Business Transformation, Proven Success Factors

Does your outsourcing service provider really have your best interests at heart?

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Hallmarks of the Acxiom/TransUnion Outsourcing Partnership

Partners in the Marketplace Although they have some of the same customers and are both focused on developing innovative customer products, the two companies have made a conscious decision not to compete with each other. This extends to the point of exchanging ownership if an asset/resource is more strategic to the other’s business. For example, TransUnion sold its profit-generating background security company to Acxiom, because it was building large-scale solutions around national security. Conversely, when they discovered both companies were trying to build some analytic capabilities, TransUnion acquired Acxiom’s core group of analysts, and Acxiom is now a customer for those services.

Communication Relationships are built over time. As they learned more about each other, they solidified the way they interact. Both companies permit—and encourage—each other to have coffee or lunch together. In this manner, they each become aware of what people are trying to do, and it often leads to collaborating on ways to do something more efficiently.

They also use these visits as opportunities to look for ways to enhance and expand their relationship. The visits, together with the length of the relationship, not only facilitate easy access to each other but also result in a unique understanding of each other’s business. Such familiarity eliminates the needs to spend time educating each other on what they are trying to accomplish.

The Bottom Line Acxiom’s attitude is to go beyond providing great services. The provider looks for ways to help drive TransUnion’s bottom line, whether or not it also has an impact on Acxiom’s bottom line. Similarly, TransUnion wants Acxiom to enjoy a profit from their relationship.

Because both companies look out for TransUnion’s bottom line and focus on the same objectives, they approach all decisions with how to do the right thing for both companies. They strive to create situations where both emerge victorious. About each other, they each believe: their success is our success.

Summary: Requirements for Achieving Business Transformation

Like any outsourcing model, business transformational outsourcing (BTO) focuses on value outcomes. Where it is successful, it frees the buyer’s executives from inward-focused operational challenges to be able to drive the investments and decisions that will transform the way the company conducts business and also yield dramatic synergistic competitive advantages. Buyers benefit by leveraging an outsourcing provider’s expertise and technology solutions that enable transformation of the business, positioning buyers in the forefront of their competitive marketplaces.

But, unlike some business models, BTO requires a highly effective relationship between the buyer and its service provider. Some buyers make the mistake of selecting a service provider based solely on technology solutions and capabilities. But BTO is wrapped around highly complex, enterprise-wide strategic maneuvers; and it is not accomplished in a short period of time.

Indeed, as TransUnion’s experience evidences, transformational objectives may not be entirely determined at the outset of a relationship, and the objectives may change again and again over the long run. It is a continual project. Thus, BTO must also be enveloped with never-ending change management strategies.

But, more importantly, a “trusted partner” approach to the outsourced relationship is crucial to successfully achieving transformational objectives. It goes far beyond “teamwork” and considering an outsourcing provider as an “extension” of the buyer’s enterprise. The parties must trust each other to communicate openly and honestly so

they will understand what is important to each other and their businesses. They must be committed to the relationship itself, as well as their mutual goals. Both must be able to have confidence that both look after each other’s interests and will do what is necessary to ensure that the relationship continues to be mutually beneficial over a long period of time.  

Therefore, while success in BTO is highly dependent on the selection of service provider, the primary focus of that selection should be the relationship aspects.

Because of the mutually beneficial, highly effective relationship between TransUnion and Acxiom, they successfully achieved transformational goals in the early 1990s—even before there was such a model as “business transformation outsourcing.” They continue to set the benchmark, illustrating what must happen in the boardrooms and the public corridors of companies wanting to transform the way they do business.

With the right provider in place—one that truly shares the buyer’s goals and best interests—the evolving relationship will be strong enough to withstand ongoing impacts from changes in industry and technology over a long term; and the parties will achieve their evolving goals. 

 
For more information , please visit www.acxiom.com or contact Larry MacEachern at 1-877-944-1501.