1. Informative guides on industry best practice
Inspiring
Business
Performance
Process Ownership
The key to change management success
R&D
MARKETING
FINANCE
PRODUCT
SALES
PROCUREMENT
SUPPLY
CHAIN

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The benefits of being agile, flexible and responsive in business today need little
explanation. Continual change is vital to adapt to market needs and meet customer
demand efficiently and profitably.
Change management programmes can bring
huge gains for an organisation. But their failure
is a common story. All too often, once change
has been implemented and the project team
has been reabsorbed back into the business,
these benefits gradually slip away. Why?
The reason can often be found in the
conventional structure of a business. Most
organisations are functionally run, yet many
of the issues fundamental to business
performance - new product development and
order-to-cash, for example - are linear, running
end-to-end across the business, and they pay
no regard to departmental boundaries. In this
case, functional heads find themselves with no
jurisdiction over neighbouring departments to
drive improvement and the sole recourse is the
CEO’s office, where the only cross-functional
authority lies. The problem being, as important
as these day-to-day processes are, the CEO is
just too busy to manage them. Consequently,
the advances gained from the change
management programme soon begin to wither.
Transforming an organisation takes tremendous
effort and resource, and seeing achievements
disintegrate can be hugely frustrating not only
for the executive suite, but the management
and staff who have dedicated their time and
energy to implementing change.
How can you ensure improvements are
sustained? Moreover, how can you ensure they
are continually progressed? The answer lies
in assigning accountability for these cross-
functional processes to dedicated Business
Process Owners (BPOs).
Excellence is only the beginning
Once a business has reached excellent
levels of performance, the champagne corks
have popped and everybody’s patted each
other on the back, it is easy to sit back and
expect the results to continue to roll in. Not
only is this unlikely to happen - as staff leave
and new people join, it is easy for processes
and behaviours to slide. What’s more, with a
rapidly evolving business environment (and
competition) what was once excellent may
soon become standard. As Winston Churchill
once said, ‘success is not final’.
To make the benefits stick, the ethos of
continuous improvement has to remain.
The business should be optimised and re-
optimised, then optimised again. In doing so,
it is vital to measure your progress. The Class
A checklist (a globally recognized standard for
Business Excellence) provides a set of metrics
against which to determine your business
performance.
Even then, once a business has achieved a
Class A accreditation, it is not the end. Class
A provides the framework from which initial
improvements can be identified and delivered
and from this base a springboard for more
improvements that are vital if excellent levels
of performance are to be sustained.
Empowering the BPOs and their cross-
functional teams to proactively design and
implement improvements will give the CEO
confidence to focus more personal time on
the business strategy that will take your
company to the next level, leaving the
competition in your wake.
Dawn Dent
Oliver Wight Associate

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Making a single person accountable for
nourishing the benefits brought about by
a change programme can have a massive
impact on the performance of a process for the
business and, more importantly, its customers.
This responsibility does not necessarily need to
fall to the head of the apparently most relevant
function (Head of Finance for order-to-cash, for
example). In fact, most processes could, and
should, bridge multiple functions - they can be
a lot more effectively integrated horizontally.
What is a BPO?
A BPO is someone who is responsible for
continuously managing a single process, end-
to-end in an organisation. Every organisation
has linear processes such as:
• Order-to-cash
• New product development
• Global product support
• Strategy development
• Employment lifecycle management
Each of these processes should have a BPO,
an ambassador for the process in its entirety,
who is accountable for it running smoothly
across the different functions.
The Business Process Owner
New Product Development, for example,
involves R&D, marketing, procurement,
supply chain and finance. The BPO is
responsible for ensuring the process is
performed well across these different
departments, and meets the needs of the
business, the customer, and the strategy.
If it is not fit-for-purpose, i.e. supporting
the strategic business goals and tactical
requirements, it is the BPO’s job to do
something about it. This is far more efficient
and effective than relying on the CEO to gather
together all of the heads of department every
time an issue arises.
The BPO should not facilitate the process,
however, that is the role of the Process
Facilitator, nor should they carry out the
process that is the job of the front-line staff.
Instead, BPOs should provide strategic
guidance, set targets, commission change
projects and offer coaching to those operating
the process.

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Who should be a BPO?
Close association with the overall business
strategy means the Business Process Owner
should be a senior level leader. They are the
people who understand the strategy the best
and the earliest.
Being a good functional leader, however, does
not necessarily mean an individual will make
a good BPO. The BPO does not usually line
manage everyone working in the process
and so the ability to ‘see the bigger picture’
and to influence and coordinate across
functions and through functional leaders is
important. In taking on a Business Process
Owner role, a functional leader will develop a
much broader view of the business. Forward
planning to prevent problems, rather than
simply firefighting, is vital. Having a real passion
for the process is a key differentiator too.
These characteristics are especially important
for leaders in a business maturing from a
traditional functional organisation to a process
based or team based organisation.
There is no single formula for determining who
will make the best BPO, it depends on your
own organisation and personnel. Returning to
the example of New Product Development,
the BPO doesn’t have to be the Head of
R&D, but should be someone senior involved
in the process who displays the following
characteristics:
The Business Process Owner - a CV
• Senior Executive
• Process coach
• Influential
• Enables problem resolution
• Fosters cross-functional co-operation
For one organisation this may be the Head of
Marketing, for another, it will be the Finance
Director, or Head of Procurement.
The type and size of your organisation will
also have an impact, as well as your business
maturity. For example, in large organisations
it is common to have two levels of process
ownership: the Global Process Owner, a
member of the executive team, supported by
Regional or Local Process Owners. In smaller
organisations, the executive team members will
have the dual roles: functional leader and BPO.

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The role of the BPO
The role of a BPO has four facets: designing,
measuring, coaching and acting as an
ambassador for the process within the
business.
Design & execution
It is important to remember the Business
Process Owner’s role is one of senior level
management. Thus, they are responsible for
determining process performance requirements
aligned to the business vision and mission,
driving change, and providing an end-to-end
authority, across all relevant departments.
When it comes to design and execution,
their role is to manage, or at least sponsor,
implementation, automation and change efforts.
They should design and implement training
systems, and take ongoing accountability for
the key business assets.
Measurement
With the business strategy in mind, the BPO
has to continually monitor performance and
interpret that performance, so setting targets
and communicating this information, come
high on the agenda. As well as benchmarking
against competitor processes, performance
needs to be understood in terms of efficiency,
cost-effectiveness, agility, and, most
importantly, customer needs. These have
to be translated into an appropriate set of
performance requirements and KPIs. The
BPO should ensure the mechanisms used to
measure these are deployed in the correct
order and regularly reviewed to ensure optimum
performance. Where gaps in performance are
recognised, it is the BPO’s responsibility to
oversee the change effort (as described above).
This aligns to the need for a Measures hierarchy
which links the business’ strategic goals to day
to day process measures.
Coaching
The BPO should build process expertise within
the people operating the process, instructing
on technique, providing support and resolving
conflicts. That said, they are a resource rather
than a supervisor, enabling problem resolution,
so helping rather than telling. The role of
the BPO is to listen to feedback from the
process performers to establish what works
well and what does not. Thus, focus should
lie on exceptional or unanticipated situations,
troubleshooting through a relentless pursuit for
the root cause, so permanent corrective action
can be taken and resource redeployed as
necessary, to improve process performance.
An Ambassador
Naturally the BPO is ambassador for the
process within the business. They should
represent the process at leadership
meetings, lobby for process goals, obtain
required resources and agree performance
requirements. They should make changes
when needed, the BPO should manage
interfaces with other processes, negotiate with
stakeholders, and remove any obstacles.
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Following a Proven Path
The Oliver Wight Proven Path is an
implementation methodology for sustained
cultural change, with three key phases:
leadership, development and ownership (Fig.
1). At the end of the Proven Path, once the
change initiative has been implemented and
the executive team are satisfied with how it is
working, the project team will be reabsorbed
into the business and the processes
embedded. The challenge becomes sustaining
and maturing the benefits that have been
brought about - it is then that the role of the
Business Process Owner comes in to its own.
Typically, however, the BPO will have
been a key member of the original change
management team. That means they will
already have a thorough understanding of the
process, will feel a sense of ownership of the
new design, and will want to sustain it moving
forwards. Furthermore, it is easier to implement
a culture of process management when
introduced from the beginning of a change
programme.
The diagnostic, the first step in the Proven
Path, which comes before the change
management initiative will assess, amongst
other things, the organisational structure and
culture to see what change is required to
implement formal BPO positions. The concept
then has to be incorporated in to the executive
team education, to get them excited and
committed to it. It is at this point that BPOs are
usually assigned.
As strong ambassadors, each BPO will be an
important ‘agent of change’, throughout the
development phase. As their title suggests,
they will also be fundamental in the ownership
phase, leveraging capability, delivering change
and eventually taking full ownership of the
process. They must also ensure during the
ownership phase that the old processes,
behaviours and measures are fully removed
from the business.
Fig 1: How Process Ownership is integrated into the Oliver Wight Proven
Path

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A permanent part-time fixture
Assigning Business Process Owners doesn’t
mean creating another set of parallel senior
leaders, but using those leaders that already
exist in the organisation. In addition to having
a functional responsibility, the executive will take
on an end-to-end process responsibility.
Understandably you may be wondering how
senior leaders, who are already incredibly busy
people, are possibly going to find time for this
extra responsibility? But being a BPO is not an
all-day, everyday activity; it’s a part-time role.
Unless there is an ongoing change programme,
in many instances the BPO has just a few key
process meetings a month.
It is imperative, however, that organisations
recognise the role of the BPO not as an interim
one, but a permanent fixture. The BPO has a
role to play long after the improvement project
is complete. That means no matter how many
staff changes occur, documentation should
exist and a formal handover process take place,
so there is always an assigned and properly
trained BPO to look after the process, sustain
any benefits, and continue to improve it.
In the pursuit of business excellence, an
organisation will progress up the business
maturity model (see Figure 2), evolving from a
traditional vertical management structure, with
a functional focus, in phase one, to a flatter,
horizontal structure, which is process focused,
in phase two.
Once staff have become used to working in
a process focused organisation, the business
can then look to mature to a matrix structure
(phase three), which combines the best
characteristics of the process structure, with
that of a functional organisation. In parallel,
functional leaders will grow the functional
skills and competencies of staff, whilst BPO’s
focus on optimising end-to-end process
performance.
Thinking in processes has some serious
advantages in the modern business
environment, where to be truly successful a
company has to put the customer at the centre
of everything it does. In the recent economic
downturn many businesses rushed to make
cuts, without thinking end-to-end, and are now
suffering the consequences.
An end-to-end perspective also helps prevent
the misdirection of improvement activity.
When problems in a business occur, often
responsibility for resolving the issue falls to the
department where symptoms appear.
Thinking in Processes
Fig 2: As a business evolves it will move up the maturity model, from
a functional organisation in phase one, to a process organisation in
phase two, to a matrix organisation in phase three, and finally a virtual
organisation in phase four.

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For example, if the issue is with invoicing,
responsibility automatically falls to the accounts
department. In many cases, however, these
are merely manifestations of the problem,
whilst the cause is occurring upstream in the
process; it could be an error with product
price, for instance. Once you begin to think in
processes, rather than squandering time and
resource on fixing the symptoms, it becomes
far easier to get to the root cause of the
problem, and fix it.
For one organisation, this approach helped
overcome invoice grief in the indirect
procurement process. Accounts payable were
failing to pay invoices on time, either because
the procurement order was incorrect, or the
user manager wasn’t signing off the orders on
time. Before, there had been a blame culture
with each department finger-pointing at one
another. But once a BPO (in this instance a
senior leader in finance) had been assigned
and met regularly with the sub-Business
Process Owners (Head of Procurement, Sub-
contractor manager and Accounts Payable
leader), communication was improved across
the process and the root causes of the problem
quickly addressed.
Figure 3 is a simple breakdown (by its
processes) of a manufacturing organisation with
an aftermarket business. The core processes,
in the centre, are those which directly impact
the customer and deliver value to them; the
enabling processes allow the company to
perform the core processes; and the governing
processes are those used to manage the
business. Focus here is end-to-end, so in
the case of order-to-cash, it starts with the
forecast, through managing orders, to the
master schedule, the material plan, receiving
the material, manufacturing, dispatch, invoicing
and then finally collecting the cash. This single
process involves individuals from a variety of
functions: sales, customer service, supply
chain, operations and finance.
Rather than having multiple senior executives
sub-managing this, one senior executive,
the Business Process Owner, will oversee
the process in its entirety, working through
the functional leaders and with the process
performers to ensure the required process
performance is being achieved. The BPO
ensures that everyone understands the role
they are expected to play in the process, and
sets them annual performance targets and
metrics. By documenting the knowledge of
process performers, job rotation becomes
easier, and the knowledge and ideas of
staff can then be harnessed to improve the
process (and business) performance. Since
many of these people will not work in the
BPO’s functional department, a process of
cascade education is required to ensure the
heads of functions, line managers and process
performers are all aware, and supportive of the
role of the BPO.
Fig 3: An example process model - a manufacturing organisation with an
aftermarket business

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Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a
tried and tested process which will drive
an organisation to higher levels of maturity,
because it removes traditional functional
barriers and silo thinking, replacing them
instead with a structure based on integrated
processes and teams. The role of IBP is to
align all the individual functions of the business
(marketing, operations, finance, R&D etc.) to
the direction in which the company is heading
and the plans it has to get there.
Process Ownership and IBP go hand-in-hand,
as many of the end-to-end business processes
are considered in the monthly IBP process.
The BPO will chair the relevant monthly review
meeting (e.g. for the demand management
process owner, this will be the demand
review), supported by the meeting (and
process) facilitator. The BPO will also attend
the Management Business Review (chaired by
the business leader) along with the rest of the
Executive team, to represent their process.
The classic challenge for any organisation is to
make its business cost-effective, and produce
margin all the way through the economic cycle,
through big growth to the depths of recession.
This means having the flexibility to shrink or
grow capacity strategically, depending on
the economic environment, and this relies on
having good visibility over the business and
market.
It’s no mean feat for any business, but
becomes an easier task when approached
horizontally. The aim of the BPO is to develop
a process roadmap and build flexibility in to the
process, so if business takes off, rather than
simply hiring more people and not improving
Process Ownership within the IBP process
Bringing the future in to today
business margin, growth can be facilitated
strategically, with some systems automated
and resource released. The process then
becomes less sensitive to both major growth
and economic downturn. As an aside, this can
also add value to people’s jobs, as typically it is
the repetitive work which is automated, leaving
staff with the more enjoyable, creative roles.
Regular review of the 5-10 year strategic
plan and business objectives is an essential
prerequisite for the development of an
appropriate process roadmap. The priority
of the BPO is to look to the future to ensure
the process is continually ‘fit for purpose’. An
Integrated Business Planning process, with its
Fig 4: The Integrated Business Planning Review meetings will be chaired
by the BPO and attended by a cross-functional selection of managers

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24-36 month rolling horizon, provides the BPO
with the tools to look ahead, as well as a clear
overview of the business and the strategic
direction it is looking to take.
If significant change occurs or is anticipated,
be it internal or external, process improvement
programmes can then be commissioned to
bring the future in to today, and guarantee the
process remains strategically sound not just
now, but for years to come.
Take one international company, whose
strategic plan included growth in the Chinese
market. Significant change to its process
designs, capacity and performance were all
required to deliver this objective. Because
the business already had an established
Integrated Business Planning process and an
infrastructure of Business Process Owners, the
business was able to set up the processes and
secure a system in China, which allowed local
sales and customer service to be established
at an early stage, and for the market forecast
for China to be easily integrated in to the
Integrated Business Planning process.
Working closely with IT, the BPOs delivered
a set of processes which not only supported
the strategic objective, but were also globally
integrated.
Fig 5: Strategic continuous process management - bringing the future into today.

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Bringing the future in to today becomes easier
when the business strategy is considered from
the perspective of a multitude of processes.
Setting aside time for the various Business
Process Owners to convene at a Process
Leadership Meeting to discuss their individual
processes and provide support to one another
has real merit, especially if they are working on
developing the business strategy - a strategy
can then be executed through the Integrated
Business Planning process.
The Process Leadership Meeting helps to
ensure all processes suitably support the
business strategy, and are integrated with one
another at every level. Moreover, approaching
issues with their process hats on allows
business leaders to ask the right questions
and make high-level decisions, such as the
implementation of an ERP system, with not
just one department, but the entire company
in mind.
Traditionally when an Executive helps to put
together the strategy they approach it from
a functional viewpoint. The Head of Finance,
The Process Leadership Meeting
Summary
for example, would financialise the different
ideas put forward, the sales person would be
thinking about growth, the supply chain person
would consider the cost profile of the business,
and so on. But once these executives
approach each problem from two angles
(functional and process), the company strategy
immediately becomes richer.
This does not mean changing the governance
structure of the business entirely; it just
requires some tweaking, to allow time for the
BPOs to make decisions and focus agendas
on process management.
Once the strategic process plans have been
developed by the BPOs at the Process
Leadership Meeting, the Integrated Business
Planning process then helps in the execution
of these plans. Each month the five reviews
- product, supply, demand, integrated
reconciliation and management - produce one-
page summaries, with relevant news succinctly
detailed, making it easy for the BPOs to debate
the important data from a process perspective.
A properly implemented system of Business
Process Ownership can deliver real business
benefits. Assigning senior individuals
accountability for the ongoing success of a
process sends a powerful message to the
rest of the organisation and ensures the time,
effort and resource invested in a change
management programme doesn’t go to waste.
Not only that, Business Process Ownership
can deliver benefits throughout a change
programme, and can extend way beyond the
process itself to positively influence the delivery
of the overall business strategy, to ensure your
organisation performs well now, and for many
years to come.

12. About Oliver Wight
At Oliver Wight, we believe sustainable business improvement can only be delivered
by your own people; so, unlike other consultancy firms, we transfer our knowledge to
you. Pioneers of Sales and Operations Planning and originators of the fundamentals
behind supply chain planning, Oliver Wight professionals are the acknowledged industry
thought leaders for Integrated Business Planning (IBP).
Integrated Business Planning allows your senior
executives to plan and manage the entire
organization over a 24-month horizon, while
Oliver Wight’s extended Supply Chain Planning
and Optimization ensures your supply chain is
designed and structured to deliver best-in-class
customer service with minimal costs. Using
the Oliver Wight Maturity Model to pursue our
globally recognized Class A standard for best
practice will determine a tailored improvement
journey for you to develop your organization’s
processes, and reach and sustain excellent
business performance. With a track record
of more than 40 years of helping some of the
world’s best-known organizations, Oliver Wight
will help you define your company’s vision
for the future and deliver performance and
financial results that last.
Inspiring
Business
Performance
Oliver Wight EAME
The Willows, The Steadings Business Centre
Maisemore, Gloucester, GL2 8EY, UK
T: +44 (0)1452 397200
Oliver Wight Asia/Pacific
131 Martin Street, Brighton
Victoria 3186, AU
T: +61 (0)3 9596-5830
Oliver Wight Americas, Inc.
PO Box 368, 292 Main Street
New London, NH 03257, USA
T: +1 (603)-526-5800
www.oliverwight-eame.com
The information contained is proprietary to Oliver Wight International and may not be modified,
reproduced, distributed or utilized in any manner in whole or in part, without the express prior
written permission of Oliver Wight International.