Evolution of Business Consulting

Professional services firms are undergoing a profound transformation. The markets are changing and the old ways of doing business are becoming obsolete. Customers paying for professional services are becoming more sophisticated and more discerning. Why are we still doing business as usual when the world around us is in such extreme flux? [Read more…]

Is the apprenticeship model still relevant?

Apprenticeship is a model of training passed down from one generation to the next.  The explicit goal is to pass along a specific competency, a basic set of skills, in a structured manner.  Most of the training is on-the-job working/learning within the framework of a formal agreement.

Is the apprenticeship model still relevant? [Read more…]

Big Data is a Big Deal

Big data is more than just the latest IT trend, more than just a consultant buzz word, more than another technology improvement.  Big data is a big deal.  [Read more…]

Strategic alliances and open versus closed systems

Strategic alliances and open systems can teach us much concerning the new ways of working.  As a strategic alliance professional and a business consultant, opening up closed systems for clients and assisting organizations to embrace ecosystem development is a core competency.

What is an open system and why does it matter? [Read more…]

Strategic alliances and the profession

Strategic alliances is a profession onto itself.  Where the profession lies within corporate or not for profit organizations is an interesting question which was bantered about recently at the global summit of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP).

The strategic alliance profession is growing and ASAP is the leading association in the field.  Their role is to promote the profession and the discipline of alliances, partnerships and channel development.  The profession is relatively recent in the business world and the emergence of executives with titles such as Chief Alliance Officer, Alliance Director or Partner Manager are cropping up more frequently in resumes and professional profiles. [Read more…]

Strategic Alliances and New Ways of Working

Strategic alliances and new ways of working go hand-in-hand.

Strategic alliances involve putting together partnerships which are designed to create more value for each organization than each one could generate on its own.  They are strategic because the relationships are more than transactional commercial agreements. They are alliances because they imply long term frameworks, over multiple years, with complex and codified rules of cooperation.

New ways of working concern all the organizational and behavioral aspects of the way we produce goods & services, mostly driven by technology innovations and ubiquitous information.  Our relationship to space and time is being modified.  We are physical and virtual at the same time.  We are always on, 24/7.  We share effortlessly our work products without paper or the need to be sitting next to each other. [Read more…]

What is an Accountable Care Organization? (ACO)

What is an Accountable Care Organization? (ACO)

Accountable Care Organizations (better known by their acronym ACO) are among the latest & greatest attempts to gain control of spiraling, out-of-control health care costs.  The Affordable Heath Care Act (better known as “Obama Care”) is convoluted and needs some serious tweaking.  But the overall political purpose of the legislation is to provide affordable health care to the general population (expanded coverage) and at a lower cost:  more productivity, quality, efficiency and streamlined patient-care processes.

The good news is that the ACO framework for Medicare and Medicaid is the most sensible and potentially the most effective way to achieve the very ambitious double goal of the Act:

  • Better care and increased quality of health services
  • Lower costs and streamlined processes of patient care [Read more…]

Coopetition

Coopetition – please excuse the neologism – is a term created to describe a situation where two or more organizations which would normally be in competition would cooperate with each other in some form or manner.

Coopetition is a key concept for strategic alliance professionals because there are rarely cases where all parties involved in a collaborative process experience an immediate ‘win-win’ situation.  Usually, one or more of the parties feels that his ‘best case’ scenario was not fully realized.  [Read more…]

Transnational Organizations

Transnational Organizations was a term we used extensively in the 90’s to put forth a different version of what it meant to “go global” or “become international.”  As a practitioner and a junior consultant, traveling the world to implement change management projects for large corporations (usually called Business Process Re-Engineering or Enterprise Resource Planning or Global Shared Services…), it was fascinating to see the different forms companies could take. [Read more…]

Member Firm Organizations

Member Firm Organizations are a form of strategic alliances, situated on a continuum somewhere between a subsidiary and a purely commercial agreement.  The member firms within the organization have chosen to be part of the group, and have been vetted by the organization as qualified and desirable to the others and to the organization as a whole.

Member Firm Organizations can be very tightly knit, almost like a franchise model, or rather loosely aligned in a network of common interests.  Issues such as sales & marketing, operations and support functions are dealt with in a manner in which there is a common approach or each member firm has its own processes and systems.  [Read more…]

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