^The APQC Blog

Articles and case studies are great resources, but when knowledge managers really want to get down to business, they come to APQC for tools that can help them evaluate their programs, develop new strategies and tactics, or think about KM in a new way. Without further ado, here’s a list of some of APQC’s most popular KM assessments, frameworks, and templates. Starred items are available to everyone, but un-starred items are exclusively for APQC members.

KM maturity:

Have you noticed that meetings have changed in the past decade? Increasingly meetings occur virtually, via teleconference, on desktop video conferences, and in mixed environments where people meet in a room and “conference in” attendees. The biggest change might be the attention people give during meetings. With mobile phones and portable technologies, people can be physically present in a meeting, yet electronically whisper to others.

When managed well, HR shared services organizations (HR SSOs) can reduce HR costs, while maintaining or increasing the quality of HR services delivered. But, how do you know if your HR SSO is fully delivering on these benefits? APQC has two new resources that can help you assess the performance of your HR shared services organization (HR SSO).

Take APQC and ScottMadden’s 2^nd Annual HR Shared Services benchmarking survey.

Vested outsourcing is an innovative way to create value and get sustainable results through business relationships. Kate Vitasek of Supply Chain Visions and the University of Tennessee’s Center for Executive Education recently presented at APQC’s Supply Chain Community Call about how organizations are using a vested approach to achieve award winning results by redefining how they “win” in their business relationships.

The consulting profession’s largest firms--the multi-billion dollar global firms that offer services across multiple industries, geographies, and market segments--have brand awareness levels as much as twice that of the average firm. However, the relative likelihood that a client will hire them isn’t that much better than the masses of smaller, niche-focused firms.

Organizations evolve over time as they expand into new markets and develop product lines to meet fast-moving consumer trends. However, as organizations become more complex, performance management processes and tools—implemented long before the business evolved to what it is today—may be obfuscating senior management’s view of performance trends, opportunities, and risks. APQC research shows that larger companies sport relatively slower cycle times when it comes to financial forecasting. Arguably, outdated performance management models are holding many of these large organizations back.

Tools like Skype and Yammer make it easy to talk to people whether they’re across the room or across the world, so why is it still so hard to break out of our silos and collaborate? APQC doesn’t have all the answers—we wish we did!—but our white paper Seamless Collaboration: Enabling Employees to Work Together Across Boundaries offers some insight into how to lay the groundwork for collaboration in the modern, global workplace.

Many organizations want to implement process management into their organizations, but they find that motivating employees can be one of the biggest challenges. Some organizations are able to gain buy-in to process management by using external influences such as adopting the standards of recognized quality or compliance programs. These can engage and motivate employees to adopt and adapt to process management.

Recently, Hedrick Smith published a New York Times editorial titled When Capitalists Cared. His discussion was a great review of American productivity starting in 1945, a time when productivity, pay, and standard of living were all increasing in the United States. Smith tracked wages and productivity through the next 65 years, and he illuminated some concerning facts in the discussion. Wages are declining while productivity is increasing.

 Responses to frequently asked questions about the HR function

In my last blog post, I wrote about new APQC tools that can help HR assess its past performance and make plans for the future. In this post, I want to present some new APQC articles that answer common questions about the HR function—questions that our members often ask us as they assess HR performance and set HR plans.