Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/73199
Strategic Sourcing Roadmapping Optimisation Making the choice to engage in ambitious outsourcing requires learning to say no as well as yes. By John de Waal John de Waal In recent years sourcing has become a prominent topic on the HR agenda. This is not strange when you realise that the HR department deals with a lot of different suppliers for various HR processes. The question of how to organise yourself and where to position your processes (strategic sourcing) is, therefore, an important one for HR. It was precisely this question that was one of the driving forces behind the European HR strategy of Dutch retailer Ahold Europe. In accordance with its "way of working" philosophy—centralising services and liberating the business from HR administration to enable the company to concentrate on its core business—Ahold Europe tried to find the optimal answer to this question. We formulated this ambition as follows: "Deliver professional and efficient HR services for all Ahold Europe employees and their managers. High quality service needs should be provided through standardised, highly automated processes on a best-in-class, scalable platform." [38] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | SPRING 2012 We spent considerable time drafting the roadmap that our team followed in order to identify the most optimal sourcing choice which could ultimately lead to the realisation of this ambition. And we overcame more than one "minor" hurdle along the way. We established some first questions on sourcing (see page 42 for the answers): 1. What kind of sourcing options exist? 2. For which type of organisations would outsourcing be a good option? 3. What is the current market situation regarding HR services/BPO? 4. What kind of trends do we see in the HR services/BPO market? 5. Which type of organisation is ready for BPO? 6. Which types of processes and activities could benefit from BPO? 7. What are the market trends? What processes and activities are currently outsourced?