A mid-sized MNC company with presence in Americas and India was a renowned player in staffing services. The company was a focused leader in providing skilled man-power with skills across various technology platform. Their forte’ was to work with the customer’s short term and long-term staffing needs and provide requisite staffing consultants at short notice.
The company had realised these staffing solutions market place had become very competitive arena and they were unable to generate revenues and margins like the erstwhile days. It was imperative to look for other avenues in Technology sector for newer business opportunities that could help them meet their revenue and growth targets.
The Company was focused in the field of staffing solutions for their customers. They carried a pre-determined thin bench of basic skilled and low-cost resources for easy deployment. As the markets turned matured with large scale enterprise solutions being implemented; the customer demands shifted from regular low-end developers to high-end technology specialists. People with relevant industry experience and skills in implementing large enterprise applications were needed. These resources were less readily available in the marketplace for temporary & immediate staffing demands.
As an alternate service offering & change of business strategy; it was decided to setup a COE with project delivery capabilities on the ERP technology platform. This would elevate the level of engagement of the company with their existing and newer clients from T&M staffing to complete project implementation ownership.
The company lacked market presence in project engagements, delivery processes, GTM strategies and the skills to deliver ERP solutions. They lacked marketing readiness, skills to respond to RFPs or well-trained sales team. The company lacked proper organization and delivery structures for setting up this COE. HR lacked skills & necessary expertise to hire relevant staff, knowledge about their salary bands, designation matrices and career maps for these highly skilled and talented staff.
It was agreed to help the company build a technology practice (COE with delivery capabilities) around one of the leading global ERP platforms. The decision necessitated a paradigm shift in the company’s beliefs, expectations and primary areas of expertise into building a COE of ERP grounds up. This choice was different from staffing business run historically.
A detailed approach based on AMREG methodology fundamentals was utilised in helping analyse the requirements and the objectives that the management expected to meet. The expectations were effectively mapped out using standardised templates. Realistically expectations were aligned to match the appetite of the company for this new service offering in a do-able time span. Key performance measurement parameters of the organization were also realigned.
Detailed discussions with the management teams, leadership teams and the people on the ground helped understand the company’s readiness and appetite while on-boarding this journey. Presentations were made to Management team to set realistic expectations on process to follow and outcomes. It needed multiple discussions and presentations to the Management team to remap the new business performance parameters with financial objectives. Basics like difference in revenue recognition and realisation timelines had to be integrated back into the company objectives and financials as monitored by the Board.
With management on-board, a detailed Annual Operating Plan (AOP) was drafted and set into motion for implementation. Detailed revenue plans, region-wise Go-To-Market and sales projections were built. Sales training kits were developed. Sales targets were set. Teams were hired and groomed on the newly defined Quality processes. Detailed delivery processes were designed and documented.
The HR team was guided with detailed descriptions of specific skills to be hired and modalities to hire them. Based on the HR frameworks to hire the best talent from the market was shared with the HR and recruitment teams. Detailed interviewing techniques including question banks for detailed evaluation of consultants were shared with the interviewers and managerial staff to make selection a quality oriented efficient process.
With this entire basic infrastructure built grounds up; a revenue pipeline of a couple of million dollars was built over a period of 18 months.
Challenges faced :
Frameworks used :
