Business Process Re-Engineering Projects Success Factors in United Arab Emirates’ Public Organizations

Public organizations are striving to achieve excellence in their performance and gain a competitive edge through process improvement. To date, organizations have been able to achieve significant results through Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) implementation. However, and despite the reported success, many BPR projects in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) public sector fail to achieve their desired objectives. Many developing countries such as UAE have an open and growing economy where service in general, and governmental services in specific, play a major role in their growth and development. The objective of this study is to identify critical factors that contribute to the success of BPR in public organizations projects in the UAE. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six subject matter experts (SMEs) in BPR to seek their feedback on BPR practices and challenges in the UAE. In addition, the study collected and analyzed the responses from 119 professionals in UAE's BPR public organizations. The findings indicate that the success rate of BPR projects falls within the range of 60-70%. Moreover, confirmatory model analysis suggests that process owners, performers, and IT infrastructure are the most influential factors especially for smaller size organizations. The findings will provide valuable insights for decision makers seeking to improve the success rate of BPR projects in the UAE, specifically, by investing more in the influential factors. Such investment and the proper implementation of recommendations will enable them to achieve their quality and productivity goals while minimizing cost.