This blog is often characterized by harsh terms like ‘evidence based’, ‘KPIs’ and ‘governance’. Last week a few clients pulled me up on this and told me that maybe i need to start talk a little bit more about relationships. So here goes. What is it about relationships in business that makes them successful? It seems to me that a clear understanding of what both parties to the relationship expect – as well as a clear understanding of how both parties feel about what is being delivered are critical. It seems to be a combination of both evidence and experience.
Evidence is about capturing the objective truth about the quality of the relationship. Whether it is a HR, Finance & Accounting, IT or any other shared service relationships. The evidence typically consists of three key inputs -= performance information (whether it is KPIs, SLAs, OLAs etc.), issues and risks. All of these together create a picture of where you are from an objective perspective.
Experience – so this is pretty intuitive – how do both parties to the relationship feel about what is being delivered? It doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong – knowing how people feel is key to understanding the health of the relationship and identifying areas for concern and improvement.
So what? The learning for me last week was that success in Shared Services is dependent upon good and effective relationships. At ServiceFrame we exist to support companies to build better business relationships. We do this by making it simple to capture information on KPIs, Risks and Issues. We ensure that you can view the information in simple dashboards and make quick effective decisions. Traditionally we treated customer satisfaction as just another KPI but maybe it is more than that – maybe we need to clearly articulate how evidence and experience correlate to inform the quality of relationships – so that is exactly what we are doing. Watch this space. Good relationships do indeed make good Shared Services.
