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Corporate Functional Strategy

26 Feb

Change1

The role of corporate functions, traditionally, has been to conduct the various service-oriented specialized tasks necessary to run the business.  Corporate functions are of strategic significance in achieving organizational objectives yet their role at most enterprises is kind of contractual at best.  These units assist in routine operations, facilitate other business units, and manage conflicts and relevant pressing matters.  For instance, the Human Resources (HR) function is typically responsible for staffing people, administering their benefits, managing performance appraisals, and career advancement procedures.

Constant pressure on businesses to compete in this age of disruption has forced them to rethink the role of their Corporate Functions.  Lately, the expectations from corporate functions have evolved to the degree where the Leadership anticipates the support functions to be of more value for the company.  These corporate functions are now required to align more strategically and directly with the Corporate Functional Strategy.

To undergo Transformation, businesses should act quickly to tap value offered by these 4 key opportunities:

  1. Change in Market Environments
  2. Increased Focus on Discretionary Activities
  3. Increased Pressure on Process Improvement
  4. Development of Distinctive Capabilities

Let’s delve deeper into these key opportunities.

Change in Market Environments

Markets are becoming more and more volatile, uncertain, and rife with innovative rivals.  In addition, the constantly shifting customer demands are forcing organizations to put more pressure on strategic as well as support functions.  This demands from these functions to develop expertise in order to deliver on more complex tasks than in the past.  For instance, IT needs to be able to now design applications capable of unearthing vast data lakes to reveal valuable insights in real-time.

Increased Focus on Discretionary Activities

Traditional corporate functions were more occupied with routine operational activities—resolving financial errors, emailing, overseeing employee compensation, and managing IT assets.  However, now, thanks to Process Optimization and Outsourcing, Corporate Functions have become efficient to the point that they have slashed the requirement for resources to deal with routine activities significantly.  This has freed immense resources, leaders’ time and effort to be spent on discretionary strategic initiatives that have the potential to bring more value for the organization.

Increased Pressure on Process Improvement

Changing market dynamics and intensifying rivalry has strained the organizations to ensure seamless implementation of strategic initiatives, boost effectiveness, and bring on Operational Excellence.  This competitive landscape has forced the functional leadership to reduce expenditures, find new avenues of operational improvement, and enhance value.

Development of Distinctive Capabilities

The changing market dynamics have made the companies realize the significance of creating unique capabilities—differential edge acquired due to the ability to do things remarkably and inimitably. Organizations are now more focused on empowering their global corporate employees.  The Corporate Functions have now become more and more important for the organization’s Corporate Strategy.  Rather than just assessing fulfillment of requests from the team members, rewards and recognition of functional leaders is now being tied more with their efficiency, judgment, ability to create key differentiators for the organization, and finding efficient ways of doing business.

Organizations are now more focused on empowering their global corporate employees.  Rather than just assessing fulfillment of requests from the team members, rewards and recognition of functional leaders is now being tied more with their efficiency, judgment, ability to create key differentiators for the organization, and finding efficient ways of doing business.

Interested in learning more about Corporate Functional Strategy?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on Functional Strategy here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients.  In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over!  The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”

– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd

Small, Agile Teams: 10 Best Practices

13 Oct

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Profitability is at the core of successful businesses.  Many markets do not allow as much top-line revenue increase as the companies would like.  Therefore, organizations have to focus on improving the bottom-line.

Boosting the bottom-line entails raising Productivity.  Productivity enhancement can be achieved by eliminating redundancies and improving processes that change the company.  Process Improvement also means less people needed to accomplish the same tasks.

Change projects—as is the case with most other projects—almost always run over budget and over time, especially when new technology comes into the mix.  Causes for failures in Change Management are many and one of them is heavy and bureaucratic teams.

Raising Productivity in teams designated for change projects is well-nigh impossible.   A solution to this is Building Effective Teams by keeping teams small—a remedy that has shown its effectiveness time and again.

Smaller teams tend to communicate effectively, decide quickly, do course corrections more easily, work faster, and innovate more.

Large organizations have the tendency of deploying large teams because as the planning process goes on, the scope gets bigger and bigger.  This practice is defeating in itself because sight of the goal is lost in the bureaucratic rigmarole.

For projects to be executed swiftly and successfully the following 10 best practices for smaller, more Agile teams are very effective:

  1. Break Down Problems
  2. Eliminate Indispensable Roles
  3. Adopt One-step Decisions
  4. Foster Trust
  5. Share Information Freely & Informally
  6. Increase Visibility & Accountability
  7. Minimize Conference Calls
  8. Track Less
  9. Increase Cross-team Collaboration
  10. Adopt Technology Faster & Effectively

Let us delve a little deeper into some of the best practices.

Break Down Problems

Dividing the project into distinct problems or separating business capabilities into converged organizational units makes it easier for smaller teams to deliver.

Assorting sizable, complex problems into discrete, attainable pieces and teaching members to develop a Problem Solving Mindset enables small teams to take them on easily and over deliver on them.

An alternate to making teams smaller without compromising on the structure of the organization is to separate business capabilities into focused organizational units.

Eliminate Indispensable Roles

Making sure that individuals with a certain type of skill or key people are not scarce in the organization lest they get pulled by different teams at the same time.

Essential people are wanted by all teams, consequentially their time gets split into such small chunks that no task gets done properly.  Operational risk becomes prodigious when dependent on a single person.

It is vital to work away from such scenarios in a team.

Adopt One-step Decisions

Bureaucratic way of decision-making in large teams should be avoided by identifying types of decisions and the decision-making authorities, at the outset.

Foster Trust

Trust speeds up progress, augments quality, and diminishes execution risk.  Trust has to be built up by conscious effort.

Share Information Freely & Informally

One of the ways for effective Team Management is to keep communication swift and the only way of doing this is to keep it informal.

Interested in learning more about these best practices for Small, Agile Teams?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on 10 Best Practices for Small, Agile Teams here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

Do You Find Value in This Framework?

You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library.  FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:

“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market.  They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions.  I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”

– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects

“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power.  For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”

– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients.  In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over!  The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”

– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd

3 Obstacles Hampering Organizational Agility

30 Sep

Agile is a robust approach to value creation.  More and more organizations are adopting Agile Software Development approach.

Becoming Agile is imperative to meet and exceed customer expectations and emerging business trends.  Implementing the Agile approach to Software Development leverages significant benefits, including:

  • Rapid design and development of new product and service offerings
  • Revolutionizing processes
  • Managing talent
  • Reforming organizations

However, Agile alone is not enough.  Agile Transformation can slip-up as Agile teams can stagger while working together and depending on others.  In order to become an effective Digital organization, companies have to steer clear of the obstacles that bog down the rapid progress of Agile software development.  These organizational obstacles to Agile include:

  1. Rigid Technology Architecture
  2. Poor Talent Management
  3. Lack of Product Mindset

Overcoming these barriers necessitates sincere harmonization, persistent effort, and commitment from the business and technology leadership.  Anticipating and addressing these major organizational obstacles is integral to becoming Agile.

Let’s discuss these obstacles in detail.

Rigid Technology Architecture

Using and expanding the same old codes and plugging gaps with software patches renders the IT Architecture cumbersome and unyielding, at most organizations.  Many organizations have outdated systems to manage operations and facilitate their customers.  The integration of these outdated systems with modern applications and IT architecture isn’t easy, making them inflexible.  Most of these systems and aps are inter-reliant and connected.  A small change in a code has serious implications on other connected applications.

IT executives have to consider a number of factors before modernizing their IT architecture.  These factors include potential value envisaged from the new architecture, requirement for new functionalities, risk of disruption, complications involved in the process, extent of fragmented data, and costs.  Based on thorough evaluation of these factors, executives select one of these 4 common approaches to revolutionize their IT architecture:

  • InactionThe investment in overhauling certain applications is thought to be nonviable as their impact is considered insignificant in the overall architecture.
  • IntegrateUncover the old system’s essential function / elements and connect them with modern systems using interfaces (APIs).
  • OverhaulModify the design of applications—e.g. dissecting the code into distinct, autonomous sections and eliminating any hard-coded values.
  • ReplaceDesign innovative applications and deploy latest architecture (e.g. micro-services).

Poor Talent Management

Most leaders understand the importance of finding and staffing top talent in becoming Agile.  However, outdated HR Management practices at some organizations become a major hurdle in attracting and retaining talented individuals.  The issue with IT management at most technology firms in the recent past was their shortcoming in visualizing the problems through a business perspective.  This led to the depletion of technical capabilities due to hiring of more and more people with strong business sense, but inadequate technological prowess.

Another factor compounding the talent deficit is entrusting the hiring function to external contractors by scores of IT organizations.  This practice, although, assists in staffing talent and gaining new capabilities promptly, but diverts much of the executives’ time in supervising the external contractors.  This leaves little time for them to acquire new technical skills and gives the contractors too much control over innovation.  Outsourcing the software maintenance to 3rd parties is another factor that leads to poor accountability and Talent Management.

To mitigate these issues, technology companies need to transform, strengthen their technical capabilities, eliminate dependencies on 3rd parties, and clearly define responsibilities.

Interested in learning more about the obstacles to becoming Agile?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on 3 Organizational Obstacles to Agile here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

Do You Find Value in This Framework?

You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library.  FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:

“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market.  They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions.  I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”

– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects

“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power.  For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”

– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients.  In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over!  The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”

– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd

4 Processes of Sustainable Change

25 Aug

Initiatives aimed at improving performance are often launched with great uproar, costing an organization significant investments.  Such initiatives necessitate extensive changes in the Organizational Culture and the way the enterprise systems and processes function.

However, most initiatives fall short of realizing success.  Decades of scholarly research on Change Management reveals that the issues that contribute the most to the failure of strategic initiatives are:

  • Incompetence in sustaining process improvement.
  • Lack of trust on senior leadership.
  • Failure to embrace new ways of doing business.
  • Performance relapse.
  • Inability of the initiative to produce any positive financial returns.
  • Skepticism towards the desired behaviors and return of impractical employee behaviors.

Researchers have carried out scores of studies to isolate the drivers of lasting change.  Research published in MIT SMR in 2005 discusses how leadership can design and execute Transformation initiatives that bring lasting changes in the organization.The study entailed in-depth analysis of the strategic Customer Service Enhancement (CSE) initiative undertaken by a large clothing retailer, having franchises in multiple geographic locations.

The researchers conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with leaders, in-store operations and support function managers.  Detailed notes of the interviews were shared amongst the researchers alongside an exhaustive literature review.  A case study of the initiative was prepared using independent research to have an unprejudiced viewpoint, free from any bias.  Feedback from the organization’s management was gathered and incorporated throughout the study to seek clarifications or corrections.  Data analysis was carried out employing a coding scheme developed using Atlas.ti tool.  Comparative analysis was conducted and similarities and differences in conclusions were discussed.

The study brought to light 4 key processes necessary for change to stick in an organization.   These key processes assist in laying the foundation for successful institutionalization of change initiatives by creating a company-wide culture that encourages enduring change:

  1. Chartering
  2. Learning
  3. Mobilizing
  4. Realigning

Let’s delve deeper into the first 2 processes.

Chartering

Chartering is a process through which an enterprise classifies the purpose, scope, and the way people interact with each other on a strategic initiative.  Clear delineation of project boundaries, resources, responsibilities, and reporting lines are the elements integral for the success of a change initiative.

The Chartering process entails 2 critical components:

  • Boundary Setting
  • Team Design

Boundary Setting involves the key steps a team takes for accurate definition of change initiative’s scope.

The project team should clearly outline the problem(s) that the project is, and isn’t, going to tackle.  Ideally, while designing and executing a change initiative, the focus of the engagement should be on confronting the most crucial problem area.  The leadership should ensure not to confuse the core team by eyeing too many priorities to deal with through the strategic initiative.

The Team Design element of Chartering involves ascertaining the roles, accountabilities, and guiding principles for team’s collaboration.  Team design entails creating ground rules for team members to interact, devising mechanisms to manage conflicts.  The leadership needs to not only maintain diversity of the project team’s expertise, but also ensure they complement each other, and inculcate a standardized approach to decision making in project teams.  There needs to be fostered a culture of positive discourse and testing ideas amongst the team members.  Incorporating these guidelines helps spark thinking, learning, and decision making.

Learning

Learning aids in anticipating and dealing with hurdles during implementation of Transformation initiatives.  Learning enables the managers to improve the quality of the new processes.  it is a process through which managers develop, test, and refine ideas before full-scale implementation.  The process entails 2 critical components:

  • Discovery
  • Experimentation

For more information on Learning and Development and how to elevate your organization into a Learning Organization, check out the frameworks and tools on Flevy here: https://flevy.com/business-toolkit/learning-organization

The discovery element involves gathering data to identify the objectives of the change initiative and outlining ways to achieve those objectives.  Before rolling out a complete implementation of a change initiative, testing and refining the individual elements of the initiative immensely assists in the success of the initiative.  Gathering adequate information relevant to the initiative, setting up baseline metrics to measure performance, and identifying issues hampering customer satisfactions are the key aspects of this phase.  The team should learn from the failures of prior initiatives, introduce change in a systemic fashion rather than piecemeal, and encourage people to change rationally as well as emotionally.

Interested in learning more about the other processes critical for change to stick?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on 4 Processes of Sustainable Change here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

Did You Find Value in This Framework?

You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library.  FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives.  Here’s what some have to say:

“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market.  They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions.  I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”

– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects

“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power.  For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”

– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients.  In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over!  The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”

– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd

Transportation Cost Reduction in Supply Chain Management

9 Feb

Companies looking to improve efficiency and reduce costs can gain significant ground in the Supply Chain Management function by incorporating Lean Management and Six Sigma techniques.

Reason this area has gone under the radar is that companies do not consider Supply Chain to be their core competency.

Not only Warehousing but Transportation also has almost the same potential in terms of opportunities for Cost Reduction and Process Improvement.  The approach to Transportation Costs Reduction, though, is different to that of Supply Chain Cost Reduction in Warehousing.  This is in part due to the complexity in Transportation Costs, as the costs come from numerous widely distributed individual operations every year.

The approach to Supply Chain Cost Reduction in Transportation encompasses 2 phases:

  1. Understand the Baseline
  2. Identify and Implement Opportunities

Let us delve a little deeper into the 2 phases.

1. Understand the Baseline

Improvement in Transportation operations is hindered, in most cases, by enormous variability in operations, diverse service levels being demanded by various customers, and a multitude of transport providers delivering services in a variety of ways.

Transportation Costs of between 20-30% can be saved by compiling a complete perspective of the overall Transportation operations of an organization.  The evaluation will also reveal essential service categories that have a skewed effect on Cost.

2. Identify and Implement Opportunities

Identification of the Cost Drivers is imperative for the companies to develop a systematic approach to Transportation Cost Reduction.  This systematic approach involves observing 4 main levers of Cost Optimization opportunities:

  1. Compliance with Contracted Price
  2. Negotiated Price
  3. Contract Terms
  4. Customer Breakpoints and Behavioral Changes

The 4 levers of Cost Reductions help in countering the issues impacting Transportation Costs and enabling significant savings.

Significant Cost Reductions can be gained by identifying mutual benefits and risks for both companies and suppliers in addition to understanding customer breakpoints that enable Customer Centric Design.

Let us consider a few instances where Cost Reduction can have a quick impact.

  • Companies, often, have to pay substantial fuel surcharges for waiting time or late payments—caused by variance in actual delivery patterns and the delivery pattern specified in the contract.
  • Suppliers usually charge a higher rate to compensate for inefficiencies in their operational structure. Understanding those inefficiencies helps identify significant savings potential.
  • Logistics Service Providers either increase their rates or add fuel surcharges in order to protect themselves from the effect of fluctuating fuel prices. A fixed rate benefits the customer when fuel prices go up, but creates needless high fuel bills when prices are down.
  • Ordering habits of certain customers add to the Transportation Costs. For example, unknowingly ordering early next-day deliveries, without an absolute necessity for it, causes significant (20% in some cases) extra cost than a delivery at noon.  A 24-hour delivery time costs even less than the noon delivery.

Interested in learning more about the phases and cost drivers of Supply Chain Cost Reduction in Transportation?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on Supply Chain Cost Reduction: Transportation here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of Supply Chain activities. It also captures the management of the flow of goods and services.

In February of 2020, COVID-19 disrupted—and in many cases halted—global Supply Chains, revealing just how fragile they have become. By April, many countries experienced declines of over 40% in domestic and international trade.

COVID-19 has likewise changed how Supply Chain Executives approach and think about SCM. In the pre-COVID-19 era of globalization, the objective was to be Lean and Cost-effective. In the post-COVID-19 world, companies must now focus on making their Supply Chains Resilient, Agile, and Smart. Additional trends include Digitization, Sustainability, and Manufacturing Reshoring.

Learn about our Supply Chain Management (SCM) Best Practice Frameworks here.

Do You Find Value in This Framework?

You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library.  FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:

“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”

– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects

“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”

– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting

“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients. In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over! The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”

– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd

Having Problems Maintaining a Stable Talent Pipeline? Apply the 6 Pillars of Talent Management to Master the Art

13 Oct

Enterprises worldwide face problems selecting, staffing, developing, compensating, motivating, and sustaining their key talent.  Building a sustainable Talent pipeline is quite strenuous even for large multinationals.

Replicating best practices from somewhere and applying them alone isn’t sufficient for organizations to build a Talent pipeline and achieve Competitive Advantage.  This warrants overcoming arduous challenges associated with this digital age, including:

  • Adjusting to varying dynamics in global markets
  • Handling the expectations of varied customer segments in different geographies
  • Managing the preferences of key Talent
  • Acquiring new technologies
  • Building novel capabilities
  • Achieving Operational Excellence by streamlining operations and improving processes
  • Exploring new markets
  • Devising strategies to attract, select, develop, assess, and reward top Talent.

Developing Talent Management practices helps the organizations build and retain talented people available in the job market.  The term was first used by McKinsey & Company in 1997, and it pertains to planning and managing strategic Human Capital through activities, i.e. attracting, selecting, developing, evaluating, rewarding, and retaining key people.

Executives use diverse Talent Management strategies and career pathways based on various departments, levels, and roles in their Talent pool.  Multi-year research on Talent Management practices conducted by an international team of researchers from INSEAD, Cornell, Cambridge, and Tillburg universities studied 33 multi-national corporations, headquartered in 11 countries.  The study revealed that successful Human Capital practitioners and workforce planners adopted 6 core principles.  These principles act as the 6 pillars to effective Talent Management implementation:

  1. Alignment with Corporate Strategy
  2. Consistency of Talent Management Practices
  3. Integration with Corporate Culture
  4. Involvement of Leadership
  5. Global Strategy with Localization
  6. Branding and Differentiation

Let’s discuss the first 3 pillars in detail, for now.

Alignment with Corporate Strategy

Integrating Talent Management with Corporate Strategy is imperative as the need for future Talent depends on the company’s long-term strategy.  Corporate Strategy should guide the identification of Talent required to accomplish organizational goals, since it’s the right Talent that drives the key strategic initiatives rather than strategic planning.

For example, GE’s Talent Management practices have been a great assistance in implementing their strategic initiatives.  The organization regards its Talent Management system as their most potent execution tool and has integrated TM processes into their strategic planning process.  To sustain its image as an innovation leader, GE targets technical skills as a priority in its annual Strategic Planning sessions.  Individual business units lay out their business as well as the Human Capital objectives in GE’s annual strategic planning sessions.  Significant time is spent on reviewing its Innovation pipeline, its engineering function’s structure, and Talent requirements.  To achieve its vision, GE promotes more engineers in its senior management than its rivals.

Consistency of Talent Management Practices

Talent Management practices must be consistent and synchronous with each other.  It is critical not only to invest in advancing the careers of key Talent but also to invest in processes to empower, compensate, and retain them.  Human Capital practitioners utilize various tools to ensure consistency of Talent Management practices, including Human Resources satisfaction surveys and qualitative and quantitative data on TM practices implementation.

For example, the success of Siemens is based on consistent monitoring of its systems, processes, and key performance metrics across its subsidiaries.  Every element of Human Capital Management is connected, continuously assessed, and linked to rewards.  This goes from recruitment of graduates each year, to their orientation, to mentoring and development, to performance evaluation and management, and compensation and benefits.

Integration with Corporate Culture

Corporate culture is regarded as important as vision and mission by renowned global organizations. These companies hold their core values and behavioral standards very high and promote them among their employees through coaching and mentoring.  They strive to embed this into their hiring, leadership development, performance management, remuneration, and reward processes / programs.  So much so that they consider cultural adaptability a crucial element of their recruitment process—as personality traits and mindsets are hard to develop than technical skills—and evaluate applicants’ behaviors and values rigorously.

For example, among other leading companies, IBM has a special emphasis on values while selecting and promoting people.  To ensure consistent values across the board, it organizes regular values jam sessions and employee health index surveys.  These sessions encourage open communication and debate on values and organizational culture and their importance among employees.

Interested in learning more about the other pillars of Talent Management, the various approaches to TM? You can download an editable PowerPoint on 6 Pillars of Talent Management here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Business Process Improvement: From Process Maturity Framework (PMF) to Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM)

27 Apr

Unsuccessful software applications cost organizations significant efforts and resources.  The reasons for these failed ventures are often attributed to technology issues.  However, the real issue is flaws in business processes—the enterprise application deployment environment and the ecosystem which the application targets.

This calls for ensuring the organizational readiness before initiating technology deployment.  It is for this reason the Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) originated.  BPMM helps achieve uniform standards, identify weaknesses in workflows, and create standardized tailored processes that simplify the requirements for enterprise applications.

BPMM’s roots can be traced back to the Process Maturity Framework (PMF) created by Watts Humphrey and his colleagues at IBM in the late 1980s.  Process Maturity Framework explores the ways to introduce quality practices in software development.  Humphrey and his colleagues introduced incremental stages to adopting best practices in software organization.  The PMF served as the groundwork for the development of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for software in 1991.  CMM then became the foremost standard for appraising the capability of software development organizations.

BPMM ensures the success of enterprise systems by providing proven methods for system requirements validity; accuracy of use cases, and effectiveness of applications; simplification of requirements for enterprise applications; and providing a reliable standard for appraising the maturity of business process workflows.

The Guiding Principles for BPMM

BPMM considers processes as workflows across organizational boundaries.  The key guiding principles governing BPMM are:

  • A process should be analyzed in terms of its contribution to organizational objectives.
  • It depends on the organizational ability to sustain efficient processes.
  • Process Improvement should be ideally executed as a phased Transformation endeavor that aims to achieve successively more predictable states of organizational capability.
  • Each stage or maturity level works as a groundwork to build future improvements.

BPMM Utility

BPMM has the following 4 primary utilities.

  • To drive business process improvement initiatives
  • To gauge enterprise application deployment risks
  • To ensure selection of capable suppliers
  • To Benchmark

BPMM – Conformance

Evaluating the BPMM conformance is about ensuring that the implemented system meets the needs of the client.  Verification of conformance necessitates an effective appraisal technique to gather multiple forms of evidence to evaluate the performance of the practices contained in the BPMM.

The BPMM conformance appraisal should be headed by an authorized Lead Appraiser—external to the organization, trained in BPMM as well as appraisal methods.  The team under the lead appraiser should include some members internally from the organization.  The BPMM conformance appraisal team gathers and analyzes evidence regarding the implementation of BPMM practices, judges their strengths and weaknesses, and gauges their effectiveness in meeting the goals of the process areas at respective maturity levels.

The following evidence is utilized during BPMM conformance appraisals:

  • Review of outputs produced as a result of a process.
  • Review of objects, documents, products supporting the execution of a process.
  • Interviews with individuals that perform a process and those who support and manage it.
  • Quantitative data that depicts the organizational state, employee behaviors, performance, and results of a process.

BPMM Conformance Appraisals

BPMM Conformance Appraisals help assure the implementation of practices at a level that achieve the intent and goals of the practices and their process areas.  BPMM conformance appraisals are of 4 distinct types:

  • Starter Appraisal:  An inexpensive BPMM conformance appraisal—which takes only a few days—that entails gathering quantitative data by conducting few interviews.
  • Progress Appraisal:  An extensive appraisal that entails quantitative data collection, investigation of all process areas and practices, review of artifacts, and analysis of interviews.
  • Supplier Appraisal:  An appraisal method to select sources and to make informed decisions during procurement contracts.
  • Confirmatory Appraisal:  A rigorous investigation of all process areas / practices where all evidence is accounted for.

BPMM – Maturity Levels

BPMM encompasses 5 maturity levels that signify the transformation of an organization on the basis of improvements in its processes and capabilities.  BPMM Maturity levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 each contain 2 or more process areas, whereas the Maturity level 1 does not contain any process areas.  The 5 successive levels of BPMM are:

  1. Initial

The focus of the BPMM level 1 is on achieving economy of scale, automation, and productivity growth by encouraging people to overcome challenges and complete their tasks.

  1. Managed

The 2nd maturity level aims at developing repeatable practices, minimizing rework, and satisfying commitments — by managing work units and controlling workforce commitments.

  1. Standardized

The focus of the 3rd maturity level of BPMM is to accomplish standardization in terms of business processes, measures, and training for product and service offerings.

  1. Predictable

The 4th maturity level aims at achieving stable processes, knowledge management, reusable practices, and predictable results.  Organizations accomplish these results through standardization and managing processes and results quantitatively.

  1. Innovating

The focus of the organizations operating at the highest maturity level of BPMM is on implementing continuous improvements, developing efficient processes, and inculcating innovation.

Interested in learning more about the process areas and practices at various maturity levels of the Business Process Maturity Model?  You can download an editable PowerPoint on Business Process Maturity Model here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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