THEORY OF BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING AS ONE OF THE EFFECTIVE MANAGERIAL TOOL IN TIMES OF ECONOMIC DOWNTURNS

Business process reengineering (BPR) was analyzed as one of the approaches to considerably improve the performance of the enterprise. The actuality of BPR in times of economic downturn was evaluated. The historic evolution of the concept was examined and findings about the economic nature of BPR emergence were made. The dependence of BPR actuality and simplicity of BPR usage on the level of enterprise business process maturity was shown. A conclusion about optimal point was made via depicting the interrelations graphically. Advantages of BPR usage for enterprises of different sizes were proved and specified. Benefits of BPR were compared with benefits of other related methods like ERP, JIT, TQM and Continuous Improvement. The future possible development of the BPR was analyzed. There offered possible further directions of research in the area of BPR based on current limitations of the concept. Results of the research may be used in companies of maturity level one to three, taking into account size of the company and current state of business process maturity