EquaSiis Enterprise provides
a robust and scalable issue tool set for the effective and
efficient management of issues.
Functionality
- Issue form with log of active and
resolved issues
- Full text search for quick access to
previous issue resolutions
- Scorecard to improve overall issue
management by priority and days issue outstanding
Transition
Issues happen in outsourcing and are
unavoidable. Despite the arduous negotiations that go into
every outsourcing endeavor, the fact that there is a buyer and a
provider in that relationship will result in commercial issues
between the two parties. These commercial issues are
different than the operational issues that get logged into a ticket
system. These issues result in money changing hands.
Commercial issues typically stem from
governance or account management resources trying to represent
their respective organizations. Human nature dictates that
the side of the table that you sit on changes your
perspective. Consequently, when something new comes up that
was not specifically addressed in the statement of work, or
included in the base case, the buyer's natural tendency is to take
the position that this new item is included in the scope of
services; however, providers tend to take the position that the new
item should result in incremental fees. The time that most of
these gray areas of outsourcing deals are uncovered is during
transition.
It is quite common that hundreds of commercial
issues arise during the initial stages of transition. There
are cases where more than a thousand issues have emerged within the
first six months of a deal commencing. The question is how to
manage this large volume of commercial or contract issues in an
effective and efficient manner. The most common solution is
to use an Excel spreadsheet, but this poses significant challenges
with version control, size of text fields, and access by the larger
team.
Continuity
Wherever you store your issues and their
documented resolution is just as important in year five as during
transition because most of the people in governance or account
management that were involved in transition are not going to be
around in year five. Experience tells us that managing these
complex deals is a stressful job. If the stress doesn't get
you looking for another job after a few years, then your success
will. In either case, you will be replaced by someone with
little or no knowledge of the deal. They will have to step
into your shoes and provide continuity with their
counterpart. Lack of continuity may result in tension and
confusion, and can erode the trust in a relationship.
Lacking a central repository for issues, those
new resources are forced to relive the resolution of many issues
that have previously been resolved. This may result in
unnecessary change orders, if you lose the knowledge that the set
of services was determined to be in scope as, documented in an
issue resolution.
EquaSiis Enterprise provides a customizable form for capturing
commercial issues in outsourcing relationships or shared services
environments. The data from the form is easily filtered to
provide specific reports by business unit, provider, category, etc.
that can then be downloaded into Excel. All active and
resolved issues are stored in a log that can be searched via a full
text search capability. This is particularly useful to
provide continuity of the institutional knowledge of the deal as
team members come and go. Enterprise also provides a
scorecard that displays how many issues there are by priority and
how many days outstanding those issues are. That enables
management to focus on high priority issues that are getting old
rather that new, low priority issues.