Job at a glance
Company Description About AbbVie AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio.
For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at  www.abbvie.com . Follow @abbvie on  LinkedIn,   Facebook ,  Instagram ,  X  and  YouTube. Job Description Purpose Statement The Associate Director, Clinical Business Process Owner (BPO) is accountable for continually optimizing high-complexity, end-to-end clinical business processes — defined as process areas with a high number of cross-functional stakeholders and significant process steps — including leading the cross-functional working teams that identify and define improvement opportunities and ensure accurate documentation, training, compliance, and system alignment.
The Associate Director, BPO will identify, plan, and execute opportunities to drive innovative, enterprise-aligned process excellence and deliver on organizational strategies, goals, and objectives. They serve as the primary point of contact for continuous process improvement and change management activities for their assigned processes, and communicate key updates and strategic recommendations to senior leadership for alignment and endorsement.
Major Responsibilities Serve as the accountable owner for assigned high-complexity clinical business processes across their lifecycle (Engage → Evaluate → Execute → Measure → Sustain), defining process scope, intended outcomes, and decision rights; operate with significant independence to partner with functional leaders and SMEs to streamline and optimize complex, cross-functional process areas. Establish and maintain an end-to-end process governance model (standards, forums, escalations, and stakeholder alignment) to ensure consistent global execution and a unified, authoritative voice to the business across high-complexity domains.
Own process health and sustainability by defining and monitoring key process signals and KPIs, performing periodic process reviews and listening sessions with stakeholders, identifying emerging risks, and driving timely mitigation and continuous improvement; escalate strategic risks to leadership for decision on alignment. Translate complex business and regulatory needs into clear process requirements and partner with Process Excellence roles (e.g., process design/engineering) to ensure documentation is complete, consistent, and inspection-ready across high-complexity areas.
Act as the authoritative point of contact for process questions within the domain; curate and maintain process knowledge content and ensure fit-for-purpose guidance for end users, proactively alerting leadership of trends, knowledge gaps, and remediation plans. Lead cross-functional and GBO working teams to align priorities, trade-offs, and adoption plans; manage competing stakeholder interests and navigate ambiguity to ensure decisions are transparent, strategic, and durable.
Partner with stakeholders to ensure change narratives, communications, and role-based training enable effective adoption and sustained performance across complex, multi-stakeholder process domains. Coordinate and coach a domain SME network to support process adherence, identify improvement opportunities, and reinforce standard ways of working; embed innovation and digital/AI enablement into process oversight where appropriate.
Partner with system and business owners to ensure process-to-system alignment, impact assessment for changes, and effective implementation support (e.g., acceptance criteria, UAT input, and readiness planning). May manage 0–4 direct reports; responsible for performance management, development planning, and building a high-performing, ac