Business Process Re-Engineering
A methodology first developed by Coopers & Lybrand and made famous by Michael Hammer and James Champy, in the early 90's. BPR is essentially, the deconstruction and reconstruction of the core business processes, to eliminate non-value added tasks, bottlenecks and time. BLMC’s BPR Methodology is highly structured and begins with an Assessment of the enterprise, focusing the performance of the core business processes, compared to best practices. If it is determined that there is significant opportunity, a BPR project is rolled out in a three phased approach.

The Discover Phase (Phase 1)
The Discover Phase is essentially a high-level examination of the company’s product development and product fulfillment processes and the supporting sub processes. The objective of this phase is to identify the business improvement opportunities measured in terms of performance gaps between "stretch" goals or Best Practices and the current "as-is" state of the process. The Discovery Phase strives to secure organizational buy-in for each opportunity to provide the justification for redesigning. During this phase the company selects the appropriate processes on which to focus, identifies the Best Practices that must be achieved, and clearly defines the current level of performance. It also begins to identify the potential for short-term improvements and alternative process treatments such as outsourcing. The business culture is analyzed to identify possible barriers to successful change and begin developing strategies for overcoming these barriers. This phase is based on a clear understanding of the organizations’ future vision and the underlying strategy for reaching a higher level. This implies that the client’s strategy drives our definition and selection of core business processes and, to a large extent, the choice of treatment we wish to impose on each process from short-term improvement to longer term redesign.

The Redesign Phase (Phase 2)
The Redesign Phase is the analysis and reengineering of a specific process. The scope narrows from the entire company and its vision and strategy to the process vision and the specifications needed to achieve “Best Practices” performance levels. The technology architecture and the change management actions required to realize the process vision are also designed during this phase. Redesign activities reflect a midpoint in terms of level of detail and organizational involvement. The process is analyzed at a greater level of detail than required during the Discover Phase, but not down to the everyday operational level of detail needed to implement the new process during the Realize Phase (Phase 3). Similarly, the redesign specifications produced by Phase 2 do not attempt to describe every detail and anticipate every possible situation. The redesign describes what the process should do and defines the target performance and behaviors. The Realize Phase completes the design to the lowest level of detail and implements the new processes, organization and behavior at the day-to-day operating level. As the process analysis and redesign moves to a lower level of detail, the composition of the BPR teams will also change. The top level executive team involved in Phase 1 may evolve to a steering committee, with the BPR team composition modified to reflect the emphasis on a specific process and the requirement for additional knowledge about that process.

The Realize Phase (Phase 3)
The Realize Phase is where the benefits promised in the earlier phases become a reality. Implementation may take minutes (policy changes), days (procedures), or months (systems), depending on the nature and extent of the changes. It is only after the successful implementation of the redesigned process that the benefits begin to be realized. BPR is an iterative process that takes place at successive levels of detail -- the Realize Phase takes place at the lowest level of detail. BPR typically begins at the top of an organization and moves down to the levels that must ultimately implement the day-to-day process changes required by the redesign. The preceding phases concentrated on developing strategy, vision, and a sense of what the process should do. The Phase 3 teams are charged with determining how to bring about the required process changes. At the same time, they need to understand what has taken place in the first two phases so that they can build upon that foundation. Outstanding communication during the early stages of Phase 3 is critical.

Organizational Restructuring
Organizational Restructuring is a detailed methodology developed to evaluate and support changes in process restructuring that puts the right resources and management structure in place. This follows other process work, and speaks to the need to fix the processes before you fix the organization. In many cases, the organization that managed the old processes is not sufficient to manage the new processes.

Outsourcing and/or Off-Shore Strategies
This is a process treatment used in BPR that that determines which non-core processes or activities should be moved out of the flow and either outsourced, sent off shore, or both. Designing and Implementing a Program management structure to effectively manage these new suppliers is a key success factor. This is sometimes discussed as a Variable Cost Strategy and includes both the components as well as the design scope.

Product and Facilities Rationalization
This methodology provides the tools for the analysis around the capacity, cost and use of current facilities and aids in making decisions around the number and location of facilities, relative to the strategy. The methodology also focuses on the implementation of the simplification of facilities and /or products, with the objective of improving the bottom line.