Is Outsourcing the Answer? A four-step guide to addressing process gaps in your organization
Would you wait until your tires were bald to get them replaced? Probably not. The problems that can come from waiting too long are much more costly and risky than if you take care of it before they are too far gone.
Unfortunately, too many companies make that exact mistake. They wait until the underlying issues wear down operations and create major business impacts. On the front end, it’s lagging revenue and profitability, lower NPS scores and increasing churn. On the back end its increased spend, and lower quality and delivery challenges, among others.
Compounding that problem, too many executives decide on how to fix the problem even before they determine the root cause. They are quick to add or replace leadership, institute a reorg or outsource for immediate resolution. To be clear, these are often the exact right changes to be made, the question is how to choose the proper solution that will make immediate and sustained improvements to any operational challenges.
Many consultants will tell you that to do the analysis necessary you have to choose between fast or expensive. I couldn’t disagree more. Not only can this work be done with speed, but with the right support you can do this work in an agile way that allows for quick wins on the path to comprehensive solutions.
Here are the four steps to consider as you navigate towards the right decisions for your business:
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Bridge the Gap Between Understanding What’s Broken and Finding Success
Most executives know what they want to solve but lack the roadmap to get there. Take revenue operations for example. This is one of the biggest challenges of any sales and marketing organization. Bottlenecks in the sales funnel and the customer journey range from sales lead conversion to time to quote to CSAT scores. Each KPI is influenced by a number of variables and deserves a proper analysis to determine which need to be fixed, fine-tuned or left alone. Tools like automation can speed processes, outsourcing can reduce cost and deliver improved process flow and organizational leadership can ensure all run successfully.
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Find the Forest Through the Trees
In today’s economic environment, many CFOs are deploying a broad mandate to reduce fixed costs. It impacts all functions and makes speed of change even more important. Often times it creates decisions to focus on one key KPI – cost. Of course, this is a very, very important KPI. But it is not the only one to consider. Seeing the big picture in making process and organizational challenges enables you to look at complementary KPIs relevant to business result. Better management of processes – via outsourcing for instance – can help increase revenue, allow businesses to scale their operations quicker, improve customer satisfaction and even increase margins. Jumping to a strictly cost-driven solution may miss the opportunity for long term benefits.
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Get Help. But Don’t Pass the Buck…
You don’t need to have it all figured out. In fact, often it is very difficult to look at the challenge holistically from the inside. Strategic advisors bring fresh eyes, extensive experience solving similar problems and a rigorous process to deliver what executives need without deploying an internal tiger team that may slow down the operations that are working. But don’t get carried away. Many companies go from trying to solve their problem internally to hiring large consulting firms that bring in teams of people, set months-long timelines at a price tag that makes short term ROI nearly impossible. Don’t make that leap. Trusted counsel at a smaller scale allows teams to be embed inside your own, make agile decisions and cost far less upfront.
Perhaps more importantly, this keeps executives with direct understanding of the business to lead the effort and not be handed a recommendation. It also allows for quick adjustments as situations change, and to deploy pilot programs in parallel to analyze and scale up or down internal and external resources far easier.
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Establish a Partnership for Success
JDA TSG meets you where you are to provide a hands-on approach to help you reach your full operating potential. Our strategic advisory team can parachute in quickly and help you solve your issues. With experience at some of the biggest brands in the world, the team comes armed with tools necessary to build a plan while customizing to meet your unique needs.
We work with Fortune 10 companies as well as start-ups to solve their problems. If you need to take control of your operations and optimize performance now, contact us today and lets see if we can get started tomorrow.