Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans — you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.

Subscribe to Arthur D. Little's Culture & Leadership Newsletter

Insight

You are a software engineer working on a software product, and you are not sure of how a customer wants a new change request implemented. You try to get clarification, but the customer cannot articulate the request. To shortcut the process, your customer provides you with a copy of a user manual from another software product.

But, You Do Usually Get What You Ask For!

Perception is reality. It is a bitter truth, but one that haunts IT professionals time and time again -- from the understanding of user requirements, to expectations management, to product selection and contract negotiation.

Disclaimer
I am not a lawyer, and no part of this article should be interpreted as legal advice. Do not act or rely upon law-related information in this article without seeking the advice of an attorney.

Companies turn to outsourcing for many different reasons. Some companies want to pursue new opportunities, others seek to offload nonstrategic functions, and still others want to reduce and control costs. Yet despite these different motivating factors, there is a common thread underlying each of these decisions to outsource.

There are many things that prompt companies to consider outsourcing. Some organizations want to focus on their core competencies and offload nonstrategic functions to the outsourcer. Others want to pursue a new opportunity, change direction, or correct problems in their IT organization. None of these companies, however, would be willing to consider outsourcing if it meant a deterioration in service.

The Internet and ever-increasing bandwidth have spawned a new method of delivering software functionality -- the application service provider (ASP) model. An ASP creatively combines aspects of software packages, outsourcing, and Internet delivery, allowing customers to receive all the benefits of using a software application without the associated burdens.