The August IAOP Chapter Meeting, held on August 14, 2014, featured a valuable discussion about a detailed and informative case study on Governance Models for Global Business Services (GBS) by Jack Sanderson, COP, Senior Manager, Strategic Sourcing & Process Transformation Office at Boston Scientific and moderated by Atul Vashistha, Chairman, Neo Group.
Boston Scientific is one of the world’s largest medical device companies, with a GBS organization that leverages a mix of captive centers and vendor outsourcing to optimally deliver services. Jack offered a detailed overview of the organization’s GBS governance model, including performance management, decision-making, issue escalation & resolution, contract management and strategic alignment. He also reviewed the GBS organization’s service infrastructure and explained that the proper infrastructure is critical in order to function as a provider of services to business units.
In closing, Jack shared eight Lessons Learned from his 20+ years of experience in the industry:
1. The needs and structures of Business Unit Governance differ from those of Outsourcing Vendor Governance
2. Start Early – building effective governance is hard work
3. Conveying the value can be difficult until the organization has some real ‘before and after’ experiences
4. Establish clear accountability for both design and run
5. Acknowledge and embrace the overlaps – intersection points across components require collaborative design
6. Don’t try to do it all at once – prioritize
7. Top-down support is critical to maintain momentum
8. Full-time resource/team required to maintain focus on build and run
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