Change Management Is Essential to Outsourcing Success
At Affinity Express, we encourage clients to work on changing their processes right at the beginning of their relationships with us, so that it is easier to get their systems and people ready for outsourcing. This makes it easier on their sales and production personnel, as well as our team. It goes a long way toward making these projects successful.
We use our experience working with hundreds of different companies to offer suggestions to clients on how they should structure their processes. Nine times out of ten, they are happy to follow our recommendations.
In the case with "Client A," they did not. Client A was a big publishing group with lots of little, geographically spread-out newspaper properties with very different processes. They gave little thought to change management before the project went live. The implementation occurred according to plan, but they needed extensive support from Affinity Express afterward. Because processes weren't streamlined and sales people weren't properly trained, the sales team ended up entering orders incorrectly or inconsistently. This makes it hard for our production team to keep up with requirements and can result in quality issues. The worst of it is that the client isn't seeing savings yet, which they could easily have, if the project had been managed better on their end.
In contrast, "Client B" began modifying and streamlining processes on a corporate level in preparation of their outsourcing initiative, even before Affinity Express came on board. As a result, all their transitions have been successful and consistent. We have had no surprises and very few changes to implement during go-live periods. The bottom line is that we have a very happy client with a lot of growth potential who realized savings immediately.
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