Hard work on the soft side of change

Hard work on the soft side of change

Transformation is not a fixed destination. It’s an ongoing journey, often into uncharted territory, and managing the people side of the change can make or break the success.

That includes the deployment of managed services. When you launch a new way of operating—whether it’s for cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, or adopting new functionality in cloud platforms—it’s critical to plan for the impacts of new technologies and processes on people’s behavior and performance.

It’s so critical, in fact, that more than 80 percent of companies say the traditional managed services model of “people, process, and technology” is no longer enough. Providers are also expected to bring strong change management capabilities to the table.^[1]

Building the right culture

The shifting of workloads to a managed services environment simply cannot succeed unless a company’s culture supports it. In other words, the specific behaviors, beliefs and drivers that define how work gets done in an organization—from policies and procedures to metrics and incentives—must be squarely aligned with the business strategy.

But often they are not. According to a KPMG global survey of 800 executives^[2], the No. 1 internal roadblock in the deployment of managed services is a cultural proneness to work through internal teams and shared service centers.

Other common barriers include a cultural resistance to using digital tools and platforms, a lack of C-level leadership commitment, and an overall lack of organizational alignment.  

In short, a company’s culture can either enable or inhibit the success of managed services, and that’s why visionary executives are seeking best-in-class providers who know how to manage the change.

As partners in the transformation journey, leading providers do not offer plug-and-play services. Instead, they design and deploy new operating models for the desired future state—and that also means preparing the organization to embrace them.