The managed service program was first used over 15 years ago as a vehicle for organizations to outsource their operations and bring visibility to spend with a focus on consolidating costs.
Our self-service, on-demand, technology-driven world brings us speed, efficiency and enhances our experience. Our expectations have changed, yet many organizations are still purchasing services the same way they did 15 years ago.
The rapid rate of change will see our world evolve more in the next five years than it has in the last 20. It might be time to ask — what value can we bring to a business if we are merely managing a service for them and cutting costs where we can?
“We put a big focus on attracting talented people who are willing to take on the hardest problems — the ones with a spirit to innovate like crazy and popularize our technologies.”
– Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMWare (currently ranked #1 CEO among large
US companies)
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Jobs as we know them today are dying. The talent evolution means candidates are charting their own course now more than ever – according to a recent report from HRDrive, 60% of the workforce will be considered independent professionals by 2027.
My conversations with C-Suite business leaders are shifting to focus more on “What business objectives are you trying to accomplish in the next two to five years and how will talent get you there?” Whether I’m speaking with a large multinational bank looking to digitally innovate their customer-facing applications, or a consumer goods company that is automating much of their sales and distribution processes, one thing is common. They all need talent to power their evolution.
Our future success depends on our continuing ability to identify, hire, develop, motivate, and retain highly skilled personnel for all areas of our organization.
– Larry Page, CEO, Alphabet
To enhance the experience of their colleagues by giving them an opportunity to learn new skills and solve new problems, Google’s gTech team created an internal job marketplace with a focus on fostering talent development and supporting strategy shifts. The marketplace has allowed its workforce to participate in employee and manager driven job matching based on skills, preference and a Gale-Shapley Deferred Acceptance Algorithm. On top of enhancing their talent’s experience, the marketplace has also allowed Google as an organization to drive strategic initiatives by leveraging their existing talent and reducing the need to look at the external market to find talent.
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Organizations don’t need candidates to fill jobs, they need individuals who can drive their organization and its objectives forward with necessary output. The leaders I speak with aren’t motivated by the status of full-time hire, contractor or freelancer, the skills are needed and the avenue they arrive from is no longer important, talent is talent.
All of the RFPs we have seen for managed services the past five-plus years have all had an element of cost savings, but the increasing trend in the recent past has seen a shift to more (70% to 80%) having an element of value-add services as central to their choice of partner. This is a clear sign that organizations know the value talent brings, but just getting it fast and cheap is not enough.
“People allocation is as powerful as financial allocation.”
-Greg Case, CEO of Aon
If talent isn’t placed at the forefront of an organization’s current business strategy, they’re doing it wrong and will die along with the jobs of yesterday.
Check out my next blog post, in which I detail the shifts we have seen in MSP over the last 15 years and what five elements will drive experience in the MSP of the future.
