^The APQC Blog

Does your organization use an HR shared services organization? If so, how are you benchmarking its performance? To find out how HR shared services organizations are faring, APQC recently partnered with ScottMadden to complete the third cycle of a custom benchmarking study focused exclusively on HR Shared Services Organizations (SSOs). The study included questions and metrics related to HR shared services delivery models and operations, staffing, performance, and management infrastructure and technology.

Looking at the jack-o’-lanterns and inflatable spiders dotting my neighborhood this week, I started thinking about childhood fears—and grownup ones. I’m more likely to worry about the lure of leftover mini Snickers than ghosts or goblins, but the things that really keep me up at night tend to be “the big stuff,” such as work and family.

Do you hire or recruit management accounting and finance talent? If so, I would like to invite you to participate in APQC and IMA®’s (Institute for Management Accountants) survey on the state of entry-level management accounting and finance talent.

Big Data is all the rage, with more and more companies drawing on burgeoning data streams to better understand their customers and make better business decisions. But it can be tricky when you’re trying to turn data into insights and actions that provide a competitive advantage. And both data analysts and business executives can get in the way of progress.

The most recent entrant in the cottage industry of cognitive psychology books, Daniel Leviten’s new book The Organized Mind, attempts to help us sort through the vast amount of information demanding our attention daily. Leviten claims we are victims of our evolutionary and inadequate attentional filter.

We turned to APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking to find out how median IT cost compares across industries. Our findings are in the infographic below, which reveals some pretty significant differences in IT cost among different industries. Certainly different IT needs—as well as differences in revenue—shaped the results, and high IT cost isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Did these results surprise you?

Strategy implementation is by far the hardest part of strategic planning and requires many of the skills project management offices (PMOs) exhibit—core competencies (e.g., time management and problem solving) and softer skills (e.g., leadership and communications). To better understand what contributes to PMO’s assignment to strategic initiatives, APQC conducted correlation analysis on its recent survey, Defining Characteristics of Next Generation PMOs data.

What do Nike, SG Helmets, and Microsoft have in common? They are driving innovation in the products used by players and coaches in the National Football League (NFL). Although the game itself hasn’t changed dramatically over the years, today’s players in the NFL can play in greater comfort and safety, thanks in part to 2014 Edison Award winners: Nike (an APQC member) and SG Helmets.

Organizations have shifted focus from minimizing talent costs towards maximizing talent’s potential. They are transforming HR and human capital management (HCM) to drive business growth. Making this transition requires a mature HCM strategy, mature HCM processes, and mature HR technology systems and an advanced analysis of survey results from APQC and Cognizant confirm this trend.

Any organization developing a new product or service wants to ensure that it gets a successful and profitable project in return for its investment. But what kind of success rate and profit amount should organizations aim for? APQC recently partnered with Stage-Gate International to study how leading organizations perform on their innovation projects.