Consolidating BPR with CALS

For almost a decade, Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has met a high degree of criticism as project implementations have failed to succeed in industry and public organisations. A vast majority of the reengineering literature recommends that information technology (IT) should enhance the efficiency of the concept.

However, limited directions are provided.This article suggests that Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support (CALS) is a viable concept to complement and thus consolidate BPR. This is based on two hypotheses stating that CALS provides guidelines for applying IT to increase the likelihood of BPR success.

Firstly, CALS contributes to process orientation and process organising in a BPR project. This is partly because CALS satisfies the increased information need of the process team members and partly because CALS breaks down information-based barriers. Secondly, CALS contributes to process design because CALS enables information sharing.

CALS-based information sharing has a Virtual Integrated Database serving as a visionary foundation for a BPR project.