The company under review is one of the world’s leading software providers. It derives its revenue from the sale of software licences and related services. This essay focusses on the consulting business unit, supporting various professional services, primarily software implementations.
I recently joined the company as Operations Manager.
The company has made a strategic change in its product portfolio, moving from its traditional on-premise to a cloud-based delivery model. The implications are that the business unit must expand the breadth of its offering beyond traditional implementation services to advisory services, covering architecture, road-mapping and cloud transitions.
Considering this significant change and the resultant skills shift required across roles and content areas, learning and development (L&D) is identified as a focus area.…show more content… This change demands that the business adjust its skills mix. Consultants require relevant industry knowledge and deeper architectural expertise as core skills,in addition to on-premise implementation expertise. Appendix 2 shows the composition of skills vs the expectation.
Business outputs
The business unit reported a consecutive year-on-year decline with revenue and profitability down 18.1% and 8.5% respectively, in 2016.
To enhance the delivery model and maintain a balanced P&L, the organisation underwent a restructuring that realised a workforce reduction of 47% over the past two years (Figure 2), with consultant activities transitioned offshore. This inter-organisational offshoring resulted in 49% of projects delivered through offshore centres vs 28% in 2015.
Employee survey results reflected a 5% drop in employee engagement (Appendix 3).Figure 3 shows the five least favourable responses.
