How Do You Know If Your Organization Will Benefit From A Chief Process Officer (CPO)? A full or part time CPO can benefit your organization if the answer is as follows to one or more questions.  Areas include operations, processes, computer systems, and governance.

Operations

Yes

• Is your organization growing?  Are you adding employees?
• Will the organization need to contract in size if it loses key customers or due to economic conditions?  
• Would you like to strengthen the organization’s relationship with the customer?  
• Does your organization need to innovate to be competitive with the competition?  

No

• Do you have a process-level plan identifying fixed/variable and critical/noncritical processes to support an increase or decrease in organizational size while maintaining customer service and profitability?  
• Is there an organizational process improvement plan and roadmap?
• Do you know what the organization spends at a process level, volumes, and criticality?  
• Do you have an organizational list of processes that can be automated, made more efficient, modified, or stopped?  
• Are organizational key process indicators (KPIs) measured, including volumes, costs, quality, service, efficiency, and governance?  
• Are KPIs compared,  are future goals set, and are actions taken? 

Processes

Yes

• Are there process silos (walls) within and between internal departments, groups, and the customer?
• Is the rate of process improvement slow?  
• Have past process improvement initiatives lacked sustainability and coordinated direction?  
• After training, do employee efforts dwindle as they go back to conducting their own work? 
• When employees leave, does organizational knowledge walk out the door? 
• Do existing and prospective customers ask what process improvement framework the organization is using?  
• Is there a benefit to having a well-defined process, improvement objectives, and KPIs? 
• Is your organization under ongoing pressure to reduce expenses while, at the same time, improving quality and service?  

No

• Are customer process interactions mapped out and discussed to better coordinate information exchange, decisions, customer experience, and revenue? 
• Do you have an organization-recognized/agreed to and followed process improvement method, framework, and training program?
• Are processes fully documented and up-to-date? 

Computer Systems

Yes

• Have there been computer system failures or mediocre deployments?  
• Does the scope of computer system replacement grow during deployment?
• Does the vendor charge for change orders during deployment?
• Do you purchase software and not utilize all the modules?

No

• Do you know if the money spent on technology provided a proven ROI? 
• Do computer systems fully support the organization, vendors, and customers? 
• Do new systems meet what was fully promised by the vendor? 
• Did the system come in on time and on budget?
• Does money spent on new systems provide an ROI? Is this measured? 
• Is there a full and up-to-date inventory of all software/hardware owned and utilized through subscription services?  
• Are the costs, usage, and value of these products/services annually identified, renegotiated, and stopped as applicable?  
• Are processes fully automated with up-to-date templates, digital workflows, AI assistance, and systems?  

Governance

Yes

• Are there lawsuits and/or union issues related to safety, operations, or other factors? 
• Do issues with products or services result in liability, regulatory, and/or press issues? 

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This paper is written by George Dunn, President CRE8 Independent Consultants. George has functioned as a full-time and fractional CPO for organizations across all industries.  For a free consultation on how a full or part-time CPO can benefit your organization, reach out to him at consulting@cre8inc.com or 206-556-5958.  George is a world-recognized process improvement consultant, trainer, coach, speaker, and author.  Since 1995, he has assisted hundreds of clients ranging in size from Fortune 100 to middle market to government.