The Key to Truly Effective Global Process Ownership?

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Editor Coda
Oct 15, 2013

In today’s world of increasingly sophisticated communication technologies and business networks, the Global Process Ownership role is becoming increasingly vital for any organization doing business internationally.

At sharedserviceslink, we have seen an increasing number and variety of organizations recruit for Global Process Owners in the past few years. But what has struck us has been the variety in description of these roles, which begs the question: What really defines process ownership? And what are the key elements to truly effective process ownership?

One question that kept being raised at our recent 10 Keys to Process Excellence event was whether process owners should be more occupied with the strategic or operational side of things.

Ultimately, it depends what your focus is. Traditionally, process design has been about operational efficiency. But in today’s increasingly complex business market, many companies are realising that strategic objectives – such as improving customer experience or cost reduction – critically depend on having the appropriate process capabilities.

I argue that strategic process ownership is important for precisely this reason. Sharon Friend, Senior Manager for Business Process & Innovation at Sony Europe, explained that initially, her role had covered both elements in the procure-to-pay process. But eventually managing the nitty-gritty elements of the operational side had impeded both her progress and her vision for the strategic side.

“That was key for me, because when I first started in the role, I was involved in both, but it’s very difficult to move things forward, when you’ve got problems at the back that you’re trying to resolve. And those problems aren’t process-related, it’s more down to the way people are doing things, the way vendors are doing things. They’re not following the processes.

This meant when I wanted to move to the next phase of our transformation project, I had to go back and stop what I was doing. But now all I have to worry about now is ‘does the process work’?”

So who did look after the operational side? Sharon explained that at Sony, every Process Owner is coupled with an Operations Manager, who takes care of the “back end” of process change and implementation projects.

One delegate asked whether there was any conflict in their roles – Sharon simply answered that they both have the same priorities, work to the same set of KPIs, and are both focussed on the end goal: that the process is working properly.

“I’ve now got the time to worry about the core processes. If there’s an operational issue, they can tell me and I can make sure things change in the future”.

After Sharon’s session, we polled our delegate audience and found that around 40% of the process owners in the room were also responsible for the operational side. It will be interesting to see whether they change their ways after Sharon’s experience!

Are you a process owner? How have you seen your role develop? Let us know your stories at enquire@sharedserviceslink.com

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