It’s Time to Think About the Architecture of Work

Convention is an innovation killer. 

Convention dictates that we do things the same way we’ve always done them, even though there’s often a better way of doing them.

There are plenty of reasons for sticking to convention, of course. People are often so busy doing their job that they just don’t have the time to improve their job. For years, I’ve referred to this as being “too busy working ‘in’ the business to work ‘on’ the business.”

Make no mistake, however. The fact that you aren’t working “on” the business doesn’t mean your competition isn’t. Plenty of businesses find themselves outpaced by their competition because they were so busy executing that they let the world pass them by and got “out-innovated” often making them obsolete.

Convention also causes corporate inertia – the inability to move off of status quo. Unfortunately, status quo has a shelf life. A tremendous amount of energy is required to overcome our tendency to do things the way we’ve always done them. Innovators willing to transform and overcome the associated risks are few and far between.

So why bother? Why is this important? Why is it imperative now to overcome convention and corporate inertia to examine doing things differently and making progress vs. doing things the way they’ve always been done?

The future of work, that’s why.

While some aspects of the future of work were actually developing prior to the pandemic, COVID accelerated these trends out of necessity. Businesses have had to find ways to get work done differently. To their surprise, 16 months later, they now find themselves coming out of the pandemic with unprecedented productivity, innovation, and collaboration borne purely out of necessity.

This is because the nature of work – its very architecture – has never been more important.

The changing dynamics of the workforce are forcing businesses to reexamine who does that work. Unprecedented levels of job changes, the “great resignation,” and an aging workforce (a speaker from a recent TSIA webinar referred to as “the silver tsunami”) has put a premium on qualified resources.

In order to stretch the current available resources, keep them from burning out, and improve their employee experience, businesses are being forced to question convention – and ask if the way they’ve always done things is the way they should do things going forward.

In many cases, asking these questions are long overdue. Some conventions related to work have existed since the industrial revolution. We work from 9:00am to 5:00pm because early manufacturers needed daylight to light their factories before the advent of electricity. We have meetings because sending memos took too long. Corporate headquarters became the center of work because there were no tools that allowed remote collaboration and innovation. 

Those conventions are outdated.

It’s time to look at the architecture of work differently. And it’s not enough to just automate the current work architecture. We must really look at the discrete components of work and examine how they might be most effectively and efficiently performed.

Additionally, the way work is prioritized needs to be reimagined. In many companies today (especially in field services), all work is done by permanent (W2) employees by default. If the W2s can’t get to it, the work either waits until workers become available or until more W2s are hired.

Hybrid workforces are providing a mechanism to overcome that limitation. Hybrid workforces aren’t just composed of W2’s, but contractors and gig workers – even robots! Any entity that can perform work can be a component of a hybrid workforce.

Let’s think about the basic components of work using today’s conventional terms:

Work Composition

• Conventional View:

• Who = Why + What + How + When + Where

In most companies, the “Who” is already known before the work comes in (as in: “all the work is going to our W2 workforce”) and is assigned without regard to the nature of the work or its suitability for permanent staff.

• Modern View:

• Why + What + How + When + Where = Who

In this revised view, companies will let the rationale for the work (Why), the scope of work (What), its technical requirements (How), its time requirements (When), and the location of the work (Where) determine “Who” does the work. In other words:

Let the work determine the workforce.

In order to do that, we’re going to have to start thinking about work differently. Turn the evaluation of work over to a “Work Architect.” Their function is to dispassionately look at the work itself, break it into its component parts, and then determine where those parts are most effectively and efficiently performed. I specifically said ‘dispassionately” because these architects have to be empowered to make decisions without any personal or professional attachment to the status quo. In other words, they have to make decisions that may defy convention. Overcoming an entrenched corporate culture that dictates how work is performed – and who performs it – will be challenging.

The simple fact is, however, that without this discipline companies will find themselves less and less competitive in comparison to those companies that embrace this change. In a recent article, Forbes said, “That’s a lot of change to take in, but one thing is for certain. The old school model of corporate leadership will no longer work. Leaders who insist on an outdated, hierarchical, in-person style of management will not be able to compete in the new war for talent.” 

Interestingly enough, companies don’t hesitate at all to automate every piece of field work they can today via AI and RPA. What they don’t seem to realize is that they’re already performing this necessary evaluation to determine whether work can be automated. What is the difference in determining whether work can be moved to the talent marketplace?

As I stated earlier, the status quo has a shelf life, and trust me, your competitors get that. Evaluate the “why” of workforce ecosystems and determine how to transition to this more flexible and innovative work deployment model. Position your company to enjoy the lower costs, the improved employee experience and the improved competitive position of a market competitive workforce ecosystem labor model.

The Future of Work is NOW

Innovation is hard.

That’s because predicting the future is hard.

In 2009, when Uber was founded, rental cars and taxis were the norm. Nobody had any idea that – some 12 years later – this San Francisco-based startup would have a 70% market share for ride sharing…a 22% market share for food delivery and be worth over 100 billion dollars.

Corporate America is at a similar nexus today regarding the very nature of work…how that work is categorized…who the workers are that will do that work…and where those workers will be located.

The nature of the American workforce was changing prior to the COVID pandemic. The pandemic, however, both accelerated the pace of that change to an exponential pace and pointed out critical weaknesses in the current workforce related to both cost, flexibility and proximity.

“They’re All My Employees”

I’ve been in the service industry in various roles for 35 years. During that time, , most of the companies I’ve worked for have prided themselves on the fact that their field service force was all permanent employees. Not only was it a point of pride, but it was one of the key factors used in the sales process. Every presentation to a client was bound to include “We have 6000 W2 technicians that make up our field force.”

What those organizations are finding today is that those field forces of all W2 technicians have become the proverbial albatross that hangs around their neck.

During COVID, two things happened. The first thing that happened was that – in order to preserve cash – discretionary spending from clients stopped immediately and along with that went any projects that were enabled by those funds. Secondly, the W2 workers that were performing those projects found themselves very quickly out of a job, causing employers huge amounts of severance or those employers kept those workers on the bench without the corresponding project revenue.

When COVID started to wane, and businesses started to reopen and get past their survival mode tactics, they were faced with a dilemma. As the projects started to come back – they asked themselves – should they go back to the conventional way of doing things or was it time to consider a new solution to the problem…maybe a way that allowed both more flexibility and did so at a substantially lower cost?

The Future of Work

Many analysts have been writing about “The Future of Work” for some time now. There are even books about it (try “Work Disrupted” by Jeff Swartz, of Deloitte Consulting – a great perspective on all things “Future of Work” related). There are two major points that all that academia seems to agree on:

1. The days of companies having 100% of their workforces as permanent employees are over, and
2. The days of companies having 100% of their workforce all located in offices are also over.

So…assuming you agree with the conclusions of the analysts, companies are faced with the problems of creating and managing the coming diverse workforce ecosystems (consider them personas – classes of workers) and where those workforce ecosystems are located (referred to as “hybrid” workforces).

Your response may be that “Well…we’ve been using subcontractors and on-demand labor for years.” That may well be true, as, considering how you classify on-demand labor, fully 70% of companies feel like it will be an important component of their labor force going forward. 

That said, though…the advent of on-demand labor up until now has primarily been purely tactically based – used as a 4^th or 5^th option when other alternatives aren’t available. Only a small number of companies have developed an actual strategy for creating and managing workforce ecosystems. Even fewer are actually considering dissecting work into it’s component parts, and then making the best decision regarding where those components should be performed…and by whom (or “what” – which would include automation, bots, etc.)

The following articles in this series will address both the strategic and tactical issues behind these challenges and, more importantly, discuss how to turn the strategy for “The Future of Work” into the tactics needed to actually be able to execute…and apply the advantages of workforce ecosystems in your respective company.

Automation and SIAM – Who Owns Automation in a Multi-Vendor Environment?

For years, outsourcing in a multi-vendor model has been a challenge.

Services spread across a myriad of providers that include internal resources, managed services providers and staff augmentation services.  The challenge for clients was how to manages this menagerie of services providers, all of whom had different ideas and often different ways of managing the same process.

Enter ITIL.  Initially billed as the “common language” between the diverse groups of service providers, it proved eventually to be a literal Tower of Babel as the service provider network all had different definitions for incidents, requests (remember the infamous debate re: whether a password reset is an incident or a request that raged on LinkedIn literally for MONTHS?), problem management and change management.  The debates and arguments about how to use the terms, what they meant and ultimately the end result took more time than actually running the process.

To try to closes those gaps those problems…along came SIAM (Service Integration and Management).  Written by them same people who brought us ITIL, the thought was to define a governance process for running ITIL in a multi-vendor environment.  In all honesty, if “governed” correctly (the critical question here was “who” retained “what”), it solved a lot of the problems with “ITIL-only” environments. Unfortunately, the adoption rate of SIAM hasn’t been prevalent enough to have a true “game changer” effect.

Now…to compound the equation…along comes automation.

Automation IS a true “game changer…” a true “disrupter.”  Technology has finally unfrozen the final vestiges of the last winter of Artificial Intelligence, and we seem to be in the first stages of a massive AI thaw.

Unfortunately, it’s like the wild west out there…everyone who can cobble together some venture capital is building automation toolsets and, as we all know, they can’t ALL win. Early adopters are taking risks on new innovative technologies hoping that their toolset… their technology… will win the race. Companies – enamored with being able to say “I’m automating with AI” and “I’m digitally transforming” – are implementing piecemeal RPA and AI solutions with no real idea where they will eventually end up.

Add to that fact that the providers are maybe 1-2 years ahead of the clients, and most of them are in the infancy of their digital strategies and the platforms they’re using to implement those strategies.  What this means is that as client turn outward to these providers for help, they’re going to get as many answers about how to automate as there are providers… which brings us full circle back to SIAM.

If SIAM was originally created to help consistently manage ITIL processes in a multi-vendor environment, should it also be used to help manage automation in that same environment?

Even if the answer is “yes,” we go back to the issue with SIAM in the first place – governance.  What was retained?

Like an Enterprise Architecture strategy, which is typically retained in a SIAM account, an automation strategy first needs to be developed by the client – so that they can ensure that – as they bring vendors in, the vendors automation strategies and capabilities are compatible with their own.

Besides governance, what exactly are the components that a client needs to consider when they’re developing/considering their enterprise automation strategy?  Keep in mind that we’re referring to the Digital Transformation that takes place as it relates to Infrastructure and Operations systems – not the parallel workstream that focuses on the Digital Transformation of a client’s customer-facing systems.  Toward that end, I would suggest that the major areas they need to consider include the following:

1. Connect – how are they going to connect all their disparate systems in a manner that allows them to collect the information they need from these systems?
2. Identify – in order to have the capabilities to eventually provide automation, you need to identify everything to know exactly what you’re automating.
3. Data – once your systems are all 1) connected and the 2) identified, you can then collect the data from those systems – and store it in a manner that will make it useful by the rest of the system.
4. Command – you need a mechanism to send commands – “a command generator”, if you will, to the systems you’ve 1) connected and 2) identified.
5. Automate – now that everything’s 1) connected, 2) identified, you have a 3) way to collect and use the data, and a 4) a way to send commands, you can finally focus on automating.
6. Present – this component really has two steps – 1) the ability to allow consumers of the service access into the system in a way that suits their preferred method (e.g., mobility) and then 2) a mechanism that allows the owners of the service a view into how the services being delivered.

Once a client has an idea of their direction is going to be, then they will be able to communicate it to their prospective support network (including internal, vendors, etc.), and ensure that they are directionally aligned to their respective automation strategy.

Maybe SIAM isn’t the right vehicle to carry the automation governance torch forward…but if clients don’t proactively determine their own strategy, then it will likely become a hodgepodge cobbled together by various vendors and provider – something, I would submit, no company really wants.

Who Pays for What After Automation?

Life used to be so much simpler…

Innovation was easy to measure.  ROI was king.  Cost cutting was the number one consideration.  IT was focused on that to the exclusion of everything else.  The end user was an afterthought.

Enter the digital workplace.

Now, things aren’t quite so simple.  The end user is king.  The business is focused on responding to the myriad of changes in the marketplace with some sense of velocity.  IT is relegated to a supporting role.  Service experience is the new value metric.  ROI is still important, to be sure, but more as a function of the technology advances and certainly not at the expense of the user experience.

That said, though…in the new world order…do the components of innovation economics change?  When it comes to the economics of innovation, there are macro and micro impacts to consider – so… let’s cover the easier micro impacts first.

From a micro perspective, in innovation economics there are only two components to consider – 1) consumption economics and 2) transaction economics.   As you may have guessed, consumption economics refers to the number of transactions consumed in any given period.   Transaction economics focuses on the actual cost of each transaction.  Innovation opportunities that provide ROI are going to affect one of those two variables, or a combination of the two.

It’s the macro perspective that poses the much more daunting outlook.  The digital workplace and the digital transformation required to get there are introducing new technology at a frantic pace.  The last winter of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is over, and most people are betting on the fact that we have reached a permanent spring.

What does this mean? The phenomena of labor arbitrage is over.  No longer will companies look to move work from one geography to another to save money.  The new trend will be automation arbitrage, where units of human labor will be converted to units of digital labor and, according to some, the results will be catastrophic to the workforce.  Debates are raging regarding how many jobs automation is going to take, whether the new jobs created by automation will be anywhere near the number eliminated, and the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for those that are displaced by automation and unable to find employment.

The other interesting piece to consider is – as automation arbitrage occurs and human labor is displaced by digital labor – what happens to our current economic model?  A case in point – who funds the government?

Consider this – in 2015, the federal budget was about $3 trilliion dollars.  Of that, 81% was either 1) individual income taxes (about $1.48 trillion –47%) or 2) payroll taxes ($1.07 trillion – about 34%),  is paid jointly by companies and individuals.  Income taxes go into the general government fund, and payroll taxes go into a trust for entitlement programs (social security and Medicare).

So…if we assume (and I would argue that it’s more of a certainty than an assumption) that digital labor will replace human labor at anywhere near the order of magnitude that most analysts projecting and the taxes generated by the human labor goes away, how does the government get funded?  Who will pay the UBI for those displaced by digital labor?

Will we have to tax digital labor?  If we do, what level will it need to be taxed to fund the needed government programs but not stifle the innovation so that the can remain competitive?

Will we have to increase the corporate income tax (which is only around 11% ($341.7B)) of the federal budget now?  Again…how the government make up the deficit without stifling innovation?

Questions…with no answers.

And the answers…when they come…that will change the world.

The World is Changing

The world as we know it is changing.

Depending on who you believe, the cost of supporting infrastructure and operations – due to automation –is going to drop anywhere from 26% on the low end to 62% on the high end according to a recent article from ISG.

Assuming the right answer is somewhere in the middle – like 40% – think about what that means.

It means that  40% of the work that comes into the Service Desk and Deskside for managed service providers is going to disappear.  Well… not disappear exactly, but those transactions will end up being automated thru a combination of toolsets and, although there will be costs associated with the development and maintenance of these digital labor toolsets, they will be a fraction of the cost of today’s traditional support methods.  One industry analyst, Horses for Sources (HfS) contends that if a transaction cost $1.00 onshore, and $0.33 offshore, then the cost of the automated transaction will be $0.13.

In general terms, that means a managed service firm that that generates $1B in services revenue with infrastructure and operations outsourcing will become a $600M managed service provider within the next 3 years.

The good news?   There is an opportunity for some revenue reclamation, but that reclamation will come in the form of $0.13 on the dollar.  This revenue will come from “re-onshoring” those tasks that originally went offshore in order to realize of the advantages of labor arbitrage.  That work can come back onshore as it gets automated, so it won’t come back as jobs, but it will come back as an automated task, because a $0.13 automated task offshore is a $0.13 automated task onshore (given a likely small initial premium for the development and maintenance by automation engineers that will go down quickly as the bots learn).

The frustrating thing is…people seem to have their head stuck in the sand. They are not spending any time doing any reading… doing any research… any education at all on the state of the market and where it’s headed.  I honestly think they believe it can still be “business as usual”.  So many pithy quotes come to mind…like “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” or it’s polar opposite and seemingly appropriate “insanity is doing the same thing over and over an expecting different results.”

The simple fact is – there is no history to learn from here.  This is uncharted territory…to wit:

If you think in terms of the two major industrial revolutions, the first was defined by transportation (coal and steam) and communication (in this case, the telegraph).

The second was about transportation (cars) and communication (phones).

Notice a trend here?

Both industrial revolutions had three things in common – 1) transportation, 2) the energy to fuel that transportation and 3) communication.

So…what does that mean for the next industrial revolution?

I’ll give you a hint…it’s likely to include energy, transportation and communication… except, according to Jeremy Rifkin on the latest McFuture podcast, the next industrial revolution is already here, and common denominator between energy, transportation and communication is the internet.  Energy (smart grids, solar and batteries), transportation (wireless, GPS, payment platforms) and the existing communication capabilities of the internet, contends Rifkin, build a platform upon which the internet of things (IoT) will ride.  Rifkin also believes that connecting these “things” to the internet will cause a 40-year job boom.

Which is a good thing…because according to the YouTube video “Humans Need Not Apply”, the types of automation I referred to earlier in the fields of IT, medicine, legal and the like that are easy to automate represent approximately 45% of the current workforce.

The unemployment rate during the great depression was 25%.

Admittedly,  the timelines for when this is going to happen don’t all mesh. Rifkin says 40 years… most IT analysts are more conservative in terms of numbers of jobs effected, but their more aggressive timelines range anywhere from 2020 – 2030.

So… it’s not a matter of “if” it’s going to happen… but “when”.

What does this mean?  It means that – whether as companies or individuals – it’s almost irresponsible not to have a roadmap for how you’re going to address this coming wave of automation.  As individuals, it’s our responsibility to make sure we stay employable.  As companies, it’s our responsibility to make money and to provide a return to our shareholders.

Which leaves us to wonder… are these two goals are mutually exclusive?

Intelligent Automation: Judgement Day is Coming

In The Terminator, the fictional Skynet computer network became self-aware, gaining “artificial consciousness” and realizing it was smarter than the humans who created its Artificial Intelligence (AI). Skynet then set out to eradicate all humans on Earth, as it perceived them to be a threat to its existence, and launched a nuclear strike which became known as “Judgment Day.”

While the “Judgment Day” portrayed in The Terminator hopefully will never come, “Judgment Day” for both providers and consumers of services in the Infrastructure and Operations space is at hand. Those who don’t quickly adopt a strategy around the adoption of intelligent automation are going to be left in the fallout of those that do – and given the pace with which this is likely to occur, they may never be able to catch up.

The benefits of intelligent automation are well-known and numerous, from significant cost reductions (some analysts estimate between 25-40 percent) to increased reliability of services. My colleague Sam Gross, CompuCom’s CTO, noted in a blog post that robotics process automation (RPA) “use cases and applications are infinite and…(not) a day should go by when CIOs are not promoting the idea that employee job satisfaction is at least as good an argument for RPA adoption as the potential for reducing labor costs.”

Of course, there are some who compare the hype around intelligent automation and the coming maturity of AI to the hype that surrounded the emergence of the cloud in recent years. While it’s true the full impact is still years away, contracts are being closed today with 30-60 percent reductions over a contract term using autonomic toolsets. That being the case, does it really matter if it’s real today? What matters is that it will be real by the time those cost savings contractually come due, and, according to the analysts, those purchasing those services today simply cannot ignore the savings.

Additionally, there are those who argue that the impact of AI to the job market won’t be as devastating as others are predicting. (If you haven’t seen it, please view the video, “Humans Need Not Apply.”) Many believe that humans won’t be replaced but rather will be freed to perform more strategic tasks, which is a strong benefit of automation. With outsourcing, we’ve seen jobs go overseas — not tasks — but those tasks may be coming back. This means service providers are going to get a chance, through automation, to reclaim the work (tasks) that can be done more efficiently and cost-competitively for clients.

In short, intelligent automation can be viewed as the labor arbitrage of tomorrow. No longer will jobs move overseas to save money — smart providers will automate that work and keep it onshore. As a matter of fact, they will have no choice. Why struggle to save 10 percent by offshoring, when you can save 20-40 percent by automating and reap even greater benefits by enabling people to focus more on enhancing your end-user experience? The labor-based service models used by most service providers today will become passé as the industry migrates to outcome-based models that focus on Intelligent Automation and deliver a true digital workplace.

The best definition I’ve seen of a digital workplace so far was a workplace that leverages cloud-based solutions to enable the user to securely use multiple devices, apps and applications (personal and corporate), enabling location-agnostic productivity. It shifts the centricity from IT and technology to the user through smart-machine-enabled solutions, enhanced automation and self-service capabilities, empowering the user to decide when and how to get service.

Smart-managed service providers will embrace this challenge of delivering two generations of services bimodally, and by doing so, automatically create bimodal operations inside their clients’ organizations. Part of the organization will be focused on delivering the services that are in place today via traditional methods, and the other part will focus on transitioning those services to outcome-based service models required in the new digital workplace.

The strength of our renewable economy has always been the fact that, historically, we are innovators. We find a better way to build a mousetrap, perfect it and let the rest of the world inevitably commoditize it. Then, we find the next new and innovative thing. I would submit that it’s that time again. We can lead the foray into the age of intelligent automation and enjoy the economic success that comes from returning to our role as true innovators.

What IS Innovation?

What is Innovation?

You hear it everywhere… in almost every conversation with every client.  “We must innovate…” “Innovate or die…” “We need someone who can help us innovate…”

In today’s business environment, everyone wants to innovate, yet the perception of what it means to innovate is quite diverse… ask ten clients to define innovation, and you’ll get ten different answers… if not more.

Merriam Webster defines innovation as:

1. The introduction of something new, or
2. A new idea, method or device.

The root word of innovate is the Latin word nova (novus, novare), which means “new.” This may help explain why so many people believe that innovation means something brand new – something “just invented”.  My contention is that innovation can also be simply using something that already exists in a new way… and that’s where the fun begins.

What is innovative for one organization may not be innovative for another organization.  My favorite example is self-service password resets.  It’s certainly not considered innovative by the current market standards – these tools have been around for years and, as a matter of fact, by most people would be considered a commodity. That said, however, what about that client who doesn’t currently use password reset?  Is a self-service password reset tool innovative in their environment?  Does it introduce a new method to them?

For that matter…who decides what’s “innovative”?

My point here is that innovation is not defined by the party delivering that innovation…but rather by the party receiving it.  Innovation, therefore, is in the eye of the beholder.  Expanded this also means that the market decides what is innovative…not the providers providing product or services that they believe are innovative.

While we’re defining terms, let’s touch on a couple others that may help us with the actual application of innovation. First, the easy one – Continual Service Improvement (CSI).  A defined ITIL term, in layman’s terms CSI is simply finding a way to do something you’re currently doing in a better way… making it better, faster, and/or cheaper.

Next, a more difficult term… transformation.  Like innovation, the term transformation has many different meanings to many different people.  For the purpose of expressing a point of view, I would submit that transformation is any act that significantly changes the way either you or your customer do business.  An example would be the introduction of persona modeling/management to gain end users’ perspectives and requirements, and then using those findings to determine what assets and services should be offered to each persona group to maximize their individual efficiency and productivity.

The point is that innovation can be applied to both transformation and CSI.  You can be innovative in bringing transformational change (think Service Automation, Autonomics, Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning) and you can be innovative in applying CSI (think password reset).

Remember the password reset tool example?  Would introduction of self-service password reset be CSI or transformative? One might argue that it’s just a better/faster/cheaper way of performing the password reset task.  However, those of us who have implemented password reset in our environments and have seen the cultural change of moving a service from the service desk to the end user – and those of us who have struggled to increase the adoption rate necessary to produce the ROI to justify the tool expenditure – would argue that introduction of self-help password reset is truly transformative in that it essentially changes the way the client does business.  It forces the end user to perform a task differently – they no longer just pick up the phone and call.  If implemented successfully, it forces the end user to perform the service.

Why is all this important?  Why do we need a common understanding – or at least a definitive point of view – when it comes to innovation, transformation and CSI?  Well… that’s easy – it’s how we eventually define success.  Without a baseline definition of those very important key terms, how will we be able to tell clients that we’ve been innovative?  That we’ve helped them transform their business?  That we’ve helped them improve their business?

Very simply…we won’t.

The CompuCom Client Innovation Center of Excellence and the Innovation Delivery Framework

Let me ask you a question.

 

What do you do today that is EXACTLY the same as you did 3 years ago? 5 years ago? 30 years ago? Is there anything you’ve done for that long that you haven’t found a way to improve? That technology hasn’t made better? That someone hasn’t invented an app for???

 

I’ve been in the technical service industry since 1986 – longer, if you count four years in avionics in the Marines and four years working my way through college as an electronics/robotics technician.

 

That’s a long time.

 

Throughout all those years…one thing has been constant. No matter what position I had, or what company I was working for, or what client I served – the need to get better has always been there. In the early years, the only person talking innovation was Tom Peters (remember “In Search of Excellence”) but we were constantly looking for way to get better at what we were doing.

 

Fast forward to 1996. I had my first client-facing management position for a company called Inacom. Our client was Georgia-Pacific (G-P), and I was responsible for all the managed services delivered by Inacom to G-P. Even then, part of the challenge of delivering those services was finding a way to get better, faster and cheaper over time. In those days, G-P, working with the Meta Group, knew that status quo had a shelf life and weren’t comfortable with the delivery of steady state services without the ability to improve.

 

That discomfort with the status quo caused the birth of the first version of the framework that eventually became the Innovation Delivery Framework (IDF) – the framework that CompuCom uses today to power its Client Innovation Center of Excellence (CoE). The purpose of the Client Innovation CoE is to channel all innovation from CompuCom, the industry, and known best practices with a laser focus on behalf of our client base. Starting as a process called “ConX”, which was initially loosely modeled after the Arthur Andersen 10-Step consulting model, maturing through stints at GE Capital ITS, Siemens Business Services, and influenced by my time as an outsourcing advisor with Alsbridge and now with CompuCom, IDF is the mechanism that CompuCom uses to deliver innovation – whether driven by Transformation or Continual Service Improvement (CSI) – into the DNA of our contracts and client relationships.

 

The thirst for innovation by our client base is unquenchable. Analysts like Gartner (“Innovation Must Be Accounted for in IT Deals or It Won’t Happen” – 1 August 2014) and Forrester (“The Digital Business Transformation Playbook for 2015”) realize that the status quo just won’t do… the Managed Service Provider (MSP) who is delivering the same services in Month 60 of a contract that they delivered Month 1 is, quite frankly, not doing their job… and these days that’s just inexcusable… for BOTH parties.

 

Add that to the fact that current industry trends in service automation, autonomics, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and machine learning are wreaking havoc in the pricing of new service contracts. In my opinion, Service Automation is the labor arbitrage of tomorrow. At a recent meeting with a 3^rd party advisor, they reported that their analysts are seeing 30% – 50% reduction in forward pricing from providers with toolsets they believed provided those capabilities.

 

Whether you believe the hype or not – and whether these toolsets actually deliver these costs out or not – really doesn’t matter. The fact is, they eventually will… and this is where the market is going. These technologies will replace labor arbitrage as the most effective, non-impactful way to reduce costs over the next decade – and are the biggest thing to hit our industry since the internet.

 

So… why did CompuCom decide to create a Client Innovation Center of Excellence? Simply put –  we didn’t have a choice. Our new clients are demanding innovation capabilities as a part of their contracts, and our existing clients are requesting innovation capabilities as a part of their renewals. We simply had to have a mechanism for organizing and delivering the appropriate innovation – both from a planning (what are we going to do) and delivery (how are we going to do it) viewpoint.

 

Steven Covey once said that everything is created twice – the mental creation takes place first (the idea or concept), followed by the physical creation. The realization of innovation occurs the same way – there are typically separate processes, one which identifies the need or idea, and another process that ensures that idea gets executed and that the anticipated benefits are realized. The purpose of the Innovation Delivery Framework is to ensure the best ideas get executed… and that they provide value to both the client and CompuCom.

 

So…in closing…I will leave you with this final thought…if we don’t innovate on behalf of our clients?

 

Somebody else will.

2nd HootSuite test message – apologies f

2nd HootSuite test message – apologies for the inconvenience…

Testing a message posting from Hootsuite

Testing a message posting from Hootsuite to see if it works across multiple profiles.