Outsourcing Institute’s Daniel Goodstein interviews new WGroup CEO Jeffrey Vail, discussing the rapidly changing IT space, succeeding in a tech-driven marketplace, dealing with technologies trying to circumvent IT and how to optimize your technology for a positive ROI.
The interview covers:
Dan Goodstein, President at the Outsourcing Institute sat down with Co-Chairs Gregory North, Principal of Digital Transformation Practice of Outsourcing Institute, and Anupam Govil, Partner of Avasant to recap the Digital Convergence Conference.
The Interview Explores:
Speaker Kevin S. Parikh keynote titled ” The Journey to Digital Singularity: A Case for Humanity”
Kevin Parikh is the Global CEO and Senior Partner of Avasant. Mr. Parikh is an author and speaker on topics of globalization, the digital enterprise and innovation. Avasant is recognized globally as a leading management consulting firm focused on strategic sourcing, business & IT transformation, globalization and digital transformation services.
Vendor Management Should be a Core Competency of the IT Function
With the growing role of vendors in the delivery of IT services WGroup has long held that vendor management should be considered a core competency of the IT function, as well across the entire organization. This subsequently requires a management process and staffing commensurate with its importance. WGroup uses the the straightforward and well-established Star Model* as a framework for organization design and calls upon significant experience in sourcing and IT service delivery to identify and establish vendor management capabilities.
This WGroup Strategy Brief will define and explore the Vendor Management Office (VMO) from a number of perspectives including the foundation, organization design, partnerships, vendor and contract assessments, processes and tools, performance management, financial impact and finally the implementation or rollout plan. This WGroup Strategy Brief describes our recommended considerations in each of these areas.
New strategies to transform service delivery
Back in 2014, market research firm IDC asserted that CIOs needed to drop their old roles as technology overlords and step into new ones as leaders of digital business transformation. But many IT leaders still struggle to understand how to implement new technologies to improve service delivery and enhance
business outcomes.
This is hardly a surprise. Only a tiny fraction of IT spending is allocated to IT innovation. Year-over-year IT spending is on the decline, and satisfaction with IT’s speed of delivering new applications and services remains low.
At the heart of many organizations’ struggles to optimize IT is how they have used sourcing in their business models. Too many organizations are bogged down by an antiquated and inefficient vision of outsourcing as a strategy designed solely to shave off labor costs. Some organizations still sign multi year outsourcing contracts centered around moving labor-based activities to offshore locales, which has the unfortunate consequence of incentivizing outsourcing suppliers to maintain the status quo, deliver less innovation, and minimize services. None of these factors align IT outsourcing activities with business growth.
In fact, outsourcing can create value and fundamentally change the way companies do business. Innovative and truly successful organizations use outsourcing as a way to enhance service delivery, accelerate time-to-market, implement new technologies, foster innovation, and make smarter decisions.
Why are creativity, problem solving, and collaboration the most important skills of this century? How does User Experience cultivate them? And how does this help us inspire success?
These are the questions you need to be asking yourselves in the 21st Century.
So let’s break it down.
Why creativity, problem solving, and collaboration?
Our world is getting increasingly digital, which really shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Physical production is, therefore, becoming automated more and more often. In the past, speed and efficiency were the most valued skills a professional could have. You can imagine a production line churning out products and imagine how that impacted values. It’s easy to draw a comparison between the economy and values.
Since the economy is now focused on digital, the skills we value have got to change. Obviously speed and efficiency are still important. But they’re not nearly as important as creativity, problem solving, and collaboration when it comes to predicting success. If we want to inspire success, we have to value skills that are truly inspiring.
So How does User Experience Cultivate these Skills?
Creativity
User Experience encourages thinking outside the box, but within your product/service’s limits. Figuring out how to do this automatically pushes the boundaries of your imagination. It makes you think in a different way. Thinking about what your user needs nurtures your creativity a lot more than just thinking about what your company wants.
Problem Solving
This methodology is all about solving problems. It’s about predicting problems and adjusting your product or service (or strategy or methodology) to keep them from happening. But the key is to not focus on the problem, but on the solution. This methodology gives you the tools, or the action plan, to do just that.
Collaboration
User Experience is a cycle that includes aspects of different departments. Each department has to come together with the same goal of creating a product/service that the user truly wants and needs. This collaboration encourages each participant to bring their best ideas to the table and work together to figure out what needs to get done and how.
Inspire Success
This methodology isn’t used only with digital products and services, but it is inspired by the
digital age. It’s about people coming together and collaborating to find the best and most
creative solutions to problems that products and services have or might have in the future.
And that’s something that we all want.
It’s unfortunate and it’s true. But it’s not unavoidable. There are ways that let you stack the
deck in your favor and increase your product or service’s chances of success. Design
Thinking employs problem solving before the problems even appear in order to increase
your success.
Companies have to face the facts. It’s not enough to create a good product. A good product
doesn’t mean it will become a hit and generate significant income. I know, in a perfect world,
good products/services would translate into success, but we aren’t living in a perfect world.
You have a good product/service, but how do you know if it is what your target audience
needs? How do you know if this is what they want?
This is why Design Thinking is so important for all businesses. I mean it, all businesses. Not
only does it help you solve complex problems, but it also helps you obtain the most helpful
insights from your users.
A review of the design process:
1. Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test
6. Implement
7. Repeat until it’s perfect
Creativity, Problem Solving, Collaboration
Working with this methodology optimizes your internal flow and therefore improves your internal performance. Creativity, problem solving, and collaboration are the skills that really matter in the world of today. It’s not about churning out products, services, and apps as fast as you can, not anymore. It’s about being smart. And that’s what Design Thinking does.
And because of this methodology, you will have products and services created specifically for your end users. Your target audience will be much more likely to accept what you make, meaning less rework and failure and increased ROI.
But all of that is secondary to the culture of creativity, problem solving, and collaboration that you’ll nurture. This culture is what will lead your company to new heights of innovation and success.
Digital Convergence 2017 Opening Remarks
Wipro – The Re-Shaping of Customer Experience Management in the Digital World
Avasant – Digital Singularity: The Case for Humanity
Sutherland – The Art of Blending Innovation and Operational Excellence
Scott Evoy is a PwC Financial Services Advisory partner. Scott leads our FS Advisory Digital Consulting practice across our four sectors – asset management, banking, capital markets, and insurance. Our FS Digital practice also includes our customer experience and technology capabilities such as Salesforce, RPA, AI, UX/UI, and integration capabilities. Additionally, Scott brings nearly 20 years of Financial Services experience to focus on our expanding offerings within our FS practice. Scott’s delivery experience has been cross sector within FS in banking, capital markets, and investment management and servicing with a focus on risk, technology, and operations, and a specific concentration with banks and investment management and servicing companies.
You want to make products and solutions that work as soon as possible. The faster you can get your product out there, the faster you can start seeing ROI. The faster you can see a problem fixed and happy customers and clients.
There are two common ways to develop products and they are both wrong.
The first way involves churning stuff out as soon as possible, spitting it out into the world, and moving on. This way, you get a lot of cheap stuff, cheap apps and half-thought out solutions.
The second way involves spending a lot of time designing a product as thoughtfully and carefully as possible, making sure it is absolutely perfect before you launch. Your product might be better, but you’ve invested so much time into it, you have to ask yourself if it’s really worth it. And with our rapidly changing world, by the time you launch, your product might be obsolete or someone else might have done it already.
And for both ways you run the major risk of ending up with a product or a solution that people just don’t want to use.
The best way to design products is by combining these two methods. That’s basically what rapid prototyping means. You create prototypes, or concepts, as fast as possible and test them with sample customers. Then you go back and make a new prototype based on their feedback. You work quickly and test often.
For digital products, you’ll create versions of software that function minimally so that you can make sure it actually does what the customer wants it to do before you invest so much time into developing it.
In the end, by using rapid prototyping, you’ll end up with products and solutions that have been tailored and fine-tuned, but without the risk that they’ll flop once you’re finally done. You want to see a solid return on your investment? Make sure you know you’re making a valuable product.
