Solving the end-to-end process ownership dilemma

Consider a manufacturing company aiming to deliver quality products to its customers. Their end-to-end process involves several components: sales, production, and logistics, each with its own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and targets. For instance, the sales team strives to secure as many orders as quickly as possible. The production team focuses on efficient manufacturing, often making large batches to save costs. Meanwhile, the logistics team aims to lower transportation and inventory costs, even if it means delaying deliveries by combining shipments.

Sales may rush orders, leading to strained production schedules and quality issues. Production might overproduce to maintain efficiency, causing inventory pileups that burden logistics. Logistics could delay shipments to save costs, resulting in customer dissatisfaction and impacting sales performance. These misalignments and counterproductive KPIs obviously lead to inefficiencies, higher costs, and undermine one another's efforts.

The need for a comprehensive redesign

To address these dilemmas, a comprehensive redesign of the end-to-end process is often required. Improving each department's flow individually will not resolve the overall problem. Therefore, organisations typically appoint an end-to-end process owner who is responsible for the entire process, ensuring alignment with overall objectives and optimising workflows. With a dedicated process owner, organisations can address inefficiencies and improve coordination between functions.

Challenges of the traditional process owner role

However, this ideal solution often fails in practice due to several pitfalls:

1. Cross-functional resistance: The end-to-end process spans multiple functions, each with its own functional owner. Function owners resist allowing the process owner to make decisions about their team's work, particularly if it might hurt their performance.
   
2. Lack of formal authority: Unlike function owners, the end-to-end process owner's authority is not formalised in the company’s organisational design. Without formal authority, the process owner struggles to enforce decisions and ensure compliance, resulting in slow decision-making and poor outcomes.
3. Poor communication: Poor communication and collaboration between the process owner and function owners can derail the process. Without effective communication and a team-oriented approach – typically in the form of standardised meetings and well-defined collaboration structures – misunderstandings and conflicting priorities arise.

The role of a process facilitator

We recognise the need for a more effective role than the traditional end-to-end process owner. The organisational power structure cannot be ignored, sub-optimisation must be avoided, and effective communication is crucial. Therefore, the role of a process facilitator should replace the end-to-end process owner.

The General Secretary of NATO exemplifies an ideal process facilitator, operating through diplomacy and consensus-building without direct authority. Their role is to align NATO's strategic goals with the interests of member nations, mediating and harmonising conflicting priorities.

Similarly, a business process facilitator should guide function owners in finding mutually beneficial resolutions, promoting dialogue and collaboration without imposing decisions. They facilitate meetings, mediate disputes, and encourage a team-oriented approach, ensuring integrated and efficient workflows across the value chain.

Ensuring continuous improvement

The process facilitator should proactively monitor the end-to-end process to ensure continuous improvement. When improvements are needed, the facilitator ensures the process is thoroughly analysed and added to the pipeline of improvement initiatives, all of which compete for company resources. Once the end-to-end process is up for improvement, the facilitator involves the right SMEs and calls for meetings with the relevant stakeholders to discuss issues and collectively decide on solutions. The facilitator may design the solution but cannot decide on it alone; functional owners must agree.

The proposed solution of introducing a process facilitator helps improve the end-to-end process while considering function owners' concerns. Its success depends on the facilitator's ability to encourage cooperation and the willingness of function owners to work together and find compromises.

Can you relate to the problems described and are eager to move on? Look forward to more articles describing issues in the Business Process Management framework.