This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well.
This time it is Phil Fersht, the Founder and CEO of the new analyst organization Horses for Sources, which specializes in helping senior practitioners understand global outsourcing issues. Many of you may remember him from his time at AMR Research. Here he writes about the need for a new type of industry advisor.
“There’s been a lot of talk about “New Normals” as we limp shell-shocked from a crisis that rocked our world, and absorb the impact the last couple of years has had on the business landscape. However, this isn’t really a “New Normal” from an economic perspective – the products and services haven’t changed all that much in 18 months, more the speed and efficiency with how they need to be delivered to market. But when it comes to how many practitioners want advice on how to cope with today’s business realities, we’re living in a very, very new normal: in fact, a relentlessly new normal.
There is a relentless drive by enterprises to find that next pocket of cost to eliminate, get into that next region faster, optimize inventory levels, speed up the cash-flow cycle, restructure more software contracts etc. – the agenda for relentless behavior is, well, kind of relentless.
This brings us to the crux of the matter: relentless agendas need relentless sources of advice, data and insight to help relentless decisions be made, well, kind of relentlessly. That means those leading minds and experts who can help provide advice need to be more relentless too.
The need for immediate specialist advice and insight: the BPO example
One high-growth area being driven hard by this relentless need to find new thresholds of performance is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), where business operations leaders are under immense pressure to make outsourcing decisions that are among the most career-challenging and complex that they will ever have to make. Careers have been – and will continue to be – made or broken on time-constrained decisions where executives need real-time advice, insight, experiences and data.
At Horses for Sources (HfS), we currently have a survey in the field, in conjunction with the largest network of outsourcing and shared services professionals, the IQPC’s SSON, to ascertain how they are approaching innovation with their BPO endeavors. One question we asked was simply “How helpful are the following sources of information and advice, when trying to learn more about fostering value from a BPO endeavor?”
These findings clearly illustrate how rapidly things are changing. The thirst for rapid, accessible, collaborative and (let’s face it) free information has never been as intense as today. The fact that specialist blogs are now viewed as the most helpful medium for executives in the BPO industry , is, quite frankly, the resultant outcome from a staggering sea-change in this relentless drive to be more productive. Today’s practitioners need immediate relevant answers that they’ll struggle to find in some six-month old report, and can’t always wait for the next conference with the hope their buddy at GE will give them some juicy tips at the bar. Most people simply don’t have the patience they used to have.
Admittedly, most HfS readers are regularly used to blogs, hence there will be a bias towards using them, but with several thousand practitioners across enterprises subscribing (and increasing daily), the way in which they want their information served up is unquestionable.
So what on earth’s happening to the services analyst business?
What happened to those edgy debates you used to have, the fresh ideas you could knock around, the crisp, clear insight and data that gave you some real food-for-thought about what your business needed to do next? And where did the controversial, unabated opinion go? Essentially, today’s practitioners want it served up on their laptop screens and mobile devices where they can scan the topic du jour and engage in the content that interests them. They don’t have the time, or likely the resources, to arrange a briefing to answer every question they have, or to learn more about the hot debates in play.
However, it’s not simply about the delivery mechanisms for the information, as analyst firms also use corporate blogs to highlight their products, and attempt to seduce practitioners with snippets of insight. It’s the fact that some of the specialist independent blogs are generating trust among their readers. They call it how it is, and break-out of the stodgy corporate world of carefully constructed off-the-shelf standard information and advice.
Some of today’s top blogs have personality, are untarnished by sponsorship dollars and are unafraid to call out the real issues. That may evolve in the future as some blogs get too successful for their own good and need to take cash investments from parties that will muzzle them somewhat, but for now, they are leading the market in specialist areas such as BPO, where it’s hard for executives to get access to the advice they need, in the manner and style they want it delivered.”
Phil can be reached at http://www.horsesforsources.com
