Assign one business owner who can resolve workflow decisions and coordinate acceptance. A supplier can build the system, but cannot decide your operating priorities for you.
Prepared with AI assistance. These are practical scoping recommendations; examples are illustrative, not client results.
Choose decision authority
The owner should understand the process and have a clear route to resolve disagreements. Seniority alone is not enough if the person cannot spend time on delivery. Name a deputy for absences and identify which decisions require finance, operations, or another stakeholder. Keep escalation practical rather than creating a committee for every field.
Separate users from approvers
Frontline staff can explain what actually happens; department leaders can authorize a change in responsibility. Both perspectives matter. Invite users to demonstrate real work before the scope is fixed, then make clear who approves the final rule. Otherwise every review can reopen decisions that the team thought were settled.
Reserve operating time
The owner needs time for questions, sample data, demonstrations, and acceptance. Put these responsibilities on a calendar alongside development milestones. A project can wait on a missing answer even when the supplier is ready to continue. Make blocked decisions visible so the schedule reflects business availability as well as engineering work.
Create a decision record
Keep a concise list of choices, reasons, and unresolved questions. For a routing rule, record the selected owner and what happens when that person is unavailable. The record should explain the intended operation to a new team member without requiring them to reconstruct months of messages.