Radical Redesign of Business Processes for Dramatic Performance Gains

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of an organisation’s core business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance: cost, quality, speed, service levels, and compliance. Unlike Business Process Improvement (BPI), which refines and optimises an existing process incrementally, BPR starts from a blank page and asks: “If we were building this process today, from scratch, with the technology and knowledge we now have, would we design it this way?” In almost every case, the answer is no. BPR was popularised by Michael Hammer and James Champy in their 1993 work “Reengineering the Corporation,” which documented how companies that redesigned their core processes — rather than automating or improving old ones — achieved performance improvements of 70–80% rather than the 10–20% that incremental improvement delivers. For businesses in Pune — manufacturers in Chakan and Bhosari managing complex production and supply chain processes, IT companies in Hinjewadi managing project delivery and billing workflows, logistics companies managing multi-city operations, and growing startups scaling from 20 to 200 employees — BPR is the difference between scaling efficiently and scaling into chaos.

N D Savla & Associates, Chartered Accountants in Baner, Pune, offers Business Process Reengineering advisory as part of our Risk and Advisory practice. Our BPR engagements combine process analysis, technology assessment, financial modelling of the redesign benefits, and implementation support — all from the perspective of a professional advisory firm that understands the accounting, tax, and compliance implications of process change. A redesigned procurement process, for example, has implications for GST input tax credit (ITC) timing and amounts; a redesigned payroll process has Professional Tax, PF, ESIC, and TDS implications; a redesigned revenue recognition process has income tax and Ind AS/AS consequences. Our integrated CA + advisory approach means BPR recommendations are financially grounded and practically implementable, not just conceptually attractive. Our BPR work integrates with our corporate governance advisory, SOP implementation, and business cost optimisation services.

BPR vs Business Process Improvement — Knowing When to Reengineer vs Improve

The BPR Methodology — Five Phases

1. Phase 1 — Process Identification and Scoping

   The first step in a BPR engagement is identifying which processes to reengineer. Not every process needs radical redesign; BPR effort should be directed at processes that are: (a) broken in ways that incremental improvement cannot fix; (b) core to the business’s competitive position and customer experience; and (c) where dramatic improvement will deliver measurable financial impact. For a Pune manufacturer, the shortlist typically includes: order-to-cash (from sales order receipt to payment collection), procure-to-pay (from purchase need to vendor payment), production planning and scheduling, and quality management. For an IT company: project onboarding and staffing, resource utilisation and billing, and client reporting. We map the existing process universe, score each process on dimensions of pain (performance gap, frequency of failure, customer impact, cost) and opportunity (improvement potential, strategic importance), and select the 1–3 processes where BPR investment will have the highest return.

2. Phase 2 — Current State Process Mapping (As-Is)

   Once the target processes are identified, we map the current state (the “As-Is” process) in detail. This involves: structured interviews with process owners, team members, and upstream/downstream stakeholders; observation of the actual process in operation (not just the documented procedure, which often differs significantly from reality); collection and analysis of process performance data (cycle times, error rates, rework volumes, handover delays, cost per transaction); and identification of process pain points, bottlenecks, redundancies, non-value-adding activities, and manual workarounds. For manufacturing processes in Chakan and Bhosari, we spend time on the shop floor. For IT processes in Hinjewadi, we interview project managers and account managers. The As-Is map is not an end in itself — it is the diagnostic foundation that tells us where the current process is failing and why.

3. Phase 3 — Root Cause Analysis and Redesign Principles

   With the As-Is process mapped and performance data collected, we conduct root cause analysis: what is causing the delays, errors, costs, and failures? BPR root causes are typically systemic rather than individual — they are built into the process design itself. Common root causes in Indian business processes: unnecessary sequential approvals (tasks done one at a time that could be done simultaneously); information handover inefficiencies (each team re-enters data from the previous team’s output); functional silos (departments optimising for their own metrics at the expense of the overall process); and technology gaps (manual steps that automation could eliminate). Having identified root causes, we establish the redesign principles — the guiding commitments for the new process: “maximise parallel execution,” “eliminate all duplicate data entry,” “one version of the truth for all data,” “decisions made at the point of action.”

4. Phase 4 — Future State Process Design (To-Be)

   The To-Be process design is the centrepiece of the BPR engagement. Working from the redesign principles and enabled by an assessment of available technology, we design the new process: what steps occur, in what sequence (or in parallel), who performs each step, what information is required at each step and how it flows, which steps are automated and which require human judgment, and what the expected performance of the new process is in terms of cycle time, cost, error rate, and quality. For Pune manufacturers, To-Be designs often integrate ERP modules more tightly, replace manual shop floor data collection with IoT-enabled production monitoring, and eliminate multiple approval layers with risk-based electronic approval workflows. For IT companies, To-Be designs often replace spreadsheet-based resource tracking with integrated PSA (Professional Services Automation) tools and create automated billing triggers from timesheet approvals.

5. Phase 5 — Implementation Planning and Change Management

   Reengineering design without implementation is just documentation. Our BPR engagement includes a detailed implementation plan: technology acquisition and implementation roadmap; pilot and phased rollout plan; training requirements; change management strategy (including communication to staff about the new process, reasons for the change, and their role in it); performance metrics to be tracked post-implementation; and a governance structure for managing the implementation. Change management is the most underestimated aspect of BPR — the best-designed process fails if the people who must execute it resist or work around it. We work with management to build a change narrative, communicate it effectively, and monitor adoption during the rollout.

BPR for Pune’s Manufacturing Sector

Pune’s manufacturing belt — extending from Chakan through Bhosari to Pimpri-Chinchwad and Talegaon — is India’s largest automotive and engineering goods manufacturing hub. Manufacturing BPR typically focuses on: Production Planning and Scheduling (eliminating the disconnect between sales orders, production plans, and material availability that causes either idle time or overtime); Procurement and Vendor Management (redesigning the purchase order, goods receipt, quality check, and payment cycle to reduce cycle time and ensure ITC compliance); Quality Management (redesigning the inspection and rejection process to move quality checks earlier in the production cycle, reducing rework and scrap); and Inventory Management (redesigning the material issuance and consumption tracking process to improve inventory accuracy and reduce holding costs). For the broader supply chain risk dimension, see our Supply Chain Risk Management guide

BPR for Pune’s IT and SaaS Sector

IT and SaaS companies in Hinjewadi, Kharadi, Magarpatta, and Baner face a different set of BPR opportunities: Project Onboarding (from contract signature to first billable work, which for many IT firms takes 4–6 weeks when it should take 5–7 days); Resource Allocation (the spreadsheet-based, email-driven process for allocating engineers to projects is one of the most consistently broken processes in Indian IT); Revenue Recognition and Billing (particularly for milestone-based contracts under Ind AS 115, where correct revenue recognition requires tight integration between project management, delivery tracking, and the accounting system); and Customer Success and Renewal (the handover from sales to delivery to account management, which is a critical process for SaaS companies managing contract renewals and upsells).