The Evolving Landscape of Global Technology Delivery

 

In the last 20 years, most organizations have shifted their technology engagements with the global vendors (suppliers) – going from a “touchless” outsourced delivery to a “partnering” model and a shared ownership of the business success.

We have come a long way from back-office operations and call centers to active participation in executing growth and modernization strategies. Companies have adopted the outsourcing models at scale, while the vendors in-turn have evolved from resource augmentation to creating a pool of highly experienced industry experts, who partner with client organizations in building the platforms for shared success.

The benefits and the profits at the client organizations have soared, and so have the expectations to extract even more value from the suppliers. Internally, pressed for efficiencies, ROIs and savings targets, companies are looking for even greater stakes from the vendors, where the latter should not only partner, but also own the end-to-end program execution. In addition, vendors are expected to be geographically dispersed to provide that round-the-clock coverage and cost optimization. 

The vendors, however, have to keep pace with these increasingly complex expectations and their success will require strategic investment in two areas:

• Develop geographically disperse locations and some redundancies, with the resource pool in your top 5-10 core support functions. Client needs often pop up, without the runway to stand one up, and being able to stand up a team at a short notice is often the key to building that long-term relationship.

• Develop a talent pipeline that regularly feeds the need for the resources. This is highly relevant from a client perspective, when market fluctuations create short-term gaps and program delivery is jeopardized or delayed.

• For a more meaningful relationship, be ready to partner in client’s success on both operational efficiencies and customer-facing KPIs (revenue, CX, CSAT, etc.). Have client engagement managers and directors to be more conversant with the client and the industry, to provide fresh outside perspectives to problems that may seem like headcount issue, when it really is about a different way of doing solutioning.

With these three imperatives, I believe, vendors can greatly enhance the client-partner relationship, and build a more sustainable and mutually beneficial business model of shared success – consider product development, AI/ML applications, business process automation, and other back-office functions in the list. 

For vendors, do it now and showcase it. From a client’s perspective, we are looking for this proactive approach and a foundation to internally promote the partnership and commit to a long-term investment.

3 E's of Effective Leadership

Been in a few leadership seminars, and the oft-repeated terms reminded me of the article from a few years back, so decided to share it again. (originally published in March 2016).

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The greatest responsibility of a leader is to make their employees successful. This is, more often than not, the one trait that does not garner enough attention from those measuring leadership success. It is about how well the employees are flourishing under one's leadership!

Use the 3 E's to answer this question; perhaps a better measure than (or in addition to) the usual promotions, team size, numbers, etc.

• Empower your employees (go do it!) – set clear goals and expectations, but don’t stymie free thinking. Establish the culture where managers can think freely and are “empowered” to make decisions that move the project forward.

• Enable your employees (provide the required resources!) – get down from the “I know all” pedestal and learn about the daily struggles of a manager in balancing deliverables and getting  projects prioritized for delivery. Then make sure to provide the required resources and/or remove the organizational hurdles to “enable” employee success.

• Engage your employees (give a pat on the back more often!). Employees are more engaged when they are recognized. But, do it on a regular basis, not just once a year. Even the small achievements should be called out at weekly reviews or other team gatherings. It will go a long way in keeping them motivated and “engaged” towards the company’s success.

Just like the other assets within the company, employees also need nurturing, albeit with a human touch!

3 C’s of Consumer Centricity

Back into a few age old discussions on customer centricity and wanted to remember the foundations that formed the basis of organizational changes I was fortunate to have been a part of. (originally published in September 2014)

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Consumer-centric organizations are known to do all they can to engage with their customers and proactively cater to their needs. Often these will include product/service updates, social communications, systems to support consumer-centric strategies, etc. 

However, it is easy to feel burdened with multi-directional pulls on your consumer-centric strategy as tactical urgencies evolve in any business cycle. Keeping a framework of key consumer touch points is imperative in such situations to stay focused and continue to deliver on the promise of better than excellent engagement. I categorize these core consumer touch points into 3 areas – the 3 C’s of Consumer Centricity.

1. Content – what does a consumer see about your brand, products, services? Are you developing content that clearly communicates and reinforces the value of your products and services? Does this content remind the consumer how valuable their relationship is to the brand and vice-versa? Whether a consumer is using your products or not, we need to evolve our content strategy such that it caters to consumer need for information, before and after they make a purchase decision, and at the time of purchase, you will typically get the nod.
2. Choice – Do we offer choice in our products and services? Is our product strategy in-tune with the evolving market dynamics, namely, technological changes, consumer usage behaviors, market expectations, etc.? After we have successfully attracted consumer attention, we need to ensure we are ready to live up to the promise – great product and service. As and when consumers mature and place their trust in your brand, you need to be able to offer a portfolio that goes beyond the core product(s) and allows the customer to strengthen the bond.
3. Community – Speaking of bonding with brand, what better way than to draw customers into your community. Do you have a community that not only caters to customer queries, but also, provides valuable information to enhance your products/services? Social revolution has brought about a radical shift in organizations’ communications tactics, as to how frequently and what do consumers need to know. We need to proactively build this into our marketing strategy and invest in right resources to maintain it and keep it current. 

As we all know, consumer life-cycle starts well before they become our customers, and continues well beyond their first purchase. The 3 C’s provide a marketer’s view into this life-cycle and by creating the planning tools within this framework may just help simplify analysis, refine your marketing/communications strategies, maximize ROIs and contribute to your maturing as a consumer-centric organization.

Why do Customer-Centric Organizations Fail?

In an earlier post on customer-centricity I had argued that executive reviews rarely go beyond the numbers (revenue, subscribers, traffic, etc.) and fail to capture a more powerful growth engine – our customers. But, what if our strategies are built around customer success, yet the goals are not achieved? 

There could be a multitude of reasons namely, market saturation, competitive pressures, product quality, marketing success, operational effectiveness, etc. While most of the listed here may be in play, in some form or the other, I want to bring our attention to “operational readiness.” 

We can hire the best consultants to design our product, consumer and marketing strategy, but it is our operational readiness that will determine how well we deliver on this strategy. 

Let’s take an example, we have our corporate mandates such as; expand our footprint, diversify our product offerings, increase ARPU, reduce cost, sign a new partnership, etc. We conduct due diligence, come up with a strategy to achieve that objective, and with a fancy deck, will have all the approvals needed for a launch. However, there is often a need for "incremental investments" and a shift from "corporate ways" that are critical for our operations to deliver. 

In my experience at leading new product launches and customer-facing site enhancements, the build phase often springs up unexpected surprises that either cause delays, or force a go-ahead with a compromised product/service features. These could be in the form of systems and process updates (may require capital investments), shift in strategy to offer a "beta" version of the product, shrink the scope of support offered through CRM, etc. As a P&L manager, it is important to highlight the larger gains and keep the project ROI positive and within acceptable range.

A well thought out and “realistic” implementation plan should be integral to the strategy deck for a new initiative. 

So, don’t underestimate the value of conducting due diligence and investments around building operational capabilities to meet the strategic goals. That is one activity which will significantly impact the success of; new product launch, analytics integration, a website redesign, and systems upgrade, etc.  

The bottom-line is that the cost of an unsatisfied customer is far too high to under-estimate the costs of poor delivery. 

In one of my client engagements, I had to re-evaluate the product features and SLAs that were agreed upon with the partner, as these were leading to customer complaints and unacceptable levels of churn. Part of the strategic redo included a better communication collateral for sales and marketing channels. The compromises made during the launch to meet the deadlines would come back to bite so quickly - no one had imagined! 

Corporate Innovation is at Risk ...

A new product or service does not come around every day. Organizations are built around the core innovative idea and thrive on systems, processes and capabilities to manage subsequent growth. In more mature organizations, repeatable processes are created to deliver the value, service and support to customers. However, this "order and routine" also leads to a corporate culture that becomes “inhospitable” to innovation. Let me share a great quote from one of marketing's leading innovative thinkers - this would become my inspiration for this post. 

“Organizations by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environment for innovation.” - Ted Levitt.

How can we look at innovation in a mature organization?

As someone has said, “innovation is anything, but business as usual.” Most daily tasks in an office tend to fall into the routine job duties, but the teams need to be encouraged to challenge the status quo and find ways to improve product, service, processes. In other words, INNOVATE! 

Let’s take an example of a project meeting that I participated in. While trying to resolve the poor quality complaint on a new product, it was brought to our attention that often the call-issue is not captured and/or is categorized inaccurately in CRM system. Adding a new complaint code based on new service would have seemed like an obvious next step, but, the support team was reluctant to do so, as it would overload the already complex list. A deeper dialogue revealed that patching the legacy systems (linear fix) was no longer a viable option and our analysts suggested an overhaul of CRM-coding that better represented the new business and customer experience priorities (innovative fix) . I saw the innovation happen right there!

Innovation does not start at the CEO level, or even at one or 2 levels below. It can just as easily start at the lowest level, amongst the troops in the trenches. It is our analysts and managers, who are interacting with the customers, vendors and internal stakeholders that are most aware of the issues and probably can help lead or collaborate on more pragmatic go-forward strategies. 

If you happen to be in such advanced organizations, don't be surprised if the next great idea for customer service, cost efficiency, reporting, etc., comes from one of the many of the "routine" meetings. It is these voices that need to be heard! It is this “out of the box” thinking that needs to be encouraged! It is this "corporate culture" that needs to be nurtured! It is the senior leaders who should lead such "corporate innovation” by encouraging participation and curbing the “quick resolution” mindset.

Corporate innovation can only be kept alive if we let the “bottoms-up” approach to flourish.

Here are a few ideas to encourage corporate innovation:

• Tying manager performance with matrix feedback from colleagues, which will ensure that managers are encouraging participation
• Training project managers to record and follow-up on any “out of the box” initiatives that emanate from the routine meetings, instead of staying focused on task lists
• Senior leadership finding time to discuss those ideas, not always relying on a formal business case to justify the time/resources spend
• Institutionalizing a reward system for innovative ideas and solutions, and making sure idea, and NOT the value, is recognized - value invariably follows!

Corporate innovation, if done right, holds real promise for more mature organizations. It ought to be at the core of corporate culture and true leadership here would improve employee engagement, get them vested deeper with the organization’s success, and may significantly contribute to the bottom-line.

* image from: awma.org

Big Data – Framework to Be Smarter with Analysis

Marketers use data to assess campaign success, allocate budget, delineate customer analytics, design new products, optimize acquisition and retention, etc. However, with multiple data sources and owners, organizations often struggle with consolidating the right data and reporting to fully answer the questions asked. Along comes big data!  

Big data is exciting and challenging at the same time, since it affords a holistic look of customer analytics, yet exacerbates the complexity due to legacy data-silos and stakeholder needs.

This is a call for "smarter” approach to defining and using big data for tactical and strategic marketing objectives.

For marketers, a mapping exercise, as below, may help create a framework of available and needed data and systems. The layout identifies the evolution of data capture and applications, as organizations mature, and highlights the value being injected back into the business. It is telling in different ways – gaps in data capture, systems limitations, analytical resource allocation, etc. But most importantly, it highlights the need to innovate and upgrade legacy systems such that the analytics efforts can be targeted for the greatest impact and ROI.

It must be noted that the data silos are identified as they relate to customer analytics. Note that, as a marketer, I am looking into our current systems, so we can model returns from existing capabilities and tie the improvements to enhanced future investments. In other words, try and look at the parts to solve for the whole - get some short-term wins to articulate investments and the need to be on an "analytics fast lane.”

The question to ask of the management is – here’s where we are and here’s where we can be. Are we ready to invest?

The framework may help articulate big data scope and ROI, and also facilitate:

• Breaking down projects into chunks of easily manageable proposals
• Identifying the next big investment 
• Developing internal capabilities (organizational and personnel) 
• Providing a launching pad for execs to commit to larger projects

With investment along X-axis, we can improve our capabilities along Y-axis, which in turn, contributes to the growth trajectory graph. 

Customer-Centricity in Government - It's an Imperative

Here's an article from "nextgov" that predicts a flattening of customer-centric growth within the government. 

The study by Forrester forecasts federal spending on customer-centricity and digital transformations to stay flat. Although, data is projected to move towards standardization and open sharing. Mixed bag really, but really worth tracking!