Business Platforms – BPO meets Technology

Is incumbency an adverse factor in Outsourcing Contract Renegotiations?

2010-12-13T04:35:35Z

Not long time ago most of the outsourcing contracts were viewed as a long term steady business with adequate stickiness - But not anymore. The general perception was - once service provider permeates into customer's organization and becomes its integral part as an extended organization coupled with inherent cost arbitrage, any chances of service discontinuity was unthinkable. This dependency in fact gets increased exponentially over the period of contract duration in the form of additional outsourcing work and collaboration. However the current slow recovery has taken its toll on this illusion also especially for the customers who have for long reaped the cost arbitrage benefits and are looking towards next avenues of cost savings.

]]> Organizations also realized that in the frenzy of getting quick cost arbitrage benefits they are now locked in an extremely rigid structure where pace of improvements has slowed down if not stopped completely. Customer's businesses argue that the outsourcing of transactional work and the absence of effective analytics has actually resulted in 'missing the feel of business' to drive the innovation engine for further cost savings especially when in-sourcing is not a viable option most of the time. This has put the onus back on service providers who are increasingly feeling the heat with increased commoditization of skills and flattening of playing turf, with next door service providers claiming to offer similar services in a comparable or much reduced price bands backed by successful track record of operational delivery. Service providers are trying to avoid this spiral of falling price by trying to come up with a story of sustainable savings over and above cost arbitrage.

Now how many times customers often hear from the service providers that - 'Their non-core business is core to them' and along with it the promise and ability to drive sustainable savings benefits and superior skill supply. In a recent survey by leading analysts it was interesting to note that most the organizations are expecting their service provider to drive sustainable savings and this expectation gap is more noticeable in areas like 'Analytics', 'Procure-to-Pay', 'Banking', 'Customer Care', 'Supply Chain' etc. in the order and least in areas like 'Benefits', 'General Accounting, 'Record to report', 'Payroll' etc. Customers also express their dissatisfaction with the service provider to improve processes, add domain knowledge, automation levers, creativity and business understanding into the mix to achieve significant cost savings. This is particularly applicable to the processes which are closely linked with cash flow and operational expenditure perceived as a big potential area.

So coming back to the original question- Is incumbency an adverse factor in outsourcing contract renegotiation? and this certainly gets vital for the customers who don't belong to the category of 'first time' or 'scope increase' for outsourcing and who don't get wowed by cost arbitrage and skill supply alone. Having outsourced the process and technology, customers are increasingly looking towards service providers for committed and increased savings outcomes which are slowly finding its way into contract clauses. However this also demands a change in mindset on the customer side - in terms of demonstrating flexibility towards new processes, tools and technology in a shared environment mode, instead of expecting service provider to commit any dedicated capital investment.

Cloud based Crowdsourcing. Will it be the next paradigm?

2010-11-10T04:05:45Z

State water control board in US has recently partnered with a cloud provider to improve water quality by monitoring thousands of miles of creeks and streams in their jurisdiction by watching water quality & problem alert data feed by community through a mobile application. This is an innovative way to involve community for monitoring the health and conservation of water without requiring any special skill and time. This is also a win-win situation by harnessing the crowdsourced data for a cause society really cares about.

]]> If above would be successful, will set the stage for innovative usage of social community energy in innumerable ways across the globe. The central theme of any Crowdsourcing is - 'two heads are better than one, and would be better with still more heads with all the heads are acting constructively'. In a simplistic way Crowdsourcing is actually an act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by your employees or a contractor to large no. of people, crowd or community through an open invite. The recent advancement in social networking medium and tools has accelerated the Crowdsourcing adoption in various areas across various fabric of our society.

Cloud is on-demand model, mostly paid, while Crowdsourcing thrives on both paid & social community contributions. The technology innovations like virtualization, digitization, standardization, utility computing, social networking etc. over the last few years has led to these newer kind of models which was even difficult to imagine sometime back. The ease at which people are now able to exchange knowledge, information & idea and gather real time data is prompting people to contribute and create value multifold. Imagine your Procurement department receive request for some 'C' class item but don't have necessary bandwidth to source it (doesn't this sounds familiar?)- can very well circle back to the employee community using social networking portal and seek help in finding the most competitive vendor & price using crowdsourcing approach. Likewise there are innumerable examples where employee capital can really contribute with the right kind of cloud based crowdsourcing solution in place.

While Crowdsourcing can be perceived more as an innovation breeding ground leveraging combined problem solving capability, Cloud can really sustain this by providing the necessary and quick execution capability with easy access to computing power with no capital investment. Early signals indicated that these models are definitely going to coexist, thrive, and become an engine of innovation in a very unique way.

Have you considered disaster recovery in your cloud based service model?

2010-11-08T16:34:09Z

An IT failure disrupted travel for 50,000 customers of airlines in Australia due to disruption of reservation and distribution software platform. The IT service provider in this case hosts the platform on its own server infrastructure at a data centre in Sydney on a cloud based model.

While there was a service agreement between Airlines and the IT provider, which requires the mission critical system outages to be remedied within shorter period of time, it didn't happen in this instance. This clearly demonstrates that merely having a contract and SLA's agreement in place don't protect any business against downtime in a cloud environment, and it's important to evaluate & construct a robust failover and disaster recovery mechanism in the NEW cloud environment. You need to clearly know that in such case of such eventuality what you need to do for resuming operations through another data centers? How much data you will you lose by the time you resume your operation? How long will it take to resume operation? What's the acceptable level of performance in such instance?]]> Today when most of the cloud selection decisions are being taken by business with IT taking a backseat, when it comes to addressing above core questions, it is often found that normally there isn't a well thought out processes to address above questions. It is necessary to evaluate recovery aspect in cloud services for geographic redundancy; network redundancy, and finally data centre entity redundancy for a complete failsafe remedy. There's also a need for a well defined mechanism for moving the data from primary network to fallback network so it can be accessed seamlessly in the event of disaster. One needs to clearly understand the cloud provider's disaster recovery procedures to ensure rapid application recovery and low data loss in the event of any unforeseen incident. If your cloud provider is using an automated tool for the backup process, you should run disaster recovery tests on a weekly/ monthly basis and use testing tools to validate the robustness of your disaster recovery process.

It is often seen that while most of the cloud vendors demonstrate high level of maturity in terms of providing DR processes on a standard platform with automated tools and are typically geared to counter any such eventuality, organizations should never overlook this aspect while designing the contours of its cloud based service model.

Are you able to balance between process efficiency and effectiveness in your supply chain shared services?

2010-09-22T15:53:23Z

Recently I had an interesting discussion with Head of supply chain shared service center (incidentally was also an old acquaintance) of a global organization. While we had difference in thoughts towards captive model approach, I picked something very interesting from him on the approach towards supply chain shared service center. His view was - simplistically, most organizations take a holistic view on shared services around three fundamental parameters:

1. Optimal structuring by resizing the staff and align them to the changing business needs with improvised skills and knowledge. This provides a recurring savings depending on the maturity and efficiency of the current processes.

2. Optimal location by sourcing the staff from the right place or country which provide the right skills or talent at a lower price - basically labor arbitrage. This also provides a recurring savings depending on the cost of living. Of course other points of considerations are business friendliness, quality of life, infrastructure quality, and currency fluctuations.

3. Optimal tasking by introducing the right tools, process improvement, service metrics and governance. Over a period of time this provides sustainable savings with relatively less change management issues.

]]> While organizations have taken mix-and-match approach towards shared services which could be a combination of onshore captive, offshore captive, offshore non-captive, local contractor or onshore local consultant, there's a no panacea in terms of achieving efficiency and effectiveness especially in the supply chain area where quick response to internal & external changes is unavoidable. The processes which typically lend itself to the shared services are non-strategic with great degree of digitization, requiring least interaction, ease in knowledge transfer, predominantly rule based and have enough scale. Of course this also needs to be viewed in terms of risks like customer impact, IT, financial, regulatory, cultural and control risks.

Though organizations have achieved efficiencies in the shared services model but when it comes to driving the effectiveness, they feels constrained to drive end-to-end process change due to technology limitation embedded into these processes. One of the major reasons for this is the constant overlooking of - optimization through existing technology, and necessary technology intervention while shifting these processes. And this aspect later troubles organization when they look towards re-revamping the processes in order to respond to supply chain changes, and thus left with no other alternative than to reinstate the processes to the original location, automate it, optimize it and shift it back to the shared service center in a time consuming fashion. In short, best-in-class processes state may provide quick short term efficiency; it is the agility or flexibility aspect of the supply chain processes which gets crucial in the long term for sustainable effectiveness, and so needs to be viewed with a technology lens also while embarking shared services strategy.

Are you able to identify VALUE for cloud in your business case?

2010-09-16T14:09:45Z

One of the most common term perhaps, we often come across in our daily interaction with clients and prospects is 'VALUE' and this term becomes louder when you enter into final stages of sales negotiation. When you don't win a contract, how many times you hear from your customer..... we really liked your offering but don't see VALUE compared to your competition. I vaguely remember the definition taught by my professor in the school, which I still find it very relevant as 'Value = Quality/Cost' or in other words, if the customer's expectations are met or exceeded at what they considered to be reasonable price, the value is realized. Like in any other service offering, one of the biggest challenges faced by the cloud providers when it comes to selling, is establishing the value of the cloud services in the absence of a structured cost data on the client side, especially when there's huge sunk cost already made in on-premise technology. Interestingly, I also came across a situation where one of the cloud prospect did cost comparison for cloud application with just 'app support cost' & 'infra overhead cost', since he was budgeting for only these two cost elements for running his technology. In such cases where technology costs are hidden behind intricate departmental cost allocation, it's time consuming if not impossible to establish the value of cloud services.

]]> One of the biggest challenges in getting arm around costs is host of up-front and hidden cost buried under complex corporate cost allocation policies. In addition to upfront perpetual license fee, installation cost & implementation cost, there's also an additional up-front cost associated with support software (databases and application servers). Along with that there's also a capex every few years organizations has to spend on upgrade or else risks losing support due to outdated software. There's also a cost associated with the upgrade of hardware, training or more importantly on-going internal support costs that consist of salaries of business representatives for supporting the application users. Net-net, for apple-to-apple comparison you really need to identify your costs for all the elements viz. License, Maintenance, Upgrade, Hardware, Database, Application Server, Implementation, Internal Support and Training. It is important to have a detailed cost comparison framework and take into account all the costs to really decide on the value, cloud applications may actually bring to the table.

Interestingly, though most of the SaaS application vendors talk about reduced TCO due to multitenant framework and single ownership, most of the cloud success & traction is happening in SME (small & medium enterprise) space alone, while large global organizations are relatively slow in cloud adoption. While this is not the only factor, SME's certainly has the advantage of relatively simple and transparent costs structure when it comes to preparing a business case for cloud services.

Spend Analysis using cloud model?

2010-08-25T17:48:23Z

Recently I had an interesting discussion with a subject matter expert in Spend Analytics and this was in the backdrop of query by one of our customer who was exploring spend analytics solution on a cloud model and wanted us to revert back with recommendation. The customer didn't want to invest any CAPEX and clearly wanted the solution and services to be delivered on OPEX model. This requirement was quite unique in the sense that while there are established cloud model in the sourcing and operational procurement space, not much of thought process has really gone into niche area like spend analytics in isolation. Further, most of the best-of-breed spend analytics vendors with whom we have interacted doesn't believe entirely in the new model from long term perspective and so don't have any firm cloud based strategy. The general opinion is that while industry has adopted the outsourcing of spend analytics services like data cleansing, enrichment and classification over the years but when it comes to running the real time analysis of data, most of the organization are still wary of doing this on the cloud because of data privacy and security issues.

]]> This brings out an interesting point that while spend analytics 'services' has seen immense traction and increasingly being used as one of the most prominent marketing tool in a non evasive way by service providers to get a foot-in-in the door, but when it comes to analytics it just stop short of end outcome or value delivery. The convergence of technology and services is now poised to bring out a new type of cloud innovation wherein traditional spend analytics services like data set cleansing, enrichment and classification can leverage efficient tools using cloud technology while analytical performance reporting layer with a prebuilt business content such as unified KPI's and metrics can actually be housed within organization firewall. This paradigm is a slight departure from traditional spend cube approach which typically requires putting highly skilled resource in charge for the continuous analysis and get historic information of - what happen in the past for benchmarking, improvement opportunities etc. The new model instead empowers procurement staff with the right visibility into its spend on a real time basis encapsulated into prescribed KPI's and metrics. Organization striving to achieve sustainable value should actually adopt a hybrid approach with reduced usage of after-the-fact spend analysis to drive more efficiency and effectiveness to manage its spend.

Are you able to realize the elusive savings?

2010-07-18T03:47:15Z

Cost reduction has invariably gained maximum consideration as part of any strategic or tactical initiatives during last few years. One customer lamented during review meeting that in spite of fantastic effort put in by the team amidst excellent visibility, the top management in the end was not impressed with the savings realized. Last few years have also witnessed a surge in cost reduction initiatives which was pervasive across entire supply chain and 'savings realization' has probably been the single most important aspect which decided the final fate of these initiatives. Interestingly 'savings realization' has also been the weakest link and now when the moments of cost cutting frenzy is easing out there's spotlight on the execution mechanism to achieve the value delivered. It is also noted that the most prominent area where most of the cost reduction initiatives were attempted was SG&A where it is difficult to put these execution mechanism in place. Taking a cue from execution challenges it can be concluded that the realization of any large saving potential is challenging and requires a good mix of process management, upfront investment and agreement across internal stakeholder (finance being most important). The savings definition, measure and enforcement are crucial which would decide the success and failure any initiative undertaken by the supply chain leader in this challenging environment. ]]> However there's also paradox associated with the savings realization mechanism and it's not always easy to baseline the cost and calculating the savings due to lack of systems and processes. For eg. on the supply cost reduction side while it is easy to define savings for material and goods, it is most difficult for services like marketing, advertising and unique buy like software. The most common example is crude oil (where complete decontrol is still in the offing for India) where current market price is considered for calculating and thus the savings should be linked to the oil price index. Not having agreed upon savings realization mechanism with the internal stakeholder would lead to unrealistic expectation and becomes a sour point later. Some of the typical models which are used to arrive at the savings realization mechanism are 'Baseline cost based on category or grouping'. Eg. like office supplies, facilities and MRO spend, 'Baseline based on unit level' Eg. like marketing, consulting and IT spend, 'Baseline based on industry index' eg. like oil, steel and other commodities. While savings realization mechanism could be unique to initiative, industry and organization's eco system nevertheless it is necessary to define, establish target, measure and enforce final savings supported by adequate systems and processes to act like a barometer for any initiative success.

Outsourcing or Automation? with cloud adaption

2010-07-06T12:02:45Z

With the surge in cloud computing supply leaders are facing yet another dilemma -"whether to structure their business processes around cloud model for increased efficiency or achieve cost reductions through outsourcing in a traditional way". It is a known fact that once you outsource your processes it's extremely difficult to introduce changes in the process embedded into underlying technology and in all probability you will be registering only a small incremental benefits through offshore enablers and productivity tools. On the other hand cloud services on a building block of standardization expect organizations to fundamentally change their processes especially in the non-core area eventually resulting into extremely low TCO due to multi-tenancy effect. While this omnipresent impasse of 'standardization' vs 'flexibility' is not new to the supply leaders, the challenge is aggravated due to cost efficiency pressure on a long term basis and so most product vendors have launched or are launching cloud services at a fraction of traditional cost (as an OPEX pay-as-you-go cost) with committed business outcome.

]]> It is said that that computing is the ultimate form of automation and so cloud computing can't sustain alone on 'standardization' and 'resource sharing mechanism'. For example take a case of datacenters which are surprisingly buzzed with lots of people covering activities like application upgrade, patch application, network monitoring, uneven network load management or surge in web traffic which requires manual interventions. The typical role of system administrator is to apply patches, run programs and install server which would take days if not weeks to implement. Unless until cloud service providers re-architect their solution with increased automation coupled with cost effective components it is not possible to achieve the much needed efficiencies. Another area of focus is technology capacity and support. It is often noted that legacy IT system are actually a patchwork that is inherently inefficient and so firms spend substantial part of their budget simply on keeping the processes running. And because most of these legacy systems can't respond quickly to change in consumption or usage and so the organizations over provide resulting in large overcapacity resulting into extremely low utilization. Cloud computing has a huge a potential to address this aspect also.

While the benefits of outsourcing are pretty established and well known, supply leaders can't overlook the emergence of cloud services which is fast getting matured and so need to craft a balanced strategy to take advantage of it with a well thought out business model in a new realm of cloud computing.

Can you apply auctions for the 'auction services'?

2010-06-21T10:48:07Z

During our discussion with CPO of Energy & Gas client we were asked to share best practices on auctions. Though the company experienced quick and significant savings from the recent auction projects, there was widespread resistance from his own team as well as supplier community. And the most prominent feedback was due to auctions there's perceived supplier relationship deterioration due to inconsistent, non-standardized auction processes & tools. So it became one of the top priorities of CPO to institutionalize standard auctions process in line with best practices. The CPO was also contemplating whether to opt for SaaS or in-house implementation of auction tool. During our intense discussion the CPO in a lighter mood commented - in view of various alternatives why they can't we should do auction for the 'auction services'. It immediately struck me then while we consider auction as one of the essential negotiation strategy how tempting it is to fall for auctions in most of the negotiation situation.

]]> Let's face it, auctions had been adopted at a frenzied pace during last one decade resulting in immense benefits and savings, however the ongoing economic slowdown has also educated us to strengthen supplier relationship to reduce prevalent supply risk. And the auction tools vendors have suitably responded to this fact by providing better flexibility into its decision making tool by factoring in quality, stability, delivery, incumbency etc than just focusing on cost alone. In spite of this we have noticed increasingly reduced usage of auction tools over other strategy during past few years. There are some key aspects one has to keep in mind while deciding on auctions:

- Availability of complete & clear data, specification and requirement. Essentially devil is always in the detail and the more you detail out, better will be your chances to get a competitive proposition from your suppliers.

- Nature of spend. Identify category of spend where margins are perceived higher and where labor contribution, value add to the overall cost is more. Incentivize supplier to be more efficient if you feel there is need to be. Some of the sample category examples are complex machined metal component, printed circuit board assemblies, IT hardware, consulting services etc.

- Supply base dynamics. It is difficult to achieve competitiveness if supply base is not homogeneous eg. if there are patent or proprietary technology and the market supply is limited.

- Attractive business scale. It is necessary to aggregate your spend volume to make the business attractive to the supplier. Again we need to keep in mind that a million dollar in annual spend might not be enough to entice 'building material' suppliers to bid competitively in an auction, but the same spend for 'security alarm system' will generally get a lot of attention.

Well finally the client didn't opt auctions for the 'auction services' but on a similar note many organizations are seriously contemplating using auctions for the nearest category - 'enterprise software' in a creative way by boxing entire software application and services using functional point approach to convert apples into oranges for fair bid value comparison for this category.

What you should look into while considering cloud services?

2010-06-07T12:52:32Z

The interim verdict on cloud services enthuse lots of promise and almost every organization is invariably contemplating 'cloud' vigorously as part of its process and technology road map. While there's still no common view on pace of cloud adoption CXO's are increasingly considering it as a mandatory option due to its ability to provide faster return on its new money and negligible upfront investment. Though there's considerable confusion as well as opportunity associated with cloud services there's no doubt that this pervasive breakthrough will eventually affect all aspects of current supply chain in a positive way. Before taking a plunge into cloud services one must evaluate the business ramification from all sides. ]]>

While business is extremely excited with the cloud services model, there are some valid concerns from IT viewpoint which needs to be addressed in a collaborative way.

1. One of the biggest concerns cited by almost all the organizations is provider's security, privacy and disaster recovery competency, policies & procedures. It is extremely important to have application and infrastructure security requirements clearly mentioned in the contract along with an audit clause whereby you or a third party should periodically verify that necessary controls are in place.

2. The cloud Integration with on-premise systems is one of the important aspects which would decide the success of this model considering the fact that most organizations are still struggling to achieve seamless and enterprise wide information visibility for faster and informed decision making.

3. Have a clear understanding of service level agreement (SLA) at specified level and cloud reliability. Look for a reliable provider striving for a performance that meets higher level of service quality (availability of services, restoration of services within few hours and .. not days etc.)

4. Have in place a transparent application roadmap from service provider in terms of version upgrade, patch fixes with right communication plan in place. This should also include testing provision due to the impact of any such patches and upgrades.

5. The cloud services on-boarding should be based on best practices of matured software development lifecycle (SDLC) with proper tollgates aided by effective governance and program management

6. One of the things often overlooked is comprehensive exit policy in the event you want to discontinue the cloud services. Have a good understanding of data recovery in the event you decide to terminate the agreement.

7. Ensure strong encryption standards for data transmission between cloud and your site with tight data communication in place. This includes browser security issues and updates also.

It is recommended to review in detail about your service provider technology prowess, process knowledge, ability to leverage cloud and relevant experience. It is also vital that all the cloud components working in tandem in a seamless way with a single ownership and any weak link will be amplified considerably if not addressed effectively in the cloud eco system.

Look beyond traditional TCO approach while outsourcing Procurement

2010-05-28T02:34:54Z

Recently we had an interesting discussion with CPO of one of the leading retailer in Europe. Like it happens in most of the outsourcing initiative the Procurement was part of Finance & Accounts outsourcing initiative, which was a big daddy in terms of contemplating overall direction and strategy. While CPO was clear that he needs to look outsource indirect procurement only and was well aware of apparent challenges like fragmented landscape, broken processes, maverick buying and extremely low spend visibility. And this is compounded by the fact that his company has grown rapidly over last few years riding on extremely aggressive acquisitions which has resulted into procurement gasping for basic stuff like standardized processes, enterprise wide contract & compliance, adequate sourcing team etc. Clearly the potential savings opportunity was immense but he also wnated first to put in place a common and centralized structure & processes to achieve the savings. This requirement of additional investment in procurement was in direct conflict with his peer team who wants to create the business case on a reduced TCO (Total Cost of Operation) to reap immediate benefit from outsourcing.

]]> While there's considerable shift during last few years in terms of Procurement gained better strategic focus due its ability to influence bottom line directly, there's still a mindset challenge - whether to transform first and transfer later or vice versa. It is a known fact that once the processes are outsourced, though the incremented process efficiency is attained it will not address the basic issue of 'spend control'. Also the latter approach - 'transfer first and transform later' typically doesn't go down very well with procurement because of the sheer fact that - internal change management due to historic fragmented & decentralized buying habit is almost impossible to address once the processes are outsourced in an As-Is form. It is necessary to have basic tools; framework and processes in place before outsourcing the procurement processes and so it's worthwhile to evaluate additional investment before you outsource. In today's capital starved economic environment when organizations are striving and acting at a rapid pace towards reduced TCO any new investment in processes and technology needs to be substantiated with a strong business case, fast ROI and models like managed services necessarily needs to be part of organization vision pack to unlock huge potential savings through effective sourcing & procurement.

While SaaS is great .. have you taken care of integration?

2010-05-12T02:22:05Z

Lately I had a chance of interacting with CXO of a leading UK retailer who was considering SaaS but was extremely wary of integrating SaaS with its disparate non-ERP systems in the supply chain space. It's worthwhile to note that supply chain solutions in most of the cases would fail to live up to expectations if it is not ingrained completely with other peripheral applications thereby limiting you to access much needed visibility in this fast paced economy. Though most of the product vendors provides basic framework for integration using standard touch points and may assuage you of integration concern, it's only when rubber hits the road you realize that the incompleteness of data or information will not actually allow you to take a fast intelligent business decisions.

]]> Interestingly most of the hosted SaaS solutions have been morphed from the products actually been designed or meant for traditional on-premise architecture and so lack sophistication in responding to system integration, secured connectivity & customization needs of the customers. It is risky to assume that SaaS vendor has the necessary experience to drive integration touch points beyond the standard vanilla interfaces because the technology reality is strikingly different from this. It is important to involve system integration partner in the beginning and assess integration requirement considering your customization need, back end systems, frequency of updates and type of integration so that the entire workflow and data touch point should work in a seamless fashion. The platform model is build on the fundamental blocks of outcome centric framework and by default would ensure that your customization and integration needs have been addressed to a large extent by design.

'To Be' or 'Not to Be' in Business Platforms model

2010-04-19T05:15:36Z

While in traditional lift and shift BPO, one of the key activities during any transition is to map the "As-is" processes and create the "To-be" process in an outsourced and/or off-shored model. The success of transition is largely driven by the level of detail in this activity. A Business Platforms based outsourced model presents a different scenario altogether. Here, the delivered functionality within the platform application is largely pre-defined. The "customized" component is a minor element in comparison to the delivered functionality.

What we therefore have is, essentially a "To-be" process which is mapped to the client business context. The "As-is" process has little or no relevance in a platform on-boarding model. What however assumes significance in a platform on-boarding is the change management at the Customer and Service Provider's ends. In a lift and shift transition, change management is more around communication, internal and external, employee strategy and risk management. In a Business Platforms on-boarding model, the change management is at the level of detail of the process or function transition as the 'To be' entity is an entirely new one for both parties.

Business Platform model - the New Normal !

2010-04-12T12:55:59Z

As organizations get out of the long recession and start looking at the best possible ways to capture the early green shoots of opportunity - there is a New Normal compared to the Normal prior to the recession.

This New Normal indeed impacts multiple facets of Organization thinking , Behavior and Actions. Clearly, the New Normal has brought along with new focus and energy on alternative business models which are geared to deliver to the new reality. Business Platforms is one such model.

]]> Business Platform model - Provides the integrated service model which demystifies the complex governance involved in managing the various moving parts in a large scale transformation to drive business value. The Business Platform model brings together seamlessly the various pieces of application, infrastructure, processing services and creates a simple accountability and governance structure.

It also drives seamless ownership and business outcome lead behavior. Clearly this means the old structures of governance will have to be done way with at both the client and service provider end - replaced with a focus on managing business outcomes. This means having folks in the governance who bring a perspective which is cross functional ( cutting across Silos ) and also means the service providers create a client mind-set which is outcome based. This would mean the way service providers hire, train, enhance and retain will all have to change to support this new model.

The new model will need a new mindset and the new mind set will have to change and percolate across all players in the eco system .This is the only way to survive in the new Normal and be successful!

Outcome centric partnership for driving Innovation

2010-04-05T05:33:19Z

In today’s business context it is imperative for organizations to focus on process simplification, standardization, compliance with green policies and leverage technology for automation across extended enterprise. The convergence of process and technology is bound to drive faster innovations and bring to life new ideas in product & services offerings. The bundled process and technology help in creating better customer experiences, developing better offerings and attract new customers. To achieve these organizations also need to simplify their technology landscape into homogeneous eco system, architect adaptive processes, encrypt green compliance and build value networks in creating smarter organizations – all of which is a huge challenge using internal resources and in-house competency alone and thus would necessarily need to be augmented through value partnership from the service provider, who as an innovation partner should not only provide adaptive service delivery model like ‘Business Platform’ but also help in altering organization’s fixed cost into variable cost structure and facilitate sustainable savings. The new business platform model will also complement the current landscape and be implemented effectively without disrupting ongoing operations with minimum upfront investment in this capital starved economic state.