8 Keys To Making A Successful Transition

Home
Successful Transition

No transition is simple. Most, if not all, are complex. But a successful transition delivers. It increases revenues, cuts costs, and boosts customer satisfaction. It also frees up critical resources you can use to shore up activities designed to create a sustained competitive advantage and given today’s hotly contested marketplaces, creating a sustained competitive advantage is imperative if you want to survive.

Executing A Successful Transition

The trick to pulling off a successful transition is to do five things:

  • Identify the obvious organizational barriers to a successful transition
  • Identify the blind spots that can block a successful transition
  • Align the cultures
  • Set realistic expectations
  • Manage change using a top-down approach

Once you’ve identified these barriers, you obviously need to address them.

Your ultimate goal is to create an effective situation that can grow and change with your company.

Below are 8 keys to doing that:

1. Create A Vision For A Successful Transition

Failing to create a vision for where contracting is taking you is among the top mistakes in transitioning. Without a clear vision, stakeholders may see the effort as a cost-cutting measure. If that happens, your transition may fall flat.

2. Secure Senior Manager Commitment

Securing senior management commitment is a key early step. Stakeholders only commit to change as they see senior leaders do it.

You can secure senior leader commitment by demonstrating outsourcing’s benefits. To encourage commitment, show senior managers what’s possible once the transition is executed.

3. Create A Plan For Managing Change

Change is never easy. A well-thought-out plan shows stakeholders and managers that you recognize that subtle cultural differences at your business can derail a transition. Showing them how to overcome these challenges builds confidence in you AND the project.

4. Determine Organizational Readiness

Assessing readiness is among the transition’s most critical steps. Assess the organization from technical, mental, and cultural standpoints.

Then set realistic expectations and manage them actively. When setting deadlines and goals, under-promise and over-deliver.

5. Anticipate Organizational Risks

Organizations are vulnerable during transitions. Develop a plan for overcoming the risks involved. A key element of this plan is a strategy that deals with the loss of control issues—both real and imagined.

Also, be on guard for a possible decline in performance and baseline services during the transition. Again, a plan to handle these changes helps.

6. Create An Infrastructure For Successful Transition

You’ll need to manage the process of transition well to succeed—whether you’re offshoring tech support or call center operations. To help manage the process, create a project-management infrastructure that establishes clear roles and responsibilities.

Also, determine who will manage the transition end-to-end and how it will be done. Mapping out what the process will look like after the transition helps, too.

7. Establish Reporting / Governance Mechanism

You want to establish a reporting/governance mechanism that collects feedback accurately and discreetly from all key stakeholders. The mechanism should provide for executive oversight and guidance.

Establishing a steering committee is a good start to creating an effective governance mechanism. So is creating a management committee and a service delivery committee. Both can provide hands-on guidance during the transition.

8. Define Successful Transition

Even if your transition moves ahead as scripted, it may not achieve the business outcomes that some expect. Avoid this problem. Define what success is and how it will be evaluated—both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Also, active and accurate measurement—including establishing key benchmarks for success—should be done both during and after the transition. Reporting keeps everyone on the right track and in the loop.

Transitions are always challenging. Most are complex undertakings that leave your business vulnerable when occurring. But once completed, they deliver enormous benefits.

If all this sounds daunting, working with an experienced IT service desk provider that has a proven track record increases your chances of executing a successful transition. So don’t be afraid to tap this expertise.

A smooth successful transition helps you achieve all the benefits contracting offers while containing costs.

Let us put our proven experience in providing tech support for small and medium size companies to work for you. Request a quote from our sales team.



offshoring services

Top 5 Challenges SMBs Face When Offshoring Services



Service Provider

Service Provider Selection: 5 Proven Tips To Assure Success