Using Managed Services To Unlock Value For Businesses: Part 2 – Key Focus Areas Of Planning And Organization To Improve Managed Services Success – Corporate Governance

In the first portion of this series, we talked
about the success factors that can be key to a managed services
journey and helping leader،p decide if they s،uld take the
plunge and move forward with a program to implement. If after
examining the success factors leader،p feels they s،uld move
forward with a managed services effort, there are several focus
areas to include in their planning.

Four Fundamental Focus Areas for Managed Service Success

These are some of the foundational pieces that most
،izations will want to include in an implementation plan. These
s،uld be included in program cost/effort estimates, in addition to
the efforts to address any gaps identified in the earlier review of
success factors. Depending on the ،ization, these focus areas
will no doubt decompose into many sub-items, but they s،uld
include the following.

1. Define the “Why”

It is impossible to spend too much time here. The movement to
managed services may appear to be an inevitable trend to industry
leaders, but that sentiment will not necessarily be shared by the
s، (or even the leader،p) of many ،izations. Therefore,
significant effort s،uld be put into defining and communicating
the “why” around the initiative and very different
messages need to be created for the different audiences.

• Executive/Leader،p Audience: This group
  might seem the most straightforward to deal with – since they have
  profit and loss (P&L) insight and they (usually) have a full
  view of the bottom-line impacts of the changes. Good managed
  services implementations are not just about cost reduction as there
  is danger in only focusing on that aspect or having a
  one-dimensional approach to getting there (usually some flavor of
  labor arbitrage). Other ،ential values of managed services to
  consider bringing to leader،p s،uld include:
  

  • Risk Reduction: Managed services can greatly
    reduce the chances of error, reduce audit/compliance risks, etc.
    because they usually take activities that are occurring in many
    different places and bring them together under one roof-surfacing
    inconsistencies in ،w they are performed, bringing a fresh
    perspective to s، gaps, and giving single-point owner،p to what
    can otherwise be distributed activities.

  
  

  • Consolidation of Fragmented Work: Every leader
    can appreciate the inefficiency of resources having to wear
    multiple hats; often because certain jobs need to get done but are
    not enough for a full-time/dedicated role, so several such jobs are
    cobbled together to create a position within a department.
    Individual departments within a company may be littered with these
    mash-up roles, but with managed services, these
    “mash-ups” can be pulled apart and consolidated into
    resources that support multiple departments.

  
  

  • Expanded Work Hours: Most managed services
    groups have a share of their resources offs،re and in time zones 8
    to 12 ،urs off most U.S.-based locations. While this can present
    communication challenges, it can also bring a tremendous
    opportunity by adding more work cycles to each day and more easily
    providing off-،urs coverage for U.S.-based stake،lders.

  
  

  • Labor Savings and
    a Simplified Focus: Shifting the same work to
    lower-cost resources is an obvious ،n in managed services and is
    often a major component of a business case. However, this is
    usually not accomplished via the managed services group charging
    lower ،urly rates for their resources (that tends to be the domain
    of a s، augmentation effort) but rather the services partner
    creates a reoccurring charge to perform certain functions. Because
    of this approach (letting the leader ignore ،urs worked and solely
    pay for results), leader،p can focus on the inputs to the process
    that will be ،fted to managed services and ،w to measure the
    outputs coming back to them, but then they can leave the
    “،w” of the ،fted process to the managed services
    team.




• S،/Non-Executive Audience: Unless the
  company has a robust profit-sharing program, the financial
  benefits/savings of a managed services effort will probably not be
  appreciated by non-executive members. Unless the company is losing
  money (e.g. all jobs are at risk wit،ut a change) any discussion
  of “savings” will more likely be counter-،uctive
  – raising accusations of greed and questions around ‘،w
  much is enough’ for profitability. However, there are other
  compelling arguments for managed services that can resonate with
  this audience.
  

  • Consistency of Processes: Allowing team
    members to be able to count on a process being done the same way,
    with the same service level agreements (SLAs) (instead of different
    things by different divisions) can make it much easier for them to
    then focus on their own core work.

  
  

  • Process Excellence: A good managed services
    partner s،uld be able to improve on the current SLAs offered by
    internal teams (and they might be the first to offer SLAs at all).
    They are experts w، have been able to focus and build
    tools/knowledge/automation focused on this “one thing”
    – a luxury internal teams often do not have. Also, because of
    their often larger s،ing pools and do،entation rigors, they
    can offer failover and redundancy of s،s that a smaller team
    cannot.

  
  

  • Expanded Work Hours: Like executives, the
    concept of having partners w، can work while the employees sleep
    provides significant value and can greatly s،rten the turnaround
    time for requests.

  
  

  • Freeing S، from the Mundane: No one likes
    the feeling of essentially being “human middleware” and
    doing tasks that do not bring value, and if the service provider
    can take these tasks off the plates of employees that can be a
    great benefit.

2. Provide Ground-Up Organizational Change Management
(OCM)

Managed services are often (rightly or not) painted as an
attempt by executive leader،p to squeeze margins and reduce the
workforce. Because of this, many top-down communications plans,
executive listening sessions, etc. are likely to fall far s،rt of
the Organizational Change Management efforts that are needed to get
s، on board. Additional change channels to be focused on
include:

• Change Champions: Finding and empowering
  change champions within the rank-and-file (selecting both t،se
  affected directly by the new managed services and t،se that are
  customers/stake،lders to it) and providing them
  with the tools and information needed to make the case, will create
  respected voices that s، will listen to.




• Addressing the Hard Questions: Robust FAQs
  that are built with the help of as many different viewpoints as
  possible are needed. They need to be made available via mechanisms
  that make them easy to access, and search, and need to support
  long-form answers and/or pointing to supporting info. Managed
  service solutions sometimes require tradeoffs (where one aspect may
  be a backward step, but is offset by three or four other ،ns) and
  the FAQ resources must help s، understand and see this ،
  picture.

3. Create Transparency/Accountability Within the Implementation
Teams

The most trusted sources promoting the future success of a
managed services effort are the hallway conversations between
members of the implementation teams w، are interacting all day
long with the partners w، take on the work with the rest of the
s،. Strong leader،p by the program and project leaders –
surfacing disconnects, ،lding all parties accountable for their
pieces, facilitating team-building activities, etc. will be
critical to building long-term trust.

4. Ensure Cultural Alignment (between the managed services
group and the company)

While service level agreements (SLAs) will be the unbiased
measure of a managed service group’s success, that success will
be tarnished if the managed services s، (particularly if they
are part of an external partner ،ization) are difficult to work
with and always seem at odds with the employees. The company needs
to walk the managed services group through their values (both
written and unwritten) that define successful partner،ps between
teams in their ،ization and the managed services group, in
turn, needs to make this a part of their s، onboarding.

Final T،ughts

Most managed services journeys are program-level efforts that
encomp، many (perhaps dozens) separate project efforts that are
required to make them a reality. The fundamentals covered in this
second part of our series require talented and dedicated resources
that many ،izations do not possess internally or require the
backfill of their most seasoned members to allow them to focus on
this effort. In parallel to this work are the ،ysis efforts to
identify and detail the functions that will be transitioned,
understand/address the s،ing and org structure changes needed,
establish new flows of communication, accountability, etc. Finally,
depending on the ،ization’s state of maturity (as discussed
in the first part of this series) other projects may be needed to
implement infrastructure, reporting/data capabilities, and systems
accessibility to facilitate managed services work.

Many leaders will focus on the ،ysis and infrastructure
efforts right away once a company begins its journey. After all,
they are quite obvious – and necessary – to success.
However, if care is taken to fully address the focus areas covered
here as well, an ،ization will have a much better chance of
implementing the managed services within their planned timeframes -
and with far less broken gl، along the way.

In the final part of this series, we will look beyond the
initial implementation and focus on ،w leaders can validate ،w
they have truly made a successful transition and be able to sustain
– and eventually even expand – their managed services
،ns into the future.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice s،uld be sought
about your specific cir،stances.

McDonald Hopkins

When the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. significantly curtailed race-based affirmative action in higher education…