{"id":1242,"date":"2013-06-30T21:03:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-30T21:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/sourcing-two-dot-o_063013\/"},"modified":"2013-06-30T21:03:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-30T21:03:00","slug":"sourcing-two-dot-o_063013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/sourcing-two-dot-o_063013\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Six Tenets of Sourcing 2.0 – where a “lights on” approach might just get you fired"},"content":{"rendered":"
All that rhetoric, all that PowerPoint, all those white papers. \u00a0Many providers and advisors desperately tried to portray the outsourcing of IT and business operations being more than simply saving money. \u00a0But they were all really painting a pretty veneer over\u00a0<\/span>why<\/em> enterprises were really interested in it: \u00a0they wanted to reduce the cost-burden at the <\/span>bottom<\/em> of their enterprises. \u00a0They wanted to get <\/span>smaller<\/em>. \u00a0That really was the premise behind Sourcing 1.0.<\/span><\/p>\n Welcome to 2013. \u00a0We’re only now limping away from five years of cost-containment and reactionary measures, into a world where much of the cost-burden at the bottom of most enterprises’ operating functions has now been hacked away. \u00a0Ambitious enterprise leaders are now zoning in on those next layers upwards<\/em> of their staff investments to understand how to become even more<\/em> cost efficient and even more<\/em> nimble, in terms of managing their global operations. \u00a0Big and clunky is ugly, lean and scalable is the new corporate sexy.<\/p>\n The transformational capability of middle and upper management is under intense scrutiny as enterprises shift from the reactionary to the radical<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Times of economic recovery pose an entirely new set of challenges and skill requirements for middle and upper managers: \u00a0no longer is their primary job focus simply to keep a lid on costs and keep the machine ticking along. \u00a0Suddenly, they are expected to come up with the “what next?” \u00a0Managing operations to drive new ways of achieving value is far, far harder than keeping the lights on and the costs contained. \u00a0And it’s exposing many middle and upper managers as being legacy-thinkers and legacy-operators – unable to grasp new ideals, new ways of doing business and letting go the inefficient, cost-bloated ways of the past.<\/p>\n Suddenly managers, whether they sit in IT, finance, procurement, marketing and so on, are expected to be transformation experts, constantly innovating and aligning their focus areas with the objectives of the business. \u00a0If they are incapable of driving value beyond maintaining the status quo, they become walking bloated costs waiting to be exposed, analyzed, and eventually removed or replaced. \u00a0I cannot count on both hands how many conversations I have had over the last few months with executives who have found themselves moved out of their firms because they were not seen as “transformational” enough in their approach. \u00a0Most were not bad at their job – it fact, some are very capable, but the common thread is simply that they had found themselves overseeing a static operational function and no longer could prove their value beyond keeping the lights on.<\/p>\n The Onset of Sourcing 2.0: \u00a0Embedding third-party services into the broader Business Operations Value Chain<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n You only have to analyze the prime motivations of enterprises – and how they are shifting – to understand the new challenges facing middle and upper managers, as their business leaders seek to manage their operations in their entirety<\/em> across outsourced, shared services and inhouse elements. \u00a0Suddenly, we need managers who understand processes, how they are enabled by technology, and how they can be best delivered by their own staff in tandem the workers contracted to their outsourcing partners.<\/p>\n We’ve taken the data from our 2011 State of Outsourcing Study and compared it with the same study we ran earlier this year to see where the motivations are shifting across delivery frameworks, whether they be predominantly outsourced, predominantly inhouse, predominantly shared services, or predominantly a hybrid approach:<\/p>\nForget all the “phases” of outsourcing that have been debated so vigorously over the last twenty years –\u00a0<\/em>the industry is only now evolving \u00a0to a new phase, where middle and upper managers are being challenged like never before to bring value to ambitious organizations, or face worrying consequences.<\/em><\/p>\n