Business Platforms – BPO meets Technology

Imagine a situation wherein you are leaving for a business trip at a short notice for an important business event. You have checked-in at the airport, well settled in your seat for a 24 hours flight and now comfortably seated on a reclined cushioned seat with refreshment on the tray, gazing at your favorite business magazine on an article you have been yearning to read for weeks and now only you have got free time. Suddenly … a flight attendant approach you to exchange your seat with some other passenger and you are suddenly in a discomfort zone with your mental harmony completely shattered. All in all, you would require considerable effort on your part to get you back on track and get into your comfort zone again. Imagine if this change is happening when aircraft is passing through a turbulent storm and now not only your effort to settle down will be much more intensive you would also feel unsettled for a long time in a unproductive mode.

This is how change management touches all our lives at some point or other and we never give it a much serious thought while trying to build a new program or initiative. Can this always predicted and avoided? Well a good monitoring can prepare organization and reduce impact to some extent but it can’t be avoided completely especially in the present situation, when there are question mark again on the economic recovery and so organizations necessarily need to build adaptability or ‘ability to react promptly and positively’ as inherent in its business DNA in today’s new dawn of global rivalry and unpredictable economy where the only thing which is constant is ‘change’.

So organization’s innate people and processes need to react much faster to any external or internal business events or disruptions. This mean the futuristic business models have to be built on a strong foundation of blended processes and technology so that they should be agile enough to incorporate change and adapt themselves with least effort in a smooth way. By outsourcing basic non-core process and technology on a hosted platform business model on a variable cost structure can enable organization to adapt and react much quickly to varying business condition because most of the change management will actually be happening on the service provider side, who have got enough expertise on these basic non-core area and thus would enable least of change management on the organization part on an ongoing basis. However organizations also need to deliberate seriously whether they are really ready for this ‘change’ and the current economic scenario is providing enought signals that the options are really limited.

Posted by Gurjeet at 01:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As more market awareness, client interest and new deals start playing out in the market place for Business Platforms, it is imperative to understand that this new engagement model clearly can unleash phenomenal business value.

Some of the areas of business value unleashed by Business Platforms are:

1. Simplifying process, technology and people experience with an easier or robust governance model provided by a single partner
2. Builds the Foundation for growth, both organic and inorganic
3. Enhancing Employee, Supplier and Customer experience with higher empowerment & self sufficiency
4. Continuous benchmarking on both efficiency and effectiveness dimensions to ensure the process supported by the platform is best-in-class
5. Higher level of sustainability by creating significant optimization of resource consumption (e.g infra)

Overall, the Business Platform model adoption has the potential to  unleash phenomenal business value to customers for sustainable growth and profitability.

Posted by Anantha Radhakrishnan at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As we march into the new year with the strengthening green shoots of global recovery, client corporations enter into their planning for this year and the next decade. Business Platforms which is the nirvana state of managed services in cloud will clearly emerge to be the new business model for the next decade.

While they are already a few early  adopters for this model, we believe the rapid adoption will come from those clients corporations which are not wedded to their sunk cost. We expect fortune 300–2000 to be the pioneers in adoption of the new model. The fortune 300 will also adopt the platform model in emerging markets and geographies and in the areas where renewal opportunities come by. The business model makes the client corporation  become a smarter enterprise, simplify their processes & technology landscape and enhance their agility to respond to the market opportunities.

Posted by Anantha Radhakrishnan at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The rapid embracing of globalization during last few decades has created an extremely profitable complex network business environment and on the other hand it has also made the global supply chain extremely vulnerable to any adverse event even in the remotest part of the world. You may ask any CPO and one of their biggest concerns today is supply continuity without disruptions and organization’s ability to manage any supply disruptions. While prevention is always better than cure, in managing supply risk you actually need a balanced combination of both. Today’s supply chain needs to be much more agile and adaptive to both external & internal events and should have the ability to react quickly to any negative signals popping up anywhere down the supply chain. With slow recovery though the number of bankruptcies have been abated and there’s an ease on liquidity, today’s global supply chain is bound to face newer kind of risks in the form of trade barriers, sustainability regulations, fluctuating currency rates, volatile commodity market etc, which mean that we need to gear up our supply chain eco-system beyond the myopic view of supplier monitoring alone. There’s also a need to evaluate supply risk from a multi-tier perceptive for any risk event at supplier’s supplier supply also that can impact our supply chain, and so access to diverse and fragmented sources of supply information is absolutely critical. It’s a business imperative in today’s environment that organizations need to work much more closely with their supply base using collaborative tools and aspire to be closest to the supply base as a their  top supply risk mitigation strategy so as to be proactive in capturing any distress signals in their supply chain. This of course will depend upon how integrated the underlying procurement technology is in terms of demand capturing, spend visibility, supplier transactions, supplier performance, external financial indicator, trade compliance, supplier accreditations etc. Though there’s much more matured procurement technology available now in terms of spend management system, supplier information management, analytical platform the key aspect will still lie in terms of ability to leverage this by collaborating and teaming with supplier in a structured way.

The second most important mitigation strategy has to be the continuous optimization of supplier portfolio by creating a lean supply base for driving the strategic level partnership.  Having large nos of supplier will make the supplier risk management effort not only cumbersome but also difficult to manage. To rationalize the supply base it is necessary to have unified supplier data instead of it is fragmented across multiple disconnected purchasing systems. It is also important to enrich the procurement systems with necessary financial, supply commodity market information by collaborating with appropriate sources of external information.

While unified technology plays a crucial role in managing supply risk, the success factor still lies in affixing right priority to supply risk management program rather than running it as yet another strategic initiative with right knowledge and skilled folks.  With increased emphasis on managing the supply continuity with lean supply base there’s a renewed focus on - how to best diagnose and manage supply risk in a structured way.

Posted by Gurjeet at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)