Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing Quotes

“20 years, Accenture remains a key strategic partner in BP’s commitment to best-in-class capability in F&A. In what follows, we detail the seven key practices the parties adopted in the process of re-learning to be world-class.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“to find a solution that works for both parties. Rather than focus on the tool at hand, the partners stepped back and focused on the features the client wanted. Furthermore, the partners were committed to finding a solution that did not harm the commercial interests of either party.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“was ‘quite disastrous’. The client lead was more annoyed that the provider was not forthright about its capabilities than he was about the provider’s lack of capabilities. From the provider lead’s perspective, he thought that he could quickly build the capabilities in India to delight his prestigious client. The partners agreed that the provider would stop providing foreign language support. The analysis: A lack of transparency caused the problem in this story. Providers are quite reticent to expose their inabilities to clients, but the clients will eventually discover them. This storyline is most common in offshore outsourcing, particularly when the provider is in a culture characterized by greater power distance and lower individualism compared to the client.1 A best practice for avoiding this service issue is to implement a rigorous onboarding process that includes training, documentation, shadowing and quality review. But as the next storyline attests, not all clients are willing to make that onboarding investment.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“over-promises and under-delivers”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Key 4: Adopt a partnering”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“the primary criteria was a partnership for transformation, flexibility and growth. This limited the choice of providers to those who could partner for transformation, rather than just deliver service at lower cost.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“3.4. Cost plus innovation”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“finance systems struggled to deal with the escalation in business volumes. Due to process improvements in the outsourced F&A processes, accounts payable and receivable and monthly closing have now become a military operation. He commented, ‘Labor arbitrage is temporary, but process improvement is permanent. Silent running was absolutely the main objective and it is not a problem for the organization any more. We achieved it more cheaply that we used to’.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Chapter 3 Key 2: Focus on business and strategic benefits beyond cost efficiencies”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Chapter 3 Key 2: Focus on business and strategic”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“An old dog learns new tricks”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“New CEO shifts gears, moving world-class to good performance”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“measures on performance. New transformation projects are planned and delivered each year. During all this time, there has been a steady set of leaders managing the Microsoft–Accenture relationship, which is key for sustaining high performance in this relationship. However, transformational leaders will get bored without new challenges, so long tenures are also associated with growth of the BPO relationship in terms of scope of services, expansion to new locations and continual rounds of innovation.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“The individual leaders at both Microsoft and Accenture are clearly transformational leaders who have been devoted to this partnership since the beginning. Microsoft partnered with Accenture in 2007. The initial 7-year agreement spanned 90 countries and 450 individual roles. Within 18 months, the partnership designed and implemented a global set of standardized processes across 92 countries, improved internal controls and compliance, improved scalability and reduced costs by 35 per cent. In 2009, the partnership was extended to include more accounts payable and buy centre processes. The contract was worth $330 million in 2012 and was extended until 2018. Five years into the BPO relationship, the partners continue to innovate Microsoft’s financial, accounting and procurement processes. In 2010–2011, for example, the partners moved 25 international subsidiaries from manual invoicing to electronic invoicing. The partners implemented new tools that increased transparency by allowing Microsoft’s business users to see every dollar spent and timely”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“From poor to good BPO performance”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Maintaining world-class performance with leadership stability”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“provider also bolstered the employee referral plan and implemented better metrics such as ‘hiring manager satisfaction’ with the pool of candidates sent by the provider.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“As service levels went green, the partners also worked on more value-added innovations. For example, the consumer products company wanted to recruit engineers with demographics that better match their consumers. The provider helped by changing the recruitment strategy from reacting to current job openings to proactively building a pipeline of potential engineering candidates.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“can deal with them openly and transparently, without doing fault-finding. What we do in those cases is a very rigorous root cause analysis and we look what needs to be better.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“To help with root cause analysis, the provider implemented a business analytics tool – at no additional cost – to better diagnose service issues.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Chemistry with counterpart: Each leader enjoys working with his/her counterpart.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Empathetic: Each leader understands, is aware of and is sensitive to the counterpart’s feelings, thoughts and experiences.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Trustworthy: Each leader is trustworthy and has good intentions towards his/her counterpart.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Action-oriented: Each leader acts swiftly to remove or work around obstructions stemming from people, processes or contracts.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Clout: Each leader has high levels of credibility, clout and power within his/her own organization.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Spirit of togetherness: Each leader does not talk poorly about the other party but instead presents a united front.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Put the customer first: Each leader always does what is best for the customer organization, then, if need be, fairly compensates the adversely affected party.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Problem solve: Each leader seeks to diagnose and fix problems; he/she does not seek to assign blame.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“Transparency: Each leader is open and honest about all operational issues.”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing

“The ten final attributes are: 1. Focus on the future: Each leader focuses on where the outsourcing relationship should go,”
― Mary Lacity, Nine Keys to World-Class Business Process Outsourcing