Today, customers can conveniently compare products and decide how to interact with companies. With customer centricity becoming an important success factor, companies must drive customer satisfaction not only through excellent products but also through customer-centric processes. As many companies face an abundance of action possibilities, fast-changing customer needs, and scarce resources, guidance regarding the customer-centric prioritization of process improvement projects is in high need. As existing approaches predominantly focus on process efficiency, we propose a decision model that accounts for the effects of process improvement on customer centricity in line with justificatory knowledge on value-based process decision-making, project portfolio selection, and the measurement of customer satisfaction. When building the decision model, we adopted the design science paradigm and used multi-criteria decision analysis as well as normative analytical modeling as research methods. We evaluated the model by discussing it with practitioners, by building a software prototype, and by applying it at a German insurance company. Overall, our research extends the prescriptive knowledge on process prioritization and customer process management.

The digital economy is highly volatile and uncertain. Ever-changing customer needs and technical progress increase the pressure on organizations to continuously improve and innovate their business processes. The ability to anticipate incremental and radical process changes required in the future is a critical success factor. However, organizations often fail to forecast future business process designs and process performance. One reason is that Business Process Management (BPM) is dominated by reactive methods (e.g., lean management, traditional process monitoring), whereas there are only a few future-oriented approaches (e.g., process simulation, predictive process monitoring). This paper supports the shift towards proactive BPM by coining the notion of process forecasting-an umbrella concept for future-oriented BPM methods and techniques. We motivate the need for process forecasting by eliciting various types of process forecasting from BPM use cases and create a first understanding of its scope by providing a definition, a reference process, showing the steps to be followed in process forecasting initiatives, and a positioning against related BPM sub-areas. The definition and reference process are based on a structured literature review.

PurposeCustomer centricity has evolved into a success factor for many companies, requiring all corporate activities – including business processes – to be aligned with customer needs. With most existing approaches to business process (re-)design focusing on process efficiency, customers are often treated as second-class citizens. Despite emergent research on customer process management, there is a lack of guidance on how to design customer-centric business processes.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a structured literature review and analyzed companies awarded for outstanding customer centricity to compile design heuristics for customer-centric business processes. The authors iteratively validated and refined these heuristics with experts from academia and industry. Finally, the heuristics was grouped according to their expected impact on interaction capabilities to enable their prioritization in specific settings.FindingsThe authors proposed 15 expert-approved and literature-backed design heuristics for customer-centric business processes together with real-world examples. The heuristics aim at increasing customer satisfaction with interaction-intensive core processes, which is an important driver of corporate success.Originality/valueThe design heuristics complement existing efficiency-centered (re-)design heuristics. They reflect cognitive shortcuts that support process analysts in the generation of innovative ideas during process (re-)design. The heuristics also add to customer process management and help put customer centricity into practice.

Purpose -The design and execution of business processes are important drivers of organizational performance. Organizations design their operations around cross-functional processes, adopting business process management (BPM) methods, tools, and systems. This often involves assigning BPM accountability to senior executives such as the Chief Operating Officer (COO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), or Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Some organizations appoint a Chief Process Officer (CPO), a phenomenon raising important questions about the skills and responsibilities of this position within the top management team. We therefore conduct an empirical study to explore the skills and responsibilities of CPOs and differences to other executives.Design/methodology/approach -We conducted an exploratory content analysis of job resumes from LinkedIn.com to investigate the skills and careers of individuals appointed as COO, CIO, CTO, and CPO in organizations from different industries and sizes. The content analysis was complemented with expert interviews of CPOs to obtain rich insights into their perception of the responsibilities of this position.Findings -CPOs possess a unique skill set to serve as change agents. Their skills enable them to serve as integrators and influencers across managerial ranks and corporate functions. COOs, CIOs, and CTOs possess more specialized skills related to their corporate function, whereas CPOs are more generalists who facilitate process-oriented strategy and execution, driving cultural change throughout the organization. These findings are consistent across industry and size.Originality/value -This is the first paper to examine the CPO position in relation to other senior executive positions. Hence, it addresses an important gap in the BPM literature which can help organizations to make informed decisions whether they need a CPO position or have it become a part-time role of one of their existing C-level positions.