Insights from the Gartner Sourcing & Strategic Vendor Relationships Summit 2014

Earlier this month, I attended the Gartner Sourcing & Strategic Vendor Relationships Summit in Orlando, Florida. The Shinetech management team attends these types of conferences and events several times a year in order to stay up to date with the latest trends, research and best practices in the outsourcing industry.

The conference attendees were made up of senior business and IT professionals and sourcing management team members from major global companies including Dell, Snapple, IBM, Boeing, and many more.The conference focused on topics such as current market conditions and future changes, vendor selection and management, latest techniques and solutions for providers and clients, how to ensure appropriate delivery of services provides (offshore and onshore), team management techniques, and best practices for delivery from successful global organizations. Below are some of the key takeaways and insights from a few of the sessions we attended.

“Successful Sourcing in a Digital Economy” presented by HCL Technologies: Dr. Pepper/Snapple Group

The speaker explained how they have built a “one team” culture where everyone works together to eliminate problems that are associated with separate internal teams. They encourage team members to share ideas on how to improve and constantly evolve. There needs to be a stable operational environment including:

- A proper vision
- Change in culture
- Merged teams
- Collaboration
- Establish common goals for entire team
- Understand the impact of current problems and the business impact of not resolving them

The speaker also gave a great example of three frogs sitting on a log: if one frog decides to jump, how many frogs are left on the log? Audience members said “two frogs are left” or “all of the frogs fell off”. But the answer the speaker gave was very interesting. She said that there were three frogs left on the log since the one frog only “decided” to jump, and in reality it never jumped at all. Just because you decide to do something does not mean it actually happens or gets done. There needs to be an action or actions associated with a decision. Therefore, no frogs moved at all. This is typical of many companies who hold weekly meetings to discuss change and initiatives, but the status remains the same every week – nothing happens and everything continues. The lesson here is that decisions are not actions; change can only happen when action is associated and teams are enabled to change.

“Driving Optimal Value Through Global Delivery Best Practices” presented by Ian Marriot, Gartner Analyst

The speaker emphasized the importance of having a clearly established goal. He covered the major factors that should be considered when developing an effective global delivery strategy including drivers, services, locations, teams and approach.

Mr. Marriot also shared some tips for offshore teams, including the importance of measuring their productivity, including lines of code, function point analysis, case points, story points, work breakdown structure, and more. Team members need to be incentivized for quality, rather than speed, and should have experienced team leaders. Last but not least, he explained that knowing how to communicate is key and team members need to communicate properly in order to have seamless collaboration.

“Transform Your Data Center into a Business Driver” presented by Dell Services

This session focused on how important a company dashboard is, and companies who have this in place will easily and quickly surpass competition in areas such as delivery, sales, marketing, finance and HR.CIOs are transforming from Chief Information Officers to Chief Innovation Officers and should be focused on these four key areas for their organizations:

- Embracing emerging technologies
- Ensuring seamless customer experiences
- Delivering strategic value via technology
- Becoming more agile

Photo credit: KROMKRATHOG