Reengineering the Corporation

"Companies and their employees must unlearn many of the principles and techniques that brought them success for so long."

"Sellers no longer have the upper hand; customers do."

"Big is no longer impregnable, and every established company today needs to post a lookout for start-ups."

"Product life cycles have gone from years to months."

"Reengineering should be brought in only when a need exists for heavy blasting."

"For two hundred years companies have accepted the inconvenience, inefficiencies, and costs associated with complex processes in order to reap the benefits of simple tasks."

"The most basic and common feature of reengineered processes is the absence of an assembly line."

"Companies that reengineer are, in effect, putting back together again the work that Adam Smith and Henry Ford broke into tiny pieces so many years ago."

"A company that cannot change the way it thinks about information technology cannot reengineer."

"The fundamental error that most companies commit when they look at technology is to view it through the lens of their existing processes."

"How companies select and organize the people who actually do the reengineering is key to the success of the endeavor."

"Deciding which processes require reengineering and the order in which they should be tackled is not a trivial part of the reengineering effort."

"How does a reengineering team proceed with its redesign effort?"

"The companies that have the most success in selling change to their employees are those that have developed the clearest message about the need for reengineering."

"While we say reengineering is often unsuccessful, it is not a high-risk endeavor."