Our Blog
News, Insights, editorial and comments on hot topics relating to Strategic Partnerships
How Can We Demystify the Digital Future for Our Organisation and Make It Relevant and Meaningful?
Strategy Management
Image courtesy of JMortonPhoto.com & OtoGodfrey.com Quite often, organisations are reactive rather than proactive. We find it difficult to plan even six months into the future, yet find ourselves ill-equipped for sudden changes when they do occur. To answer this question, we need to have clear outcomes that reflect the values of our customers – That's done through Value Management. Secondly, as part of our innovation practice, we can test different digital products and services to see if they fulfil…
What Does the Customer Want and How Does Digital Help?
Value Management
Answers to this question can be expressed as customer values and outcomes. Value Management is the “shepherd” which keeps activity and focus on those outcomes. This doesn't just mean operations and project activities but also continuously improving the way we work as we go, adopting lessons learnt. By taking our customers' values into account, we can improve where we put our focus and how we allocate our resources to bridge the gap between expectations and outcomes. Essentially, we can direct…
Beyond Service Partner
A review of the afternoon's discussions in one track at the June IT BP Forum
The Beyond Service Partner track contained two sessions facilitated by myself, Gavin Berman, with a workshop by Mark Smalley, all helped by Theresa Jacobs. In the first session I began by setting the context in which the Parliamentary Digital Service operates, providing the digital tools for two separate albeit very similar organisations – The House of Commons and The House of Lords – and the Politicians they serve in the UK Parliament. Since the introduction of the Business Partner function…
The Challenge of Delivering Value
Our Survey Results
At the Baxter Thompson Associates (BTA) IT Business Partner Forum in June, we looked at the challenge of Value Management. Previous survey respondents had said that this was the third most challenging aspect of their role. To investigate this further a new survey was issued following the DAMAC framework for Value Management created by BTA. What is Value Management? Value Management is a set of management techniques to ensure that customers’ expectations and needs are met through supporting activities, products…
Learning To Drive
Breaking The Cycle of Negative Feedback
Our surveys suggest Value Management is the third biggest challenge IT Business Partners face. Given where we currently are as an industry it is also a fundamental enabler on gaining credibility with our peers. I argue that a lack of Value Management (and as part of that Continuous Improvement) in an organisation is the root cause to why IT departments find it so difficult to get beyond what I call a “Service Partner” level. That is where an IT department…
Earning The Right
To become a Strategic IT Partner
We at Baxter Thompson Associates have come to the conclusion that whilst IT organisations are effective at being a “Service partner”, they may not necessarily be effective. This conclusion is reached through assessing two different surveys sampling the same group of people – IT Business Partners (ITBP) Whilst Business Stakeholders report that they want strategic technology insight and indeed many ITBPs we have spoken to want to position themselves more as Strategic IT Partners, in order to earn that right…
Value Management
The Top Challenges Facing IT Business Partners today
At the BRM Forum in London delegates gained some practical takeaways after participating in the BRM Forum. This is the last in a four part mini-series. BRM Forum: The Panel Article written by James O'Driscoll, Gilbert Scott Associates. On Friday 9th of June the 5th BRM forum took place in central London. The session was a mix of debate, presentation and business simulation via Grab@Pizza. In terms of the debate this was a panel discussion hosted by James O'Driscoll on…
