The early proponents of business process reengineering (BPR), Hammer and Champy wrote in their seminal book:

"By diagnosing the company's current processes, the reengineering team is learning a great deal about them, but not so that it can fix them. Old processes can take only so much fixing before the marginal benefits aren't worth the bother. Besides, reengineering teams don't look for marginal benefits, but order-of-magnitude improvements. Just fixing the old processes is not enough.

Instead, the team is trying to study the existing processes so it can learn and understand what is critical in their performance. The more team members know about the real objectives of a process, the better they will be at its redesign."

(Hammer, M. & Champy, J. (1994), Reengineering The Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, HarperCollins, p.133)

(a) Demonstrate your understanding of the principles of BPR by explaining the phrase "order-of-magnitude improvements" .

(b) Explain what is meant by a "business process" , and elaborate by using appropriate justifications why companies must consider their customers' real requirements when redesigning processes.

(c) Compare and contrast the business process perspective with the functional perspective of the organisation, and apply your understanding of BPR to discuss the importance of adopting a business process perspective in a BPR project.