Systems Thinking View of Failure

Today I read an article about the rebirth of business process re-engineering (BPR).  In this article the author described the large BPR projects of the 1990s as expensive and producing disappointing results.  Looking at the immediate return on investments for these projects I would have to agree with the author.  However, looking at a long-term and systems thinking view of these BPR projects; I completely disagree with the author.

The driving force behind the 1990s BPR projects was the emergence of large enterprise systems (like SAP).  These software packages replaced the silos of information systems supporting each of the business units in the organization.  The new enterprise systems enabled data to flow from one area of the firm to other areas of the firm to produce a more complete view of the organization's processes and information.  These systems and corresponding BPR projects removed the silos within the organization and enabled new information and knowledge to be formulated from multiple units across the organization.

We are now benefiting from the application of data warehousing and other forms of business intelligence technologies and processes.  If our organizations had continued to operate in the silos that existed in the pre-BPR era, we would not be able to accomplish our goals with business intelligence since the data would not be in a form that would support integration and business process perspectives.

My point is that while the immediate benefits of BPR may have not lived up to expectations, the results of BPR have enabled organizations to make better use of information and knowledge and also supported the emergence of business intelligence.  In order to better evaluate innovation we need to be able to view and evaluate our projects from a more global and systems perspective.