really a bad theory, only that it is so exhaustive, it is so detailed that it exhausts the management staff and responsible for implementing it. and organizations, often do not have the time or the motivation to destroy themselves or rebuild again.