WorkFit Feature Round-Up: Capability Sourcing

In business, as with life, you can’t do everything and of the things you decide to do, you can’t be the “best” in every facet. Resource constraints lead to competency trade-offs which require businesses to make tough decisions regarding the expenditure of time, money, and human capital. When weighing such opportunities, a business should first understand its capabilities. Truly understanding a businesses’ capabilities means much more than the identification of said capabilities. Mapping out the future-state of a business will allow an organization to categorize capabilities into three buckets: Strategic, Core, and Enabling.

• Strategic: Related to business planning, strategy, and investment (e.g. R&D, product development, project management)
• Core:  Identified as delivering the products and services to the end consumer (e.g. customer service and sales)
• Enabling: Related to supportive functions that keep the business going, but are non-customer facing (e.g. logistics, HR, accounting)

Accelare’s dynamic tool, WorkFit, facilitates this mapping process. Once the capabilities are grouped, a business can begin to plan its next steps, to enable it to grow and morph into the desired future-state. Part of this process involves introspection. New capabilities will need to be developed or acquired. In the same right, a business may determine that some existing capabilities are not essential to achieving its future-state, but are still necessary to maintain day-to-day operations. In these situations, a business should consider out-sourcing capabilities or partnering with vendors.

For example, a shipping company may rely on a fleet of trucks to transport goods, but while owning or leasing the fleet may be essential to the business, the servicing of vehicles might be outsourced to a 3^rd party. In making this decision, the shipping company can focus its time and money on growing its business, while relying on the vendor to ensure the fleet is maintained.

In order to make such a decision, a business must ask itself a series of questions regarding how integral a capability is to its mission. This process can be quite complex and daunting. WorkFit provides a tool to facilitate this decision-making process. “Sourcing Scoring” will allow an organization to measure trade-offs and make informed decisions about what is worthy of investment and focus, and what is not. Once a business knows this, it can embark on its journey to grow, innovate and ultimately reach its desired future-state.

Click here to learn more about WorkFit and schedule a demonstration of this powerful tool.