Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (Collins Business Essentials)

by Michael Hammer, James Champy

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The most successful business book of the last decade, Reengineering the Corporation is the pioneering work on the most important topic in business today: achieving dramatic performance improvements. This book leads readers through the radical redesign of a company's processes, organization, and culture to achieve a quantum leap in performance.

Michael Hammer and James Champy have updated and revised their milestone work for the New Economy they helped to create -- promising to help corporations save hundreds of millions of dollars more, raise their customer satisfaction still higher, and grow ever more nimble in the years to come.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4 out of 5 stars

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

A must-read book, 2008-08-01
It's sometimes difficult to find good managerial books that are based on more than pure management theories. This book is an exception. A must read piece of art crafted by people with feet deeply planted into the real way of doing things at corporations.

This book strains people's brain in the sense that they feel compelled to think about what is going on at work heading for a better company through reengineering established processes. Specially for me, this book also brings hope, hope that no matter how critical some process (which in many cases we are part of) may be, there is always a solution that can be pursued.

But the book also comes with a major drawback. One may think that the solution for all problems is reengineering.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3 out of 5 stars

Not hard to read, 2008-07-14
This book suggests that Taylorism in service industries is counter productive. Broadly the idea of Taylorism is to reduce productive process to simple repetitive elements and to have a manager supervise the process for work efficiency and integration of effort. The big pay of Taylorism is that the simplicity of the work process is such that there are limited training costs and people with little education or skill can perform the process. Whilst this approach may still have a role with manufacturing in the modern age it is counter productive for white colour work.

The authors give an example with the case of IBM Credit. IBM sell computers and a certain number are sold on credit. IBM Credit was set up to give loans to customers. The process used by IBM Credit was that a initial call would be received and a request would be logged. A piece of paper would then be taken to the Credit Department. A specialist would make computer entries and then do a credit check. Another piece of paper was then sent to the Business practices section where it would be logged on another computer system. The Business practices would attach any special terms to the form which went to a pricer. A pricer would calculate the interest rate who would then give it to a clerical officer. A clerical officer would then send out a letter of offer. The process took some six days on average although it could take two weeks. However if one calculated the actual administrative time to process the request it was about 90 minutes. The majority of the time was taken up with paper work being moved or sitting on desks. Due to the multiplicity of people involved and the number of computer systems it was not possible to know were the application was or the expected completion time.

It would appear that a complex system had been developed to deal with the potential of fraud or bad credit risks. The reality was that most of the loans were small and most going to be straightforward. IBM thus decided to develop a system in which one person would be responsible for the five process and in the majority of cases could turn the form around in an hour.

What IBM did was to reduce the number of untrained staff and have fewer staff have greater responsibility using newer slightly complex programs to do the work on calculating the deals. The throughput was increased 100% and the turn around time was less than a day.

Another example is the Insurance industry. In the past Insurance claims have been processed by each claim having an independent verification of the claim before the job was given to a repairer. This meant slow turn around times and a duplication of having an expert look at each claim.

Instead the insurance company decided to pay out claims below a certain level and to have a number of shops simply do the repairs without checking the quantum. There was an occasional audit of the cost of the repairs but the repair shops chosen were keen to keep the cost at a reasonable level because of the volume of work.

These two examples explain what reengineering is all about. Over time complex systems can evolve in a business for what seem rational reasons. Having checks to prevent fraud or bad risks with the IBM case for instance. However incrementally the administrative structure may evolve into a system which fails any cost benefit test.

The notion of reengineering is to look at businesses without assuming anything (or as the authors say starting with a blank page) to see if what is going on is rational. Reengineering is not so much concerned with incremental increases in productivity or cost reduction. It is based on the notion that many business can evolve in a certain way because of the logic of Taylorism which in the end is inconsistent with customer and business needs.

The book is entitled " a manifesto for business revolution" so that it contains some florid language suggests the need for a mindset of dramatic change and the need for leadership in change. It is easy to read but one wonders if there is objectively such a process of reengineering and whether it simply means that from time to time one should look objectively if business processes make sense or are just the accumulation of traditional practices.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

This booked marked the beginning of my journey..., 2008-03-16
Seven years ago when I was still in college we needed some stuff on changing businesses. A friend of mine, studying at another college, gave this book to me as it was mandatory reading material in his economics and business class. So what did this had to do with computer science?

This was the first book I had ever read without any mandatory pressure from school. And actually, it was fun! The book contains good samples of real business cases, although a bit dated now, and lets you think about processes. Anything at home or in business is being run by processes, so why not learn more about them?

Seven years later after graduating Computer Science I run my own business with eight programmers and me doing the business cases. Why? Because computer automation is nothing but a tool to enhance business processes. And I'm glad I've learned about them on time.

If you think this book is not for you, think again.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

3 out of 5 stars

Brilliant product of the ghostwriter, 2007-11-17
Donna Sammons Carpenter ghostwrote this book.
It made waves when it first came out.
However, like most management fad books, its message is not really relevant any more.

Buy and read a real management book, for example, something or anything by Alfred Chandler.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Reengineering the Corporation, 2007-01-12
Very satified with book, shipping, packaging, and timely fachion sent and received.

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