Top Three Items to Consider When Aligning Global Operations

What I love about working with global companies is that you never know how global or independent the regional offices are until you work through their business processes. Nothing points this out more than implementing a professional services automation (PSA) tool. There are global companies in which all offices speak the same language, use the same terminology, and follow almost identical business processes, including roles and responsibilities of individuals in various departments. There are also the opposite-extreme cases, where offices are structured very differently, call their departments and resources different titles, and have implemented local policies for metrics like utilization.

So the question becomes: How much should I align my offices to support a global business model within a PSA tool? There are three major areas to consider when aligning offices, no matter how close or far apart they are with their local processes.

1. Establish standard metrics for global reporting.
   This may sound easy, but by the time global reporting is established, each office may already be following local practices that don’t align with the new global standard. Reports, however, are one of the best ways to align offices. Everyone is reporting apples to apples, and local challenges are highlighted for accommodation. For example, U.S. offices may tend to have more travel than a Netherlands office, simply due to the amount of geography in the region. How does travel time get tracked and counted in utilization, if at all?
2. Establish common service offerings.
   This sounds like a no-brainer, right? You’re a global company, so of course your offices will all perform the same services. No, this actually may not be true. If your local offices have basically focused on their business as an independent office, they may have started to create and deliver other offerings to boost revenue numbers. These services may or may not align with the broader global visions or goals of the company. Review unique local service offerings to see if they can be introduced in other office markets or determine if they truly are in line with global operation visions.
3. Align organization structures to introduce common terminology.
   The size of the office will factor into this consideration, but for the most part, there are key players in each office that perform the same roles: finance for invoicing, project managers for delivery, department managers to support sales and resource management, and so forth. All offices do not have to be structured the same way, but terminology is important at this point. Calling someone a Technical Evangelist in one office which is the same as a Strategic Technical Consultant in another office makes it difficult to understand abilities when considering resource sharing among offices.

The bottom line is that you should basically align your offices to achieve a more global vision within the company, and the implementation of a PSA tool will become much more straight forward for quicker benefits in the organization. There are plenty of areas to review when dealing with global operations, but the top three above will at least get everyone on the same page and able to understand one other when discussing the needs of the regional office and the global model.