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Starting Out on the Right Foot with Outsourcing Change Management

I recently read one of those elaborate corporate leadership books that was trying to boil down 300 pages of common sense into one list of 10 inspiring points. If you are like me, many of the business books you read either oversimplify a very complex problem, or attempt to restate the obvious in new jargon. […]
Deborah Kops
January 1, 2011
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Learn from Leaders

…our change challenge will become: can we change fast enough?Our newest case study content in “Learn from Leaders” features outsourcing and change management lessons from Simon Newton, VP-Shared Services, Kimberly-Clark Corporation. In an industry such as fast moving consumer goods—where margin is everything, it critical to keep pushing process and cost efficiency in order to […]
Deborah Kops
December 9, 2010
Archive

Outsourcing Change Management–Relationship Breakdown: It ain’t just culture

Excuse the excrable use of grammar to make a point. So much fault in outsourcing relationships is laid at the feet of what we call culture–the provider team do not know who the Yankees are, they don’t celebrate Christmas, they have too many holidays.  In other words, they just aren’t like us. And the latest NBC offering “Outsource” […]
Deborah Kops
November 9, 2010
Archive

Sourcing Change partnering with HfS Research

HfS Research is the foremost advisory analyst firm and networking community, focused on helping enterprises make complex decisions with their business process and IT outsourcing strategies. With 36,000 subscribers to its research website and blog, HfS Research provides the most influential and frequently visited collaborative community platform in the global services industry, providing rapid and […]
Deborah Kops
November 3, 2010
Archive

It’s (power)Pointless to manage outsourcing change

It boloxes me that companies think that the lingua franca of communication is PowerPoint, and that five succinct phrases on a well-laid out page will convince people to change their opinions, rearrange their loyalties, understand the issues and forge new relationships. Yet in the outsourcing and shared services world, almost nothing—from examining a business model […]
Deborah Kops
October 21, 2010
Archive

Managing outsourcing and shared services: the end of faith-based management?

Outsourcing or offshoring require a radical adjustment in management style—from situational response to managing by fact; from keeping the team on the straight and narrow by walking around to living by governance structures that don’t come naturally; from calling Susie down the hall to formally logging and tracking a request; from communicating in “corporate speak” […]
Deborah Kops
September 30, 2010
Archive

“Outsource”—friend or foe of outsourcing change management?

Anyone see Outsource last night? Turning outsourcing into comedy is one of American television’s attempts to dominate the Nielsen ratings. The formula appears to be this: take every Indian cliché in the book and pair it with an American counterpart—sort of sacred cows, ambitious and obsequious manager, Bollywood moves, singsong English, “Delhi belly,” shy ladies […]
Deborah Kops
September 25, 2010
Archive

“It’s not my job to make my clients happy.”

Think about what drives outsourcing and shared services adoption–cost reduction. If a program or account manager is meeting all his SLAs, and this year’s cost is less than last year’s, he gets a gold star. And his partner on the provider side gets his gold star if he is meeting margin. What is wrong with this picture? […]
Deborah Kops
September 17, 2010
Archive

Why Oh Why Oh Why?

Why do companies implementing shared services and outsourcing first think about the term “change management” in the weeks before they go live with the new solution? Is it hubris (“they will do it and they will like it)? Limited awareness of the implications of what is changing? Discomfort with the so-called “soft stuff?” Haste to […]
Deborah Kops
September 14, 2010

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