A Perfect Storm – How companies are moving to a Services and Outcome based way of getting work done

Many companies around the world have now found themselves in a perfect storm of disruption over the last 12 months and the world has obviously been rocked by the appearance of the Coronavirus. It will be a long time before companies around the world manage to come to terms with the changes to their basic operating models, let alone the terrible loss of life.

Global Lockdowns and restricted movement of people have severely impacted the economy and different markets, shocking all businesses - from large multi-national businesses, down to a plethora of high street retail and hospitality businesses and everyone in-between.

However, in reality Coronavirus has only added to the storm that has already been brewing around companies for the last 5 years or so.

This is the building storm of disruption businesses have found themselves in, caused by various elements such as the unrelenting speed of technology, changing consumer activity, the growing number of very successful agile start-ups threatening the status quo, transient workforces, and increase in cyber security attacks.  Changes to liabilities in the taxation of skilled contract workers (IR35) will further add to the disruption.

Coronavirus has highlighted the inherent weaknesses in some business models and how they often operated on one, single dimension.

In response, companies and Boards have been wrestling with how they quickly change their models, as well as the absolute need to accelerate digital transformation, versus growing legacy technology debt. Many have had to face the reality and the inconvenient truth that they just don’t have the internal skills, vision or talent to drive the change needed to compete, or even survive in the new normal.

Coronavirus has only magnified this further as companies have been forced to make redundancies, postpone projects and rush to move to disparate teams working from home or remotely literally overnight.

This has radically changed where, when, who and how work is done and may change the way businesses operate forever. Even those businesses who rebound quickly will find they need to operate in new ways to avoid finding themselves on burning platforms as more nimble competitors take their market share.

With the delivery of the Coronavirus vaccine rollout, Brexit claiming to be “done”, dates now in the diary for the easing of Lockdown and a re-setting of new market opportunities, there is a gap in the clouds and a real sense of optimism and investment for 2021. However, businesses that survive the immediate crisis will need to solve a multitude of problems and deliver value through their much needed business change and technology change projects and programmes in the short, medium and-long term.

But how do companies propose to do this? How do companies tap into specialist, flexible Project Change teams who can deliver the outcomes you want? How do companies still keep the workforce flexible, whilst up-skilling their Permanent staff at the same time?

Moving to a Services model to get work done

Increasingly companies are now stating that they are looking for more efficient and measurable services and outcomes to get work done. As companies prioritise critical 2021 projects, plus re-starting postponed 2020 projects - alongside keeping the lights on in business as usual - many realise they don’t have the internal bandwidth to rigorously manage change projects or deliver the change value they desperately need.

This is where outcome-based, Statement of Work (SoW) work delivery models are quickly becoming the growing answer to how to get things done in the rapidly evolving return to recovery.

More and more companies are turning to smaller, agile organisations, that specialise in delivering change & transformation based projects and programmes to defined, co-created objectives and pre-agreed outcomes. A professional services approach delivered by pre-formed teams, with deep expertise who can make a difference quickly both to project delivery and internal capability.

The key is flexibility and impact – the need might be for a short independent discovery piece of work to establish a business case, or a set of unbiased eyes to suggest what is the art of the possible? Maybe it’s a team of business analysts, architects or testers required to work across a portfolio of projects? Maybe you need access to a PMO? Perhaps it’s an end to end project you want delivered? A technology upgrade, a Cyber Security review, a new Finance or HR system?     

Delivering business and technology change projects on-time and on-budget will be a major focus for business leadership teams, as well as delivering the benefits desired. To do this, organisations want proven solutions, experts and trusted delivery partners. Increasingly they want this from outside the traditional big Consultancy firms. They want agility, expertise, certainty and value for money.

As the economy starts to get moving again in 2021, FD’s and CFO’s will manage cashflow very carefully and controlling project cost will be vitally important. A partner who is working to defined deliverables and milestone-based payment schedules, on projects it is helping to deliver, shares financial risk with its customer. This represents an attractive alternative to the traditional open-ended Contractor time-based payments.

Also, due to the Service elements included, the robust external Project Management and Service wrapper provided around any project team deployed, will also take away the man-management time from the client that would be usually needed to recruit, onboard, put through compliance, vet, induct and hand hold on a day to day basis. 

As already touched upon, businesses will be all too aware of the potential impact  new IR35 regulations will have on their flexible Contractor workforce come April 2021 (postponed from April 2020), as well as the threat of heavy HMRC fines and unwanted bad press for the business. Potentially reducing the access to that Contractor pool of skilled talent in the current climate we find ourselves in is a potential disaster for some and if not handled well, business critical skills and talent could literally walk out the door overnight for others. This may leave many businesses and projects exposed as we witnessed when IR35 was rolled out in the Public Sector a couple of years ago.

There is good news. Engaging with a partner through this Services consultancy model and tapping into their bench of expert talent and pre-formed hybrid teams, changes the work delivery model from a disparate Recruitment time + materials contract, to a Services contract. As a result, this can help to mitigate IR35, whilst still giving access to much needed, flexible talent. An essential lifeline.     

In summary

Companies are now launching their projects and programmes for 2021 and are looking for a partner who can support them. However, in this new normal businesses now demand value for money, a partner who is agile enough to pivot left or right mid project, whilst offering the trust and peace of mind that the group of people leading their project, or the technical teams onsite, have real life experience of delivering results within that project environment and not just quoting theory from a book, or trying to re-sell something from of an out of date playbook. Companies can no longer afford to be kept in the problem anymore.

Lorien partners with companies across the Private and Public sector that require scalable solutions to generate real business benefit, at speed and a cost-base not possible with the larger, more traditional consultancies. We were born out of agility and this growing client need, by a group of delivery experts who have unbiased, independent thinking and have been working together to disrupt the traditional consulting model for many years.

Project delivery success is about impact and the outcomes that are achieved and project value that we deliver “as a Service”. But most of all, it’s about supporting our clients to weather the storm and getting work done.

Contact me for a discussion around how Lorien could support your business, hear what we have done for others, IR35 support, or just to discuss ideas and how we work.

Steve Corbett, Client Solutions Director, Impellam Group

Steve.corbett@impellam.com mobile: 07717 225 295