^The APQC Blog

The difference between top and bottom performance levels for HR shared services organizations (HR SSOs) is significant. These are the findings of an HR SSO benchmarking study conducted by APQC and consulting company ScottMadden.

The survey of 20 HR SSOs revealed that compared to bottom performers, top performing HR SSOs:

Analyst firm Gartner named nine APQC member organizations in its annual Supply Chain Top 25 released May 22. Gartner’s list identifies global leaders in the supply chain industry using financial data, analyst opinions, and peer opinions.

The nine APQC members are:

CEOs of large, global non-financial companies are now absorbing the latest ideas and best practices in the realm of enterprise risk management (ERM). They are dispatching trained managers to spread a sense of urgency to the whole workforce and fortifying managerial processes that will systematically anticipate, identify, quantify, and mitigate major risk events when they—inevitably—emerge. What does this mean?

After several years of selling mostly cost-cutting work, many consulting firms refocused their market positioning around growth-related projects. Who are the best prospects? Conventional wisdom would say that companies experiencing high, double-digit, growth should be the ones most willing to invest in consulting projects, right?

We want to hear from you! Submit an abstract by May 31 to be considered as a presenter at APQC’s 2012 Process Conference. The conference is October 25-26, and the theme is Block & Tackle: Leveraging Process for Results. We are looking for presentations that tell the story of business process management initiatives from conception through implementation to results.

Of all the great keynotes at APQC’s knowledge management conference last month, I learned the most from Carla O’Dell’s. (And yes, technically she’s my boss, but it’s still true!) I always feel like Carla has her finger on the pulse of KM, and her remarks at the conference were no exception. She framed her speech around three business and technology trends she sees transforming the KM landscape:

Third-party logistics providers (3PLs) have become an integral part of the supply chain industry, and many are expanding the services they provide to shippers. But what services are 3PLs and fourth-party logistics providers (4PLs) really providing? And are 3PLs and 4PLs meeting their customers’ needs?

Talent shortages have many organizations revisiting their approaches to work force planning.

APQC’s Work Force Capabilities survey revealed that a majority of participating organizations are experiencing talent shortages [¹] and that most of these organizations see work force planning as part of their answer to the talent shortage challenge ^[2].

In the product development space, the term “knowledge management” may be unfamiliar. But the concept certainly isn’t: knowledge management (KM) means giving workers easy access to the information or people they need to do their jobs faster and better. By providing product development workers with KM tools, organizations can streamline product development.

Prepared using APQC’s Benchmarks on Demand tool in accounts payable (AP), top performers measured by key performance metrics receive less than 35 percent of invoice line items electronically. It makes sense, then, that top performers have been very aggressive in embracing payables automation techniques. In fact, the Accounts Payable Productivity Index - Winter 2012 indicates that 78 percent of top performers are utilizing advanced data capture to convert paper invoices into electronic data, compared to only 43 percent of median performers doing the same.