The key responsibility of any leader is to ensure the resources of the organisation are used for maximum benefit. The return on investment (ROI) is a key measure of the value gained from the resources used.
Usually, ROI calculations focus on financial inputs and outcomes such as revenue increases and/or cost savings. However, with real-time professional services, there are a host of additional non-financial returns which, while difficult to quantify, all have tangible and positive results. Let’s take a deeper look at both the financial and non-financial returns from utilising on-demand services.
Direct financial returns
There are significant costs involved in recruitment, development, and retention of employees. Real-time professional services minimise these hiring costs by providing an immediate source of expertise, doing away with the need for lengthy and expensive advertising, review, interview, and negotiation processes.
Not only does it save on the direct recruitment costs, but it also saves the time of organisational leaders who can use their valuable time to focus on activities that contribute to sustainability and success instead.
The reality is also that organisations bear significant HR costs, even if the employees are not being productive, and regardless of performance outcome. The difference with real-time professional services and fractional expertise is that payment is only made for the work that is done. Scarce financial resources are applied only as needed, and for a direct and immediate benefit. This allows funds normally tied up in employee expenses to be saved or reallocated to projects that directly enhance further revenue gain or cost reduction.
It is a similar story where consultancies are engaged. Engaging consultancy services usually requires lengthy approval, tender, procurement, and up-skilling processes. Consultancy fees are known to be exorbitant, with the client paying for the consultants’ brand reputation, but also covering a portion of the consultancy’s own employee and operating overheads.
While consultants do provide a wealth of expertise, and fill the knowledge gaps in many organisations, their engagement systems are clunky and cumbersome and embed many unnecessary costs. With on-demand services, the engagement of experts is a streamlined process. It eradicates expensive procurement processes and payment of compensation for consultants’ corporate structures.
One of the greatest examples of the direct financial returns possible from real-time professional services comes from General Electric (GE). They launched GENIUSLINK to harness the power of expert networks. It comprises a team of experts both inside and outside of the company who get together to solve the organisation’s most difficult problems and advance the most ground-breaking visions.
A small squad of GENIUSLINK members were convened to deliver the goal of finding $5 billion in productivity improvements over 10 years. Working with GE business units, this team was able to identify $5 billion in improvements in just its first nine months. The energy and engagement created in the community-based model is significantly superior to the relative stagnation and isolation inherent in the one-job-to-one FTE model, and in this case delivered extraordinary cost savings in a very short amount of time.
Non-financial benefits
There are also many advantages to utilising on-demand services that may be difficult to quantify immediately but have real and lasting positive impact for the organisation.
Diversity in decision making
All the research shows that diversity improves decision making. Seeking the opinion of others with varied life experiences and skills ensures a holistic perspective and prevents the traps of groupthink, echo chambers, unconscious bias, and unknown knowledge gaps, and therefore inclusive teams make better decisions almost 90% of the time.
One of the key benefits of real-time professional services is the ease to which organisations can tap into diverse perspectives and fresh thinking. Using on-demand advice or fractional experts, decision-makers can access a wide breadth and depth of skills and experience and gain confidence in the path forward. Diversity is smart business, and real-time professional services make diversity easy.
Speed to market
One of the consequences of a volatile business market is that leaders need to get up to speed fast on new competitors, technologies, and customer expectations. The organisation also needs to be able to deliver new products, services, and strategies rapidly to respond and remain competitive. There is no way that a company can have all the information it needs in-house to respond to fast-moving markets. This is where accessing on-demand services presents a huge competitive advantage.
Firms can access immediate expert advice on countries, competitors, technologies, and production pivots, and be able to respond swiftly to threats and opportunities as they arise. Getting in first to a new investment opportunity may deliver significant first-mover advantages, both financially and strategically, and responding swiftly to issues or competitive actions may prevent loss of customer loyalty and revenue. More than ever, speed is becoming the winning capability, and real-time professional services deliver the help needed instantly.
Achieving agility
Making decisions is a relatively easy process. Implementing them is much harder. There are many interests to align and resources to rally behind the new direction. The larger the organisation, the harder it is to chart a new course, but real-time professional services provide the flexibility to get the change started fast. No longer do organisations need to waste time recruiting new experts to fill capability gaps. With on-demand services, professionals can be engaged promptly to immediately advance strategic experiments or operational transformation. There is no need to be bound up by organisational politics or bureaucratic processes. Action can be taken when the time is right, and agility achieved with a phone call.
Getting the right talent
There are many risks and inefficiencies with traditional hiring processes. The talent pool is inherently limited by the advertising channels used, and the time taken to process applications may mean the best applicants have already had better offers. Recent research has shown that one-fifth of the current workforce are also planning a move into the gig economy, looking to maximise their freedom through freelance work. This means that organisations can expect to lose 20 percent of their most talented employees over the next few years, as those with highly attractive skills move out of traditional employment arrangements.
For all these reasons, an organisation may not be able to access the quality of talent they need to move to the next, keeping them stuck in the cycle of inadequate results.
Securing the right talent is increasingly becoming recognised as the key business issue for the future. A recent survey of professionals found that 88 percent believe having specialised expertise is essential to the long-term success of their organisation. In addition, two-thirds see their inability to access this expertise as the major barrier to the achievement of sustainable success.
Real-time professional services directly and effectively address this threat, by providing the right talent when and where it is required. It eliminates inefficiencies in sourcing and securing great human resources, and provides a ready team of specialists, only when they are needed, and at a fraction of the cost.
These services even the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses, allowing them to access a pool of experts previously only available through high-cost consultancies, or which may have been prohibited by the salary offerings of bigger players.
Now everyone has the ability to access the advice and expertise they need to achieve their full potential.
Employee Loyalty
Call it the Great Reshuffle, Great Resignation, Great Attrition, Great Reconsideration, or the Great Re-Evaluation. Regardless of title there is a major shift by employees to move away from jobs they no longer find rewarding, and to careers where they feel a sense of meaning and support. Losing an employee is not only inconvenient, but also very costly, with replacement recruitment costs almost doubling their annual salary.
In addition, employees who are not engaged are also not productive, and certainly are not living up to their full potential, which means the organisation isn’t either. This is why building employee loyalty is crucial. A key way an organisation can do this is by investing in their people, not through superficial trinkets, but through tailored development. An employee is more likely to be loyal and engaged when they feel they are recognised and appreciated as a person with individual goals and career dreams.
Standardised training programs don’t provide that sense of individual consideration, and so this is where personalised development programs are becoming more advantageous.
Real-time professional services support learning and development professionals by providing a range of experts and coaches to be on-hand to meet the employee’s specific needs. They can engage with the employee when and where suits them, supporting their flexible work arrangements, and helping them work through their own personal challenges and career goals.
Through embedding on-demand development, organisations are able to provide the recognition their talent pool deserves, minimise the risk of resignation, ensure staff engagement and loyalty, and overall organisational performance.
Whether you look at it from the financial or non-financial perspectives, the returns of real-time professional services are momentous. Not only can you save costs from inefficient and ineffective recruitment processes, but you can also save the time of your key leaders which can be invested in value-adding activities. And while experts can be used to facilitate new revenue sources or find cost savings, they can also bring diversity into decision-making, deliver speed and agility, and ensure you have the right talent in place to succeed.
On-demand services also offer a whole new approach to learning and development, supporting your flexible workforce with individual consideration and career advice, fostering a sense of confidence and loyalty, and contributing to excellent individual and organisational performance. With real-time professional services, your staff and your organisation can live up to their fullest potential, and this outcome is priceless.
