Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2015, 3, 30-34 Published Online March 2015 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/jss http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2015.33007 How to cite this paper: Nicholds, B.A. and Mo, J.P.T. (2015) Risk Assessment of Business Process Re-Engineering Projects. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 3, 30-34. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2015.33007 Risk Assessment of Business Process Re-Engineering Projects Boyd A. Nicholds, John P. T. Mo School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia Email: boyd.nicholds@rmit.edu.au , john.mo@rmit.edu.au Received December 2014 Abstract Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) inevitably involves change. However, modern business organizations are extremely complex. Setting improvement targets in BPR too high without con- sidering the company’s capability and its external and internal interactions will have little chance of achieving the set targets, which means project failure. Unfortunately, forecasting of the BPR outcomes is currently a wild guess to management. This paper describes a risk model that esti- mates a process improvement capability score and integrates with a performance effectiveness function to assess the likelihood of meeting performance gain targets from process improvement projects undertaken by companies. The risk assessment can assist management to set more rea- listic performance gain targets for process improvement projects with a better chance of success. Keywords Business Process Re-Engineering, Risk Assessment, Process Improvement, Capability Score, Performance Effectiveness, Decision Support Tool 1. Introduction Business process re-engineering (BPR) for new business processes or change of existing processes is not an ad-hoc activity. It requires a good project management approach to coordinate and decide on a range of factors in a structured manner [1]. However not all BPR projects are successful. Whittaker [2] conducted a large survey of companies and concluded that 45% of improvement projects did not deliver the expected benefits. A successful BPR project depends on the capability of the company implementing it. A proper analysis of known success and failure capability factors can reduce the risk of failure and increase the likelihood of success. The structured process improvement framework proposed by Rohleder et al. [3] had the potential to simplify the change implementation process and avoid failures but their focus was on innovation which they acknowledged to have a high failure rate. This paper outlines a risk assessment method to assist organisations re-engineering their business processes in order to achieve the expected performance gains. The innovation of this method is the ability to estimate the probability of meeting a desired target performance level at various points in time. This knowledge is most crit-