ERP Process-Ownership Recovery Leader

The mandate

The ERP programme missed design freeze because nominated global process owners could document flows but lacked authority to decide pricing conditions, quality holds, intercompany supply, customer allocations and close controls across regions. Design teams converted each disagreement into a system variant. The process executive resigned after the steering committee rejected a template carrying hundreds of unresolved choices, creating an eleven-month gap before integration build and site mobilisation lose their sequence.

The interim leader will turn process ownership into a decision system across source-to-pay, plan-to-produce, quality, order-to-cash and record-to-report. Work includes outcome accountability, global and local rights, variant criteria, control ownership, design evidence, operating measures and change governance. The target must accommodate legitimate legal, tax, food-safety and customer constraints without preserving every historic organisation boundary as process necessity.

Permanent process leaders must be confirmed by month seven and chair the final design authorities under observation. Handover requires them to resolve one cross-process inventory-and-revenue conflict, decide a regional variant and defend the operational consequences to the investment committee. The interim leader transfers decision records, owner capacity, unresolved policy, process metrics, site impacts and the change backlog that continues beyond configuration.

The seat can reject incomplete process designs, set variant thresholds, reallocate authorised process resources, appoint decision owners, stop configuration lacking an accountable outcome and approve choices inside existing control and capital limits. It cannot interpret tax or law, waive food-safety controls, approve accounting policy, sign customer terms, choose software customisation outside architecture governance or direct permanent workforce actions.

The remit excludes acting as systems integrator, functional configuration lead, regional operating head or permanent process owner. Success means executable global decisions, fewer justified variants, prepared sites, controls embedded in work and permanent owners who continue change after go-live. A signed flow diagram is insufficient if the named owner cannot decide a live trade-off or measure the resulting process outcome.

Why this seat is open

The former executive assigned ownership labels but did not secure authority across regional businesses, so design workshops documented disagreement instead of resolving it. Failed design freeze now threatens the build and mobilisation calendar. Temporary enterprise authority is needed to decide cross-process trade-offs, prove ownership through consequential cases and establish permanent leaders before the programme becomes a technology-led collection of local configurations.

What you will own

• Define outcome, perimeter and decision rights for each enterprise process and its cross-process hand-offs.
• Convert unresolved design items into named choices with evidence, consequences, decider, deadline and downstream configuration dependency.
• Set variant criteria covering legal, tax, food safety, market structure, customer need and measurable operating value.
• Integrate control ownership into process decisions for segregation, release, pricing, inventory, revenue, payment and close.
• Test designs through representative ingredient, batch, customer, intercompany and exception journeys across contrasting regions.
• Build owner capability through live authorities, peer challenge, process measures and transparent escalation rather than role descriptions.
• Transfer the global decision ledger, variant register, site consequences, measures and continuing change agenda to permanent leaders.

Candidate qualifications

• Has held enterprise process accountability in a global manufacturing ERP transformation covering supply, operations, commercial and finance.
• Can resolve cross-process choices involving batch, quality, inventory, pricing, intercompany supply, revenue and financial control.
• Has reduced template variants through evidence while protecting legitimate legal, tax, safety and customer operating requirements.
• Understands why process ownership requires budget, policy and performance authority beyond workshop attendance and flow approval.
• Has stopped configuration when accountable decisions, controls or operational consequences were unresolved despite schedule pressure.
• Demonstrates handover to permanent owners tested through live enterprise and regional decisions before the interim mandate ended.

Non-negotiables

• Will maintain the London hybrid base and attend fortnightly design authorities and scheduled process-market residencies.
• Must disclose relationships with ERP vendors, integrators, food manufacturers, control advisers and transformation subcontractors.
• Brings enterprise process decision authority in manufacturing; methodology facilitation or configuration leadership alone is insufficient.
• Will not label a regional difference as standard or variant until its law, safety, customer and economic basis is explicit.

1. 49 words maximum. Which cross-process ERP decision most reliably reveals whether a global owner has real authority?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you test a claimed food-manufacturing variant before accepting it into the template?
3. 49 words maximum. What must permanent process owners demonstrate before you hand over design governance?