1 To what extent do you think the success of BPR is reliant on having a supportive culture? Before BPR was introduced, the company dealt with new applications for insurance by using a complex administrative process involving 30 steps, five departments and 20 people performing simple repetitive tasks. The total process would take anything from five to 10 days to complete.

After the implementation of BPR, the situation changed radically. All new applications were dealt with individually by case managers, with the exception of the most complicated cases. The case manager had at his or her disposal an information technology workstation utilising a database and an expert system, which was invaluable as an aid to decision-

making.

The end result was that the time taken to process each application was reduced by three to five days and the administrative capacity to handle applications nearly doubled.

A reduction in staff amounting to 100 posts led to considerable savings.