Lets stop learning from our own mistakes......

Last week was a challenging one. I spent a few days on the next module of an ongoing training course in a sourcing quality standard called eSCM. Making use of outsourcing and shared services effectively can be a tricky business. Lots of people know a little bit about it. Very few people have any real experience managing either in an outsource environment or managing the transition to an outsource environment. This creates several problems. The major one is that people struggle to find expertise to support them in their outsource and so tend to run the project themselves from 'first principles'. Many capable and smart people do very well. There is no reason why they wouldn't - the issue is that there is more risk and effort involved than anyone would like to admit.

At Palladium we have experience and expertise - the problem we had was that communicating that expertise and experience can sometimes be difficult - especially as we are basically just saying - 'look we have done this before, we have made the mistakes and we have some greaTt people and some good tools to help you'. Use our experience and save yourself some time, money and sweat. Most people want independent validation. We would too. Hence eSCM.

So what is it? It is a quality standard. It is a set of best practices. It essentially says 'Look if you were perfect and know everything about outsourcing and shared services here are the 158 things you would be doing'. where is the value? Well if you are starting off on the sourcing journey it gives great visibility of some of the key capabilities you need to have in your organization and some of the key activities you need to undertake to source successfully.

The point is this - if you are seriously considering sourcing - whether it is outsourcing, shared services or any other form of outsourcing then you don't need to learn from your mistakes. Invest in Sourcing Education to ensure that your arrangements deliver the promised benefits. Building capability around the eSCM best practices is definitely a good place to start.