Performance: Ensuring a sustainable step change in operations through service-level management, measurement, implementation of process improvement techniques and reporting. One could hypothesize that 75% of people who express dissatisfaction with offshoring or outsourcing performance never developed a comprehensive baseline of existing costs, service levels, and customer-satisfaction indicators. Therefore, measuring “step change” is purely a notional idea … unless programmatic performance management capability is embedded in the team and the process.
Key to global services delivery is the capability to consistently amass, baseline, interpret and report on data, which dimensions existing conditions, tracks and influences the extent to which performance changes over time. Performance-management capability is critical from the development of a strong business case whose results can be measured, improved and managed, through to operations, through the application of continuous improvement techniques, underpinned by a process that continually and transparently assesses and reports.
Risk: Effectively navigating the issues presented by global regulation, data privacy, tax and accounting and corporate responsibility as business-architecture changes. Managing global services risk is not inviting in the internal auditors at infrequent intervals in order to comply with corporate policy. Every services element — location, policy, staff complement, ownership structure — has a risk element that must be anticipated and weighed as decisions are made.
The capable team defines risk very broadly. It has the ability to identify all derailers — seemingly small to substantial, singly and in aggregate — and develops an informed response model, orchestrating regulatory, compliance, tax and risk-management expertise in the corporation.
Governance: Sustaining the benefits of change though effective relationship and portfolio management. Managing offshoring and outsourcing is like a marriage. Understanding how to behave as a good customer of services is not a competence but an ability to ascertain when to be flexible, when to partner, and when to pound on a contract in order to get and sustain results. The capability to govern well requires an amalgam of relationship skills, business intelligence acumen, legal understanding, and scorecard management. And, as an organization increasing implements new service delivery models, the ability to govern a portfolio of services will become increasingly more important.
Why are the Six Pack Missing in Global Services Teams?
Most organizations approach global services design, development, sourcing and implementation as an IT implementation. Not a surprising plan of attack; experience with complex programs generally comes from the IT world. So it is seemingly rational — and easy — to hire people constituted in similar teams, armed with the same toolkits and experience.
But adjust the focus from technology to process, and a Pandora’s box of challenges opens. Often a technology implementation is single-dimensional and invisible to the end user.
Changes in process delivery mean mapping and altering upstream and downstream processes, opening up policies and procedures for review, and imposing new ways of working on end users that involves a phone call offshore rather than a water cooler conversation.
Outsourcing often is seen as a “flick of the switch” transformation, negating the need to develop internal capability. Providers often inadvertently and subliminally sell to the desire to transfer an underperforming process out of the corporation with little fuss in order to close a deal, forgetting that a smart client means success for all.
How to Gain Capability?
Good managers, regardless of functional expertise, have at least one or more of the Six Pack capabilities. Identifying pockets of in-house talent is the first step. Borrowing staff from other departments such as HR or audit is also helpful. These team members deliver the added benefit of helping translating corporate policy.
Seeking Out Veterans of Other Global Services Initiatives
Whether the programs were successful or not, these staff have deep insights into the ability to effect services change.
Using Consultants Wisely and Well
A good adviser brings extensive experience in similar deals or shared services initiatives, and can be positioned to build expertise in internal staff.
Train, Train, Train
External training in business process transformation is becoming more readily available. External training gives managers the opportunity to pick up deep skills, and learn from other transformation experiences, both good and bad.
