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Sourcing Customer Interaction The second category to consider is customer interaction (see Figure 6). As most organisations follow the Ulrich model these days, interaction has been divided in HR business partner and the HR SSC (shared services centre) helpdesk. Currently, the biggest of the seven companies (electronics, healthcare) are pulling interaction concerning the HR SSC helpdesk to the regional level as much as possible. An interesting detail is that the electronics company makes an exception for typically local items (e.g., the Dutch bicycle plan), as this is considered to be too local to understand from a distant location. When zooming in on the business partner role, all companies are convinced that, because HR support management, it must be highly responsive and must therefore remain local. Moreover, this is where strategy and local (market) circumstances are combined. However, there is one business partner role that is dealt with on the global level occasionally: corporate development and change. For instance, the interviewed electronics company has a separate team that deals with mergers and acquisitions. This is typically specialised work in which value can be created, but can also easily be destroyed. Hence expertise is required, and global teams are installed, as most often there is insufficient scale to organise these jobs on a local level. One major observation: Some HR directors (bulk liquid storage company and industrial conglomerate) find it too risky to draw a hard line between the HR BP roles and the operational execution. Therefore, they do not jump on the SSC bandwagon. The asset management and maintenance company added that often the operational execution is not yet fully organised in a proper way, and HR BPs find it difficult to focus only on strategic and tactical issues. Hence, it is difficult to draw a hard line. Those who do opt for SSC recognise the risk, but they work with process owners who Identification and fullfillment of client needs Partner In Business (Manager HR, HR Business Parter) Inform about developments Policy & Innovation (translation law & regulations, innovations based upoon business needs and HR developments) From development to implementation to governance HR Services (Supplier - internal and/or external of HR services) Day-to-Day Standard service delivery Figure 6: HR Organisational Model ensure integrality and build bridges. This is a mitigation that was recognised as very important in recent research by L.D. Kramer. An organizational model, building on Ulrich's work that accommodates such a role. Govern quality of services delivered Information Technology Contrary to customer interaction, HR IT is highly suitable for organising globally. Actually, besides being highly suitable, IT is one of the drivers for the progression from multicountry to global. After all, IT is often used for leverage in the standardisation discussion. First, an important reason to organise IT globally is that IT is a specialty—especially within the nontechnological world of HR. Many organisations hence only have limited expertise at their disposal and/or do not have sufficient scale to buy and maintain IT locally. Secondly, organising IT globally adds to operational excellence and helps to cut costs. Finally, the cloud computing trend has a positive effect on the ability to organise IT globally, as one of the interviewees mentioned. Cloud computing takes away the need for in-sourced infrastructure and only leaves functional management. Vendor Management Finally, vendor management is a very interesting category. Two of the drivers for global alignment are costs and operational excellence. Consequently, one would expect active vendor portfolio rationalisation. However, none of the seven organisations indicated that it actively considers consolidating its vendors, other than the application providers. During the session, this observation was underlined. The general opinion was that it is best left to decide locally what their needs are. Consequently, many organisations probably miss substantial savings potential. Additionally, consolidating vendors can also be an incentive to start a strategic relationship with the remaining vendors, in which HR product innovation can more easily be accommodated. Executing the Transition Following the choice phase, in which the sweet spot between being a multicountry HR and a global HR function is determined, the next step is to implement the vision. The key factor of success in this trajectory is to get top management support. If top management was not involved until this point, one has to align the vision with top management immediately. HR Product management (management of HR service delivery value chain) Once top management is on board, the main challenge during implementation is to avoid becoming overly ambitious. According to the interviewees, a big bang is impossible to achieve. In the past, several companies have tried to leapfrog from multi-domestic to hybrid, but failed. Subsequently, they chose to focus on country alignment first before considering hybrid again. Many implementations of new systems and processes fail because ambitions are too big. Hence, prioritising is a key issue. Prioritisation parameters to be examined are: employee groups, processes, and countries (see Figure 7). The high-tech company, for instance, decided to roll out a global master database combined with the global compensation and talent management process first. For [18] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | FALL 2011 END-USERS Alignment HR Service delivery

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