Business Partnering

As the pressure to reduce costs and demonstrate real added value in critical functions such as HR, Finance and IS grows, functional leaders have increasingly turned their attention to building the capability of their "business partners" and the organisation in which they work. These partners (increasingly, "players" who contribute to the leadership of the business) have to understand business challenges, make the business case for key investments and be skilled at intervening to add measurable value. In some cases this role shift is a "bridge too far" and business partner capability needs to be seen as an organisation development challenge, not solely a management development one.

Here are a few examples of organisation critical challenges that we have worked alongside our clients to tackle:

• Establishing a new Organisation & People planning process aligned with the business plan to make HR Directors accountable for their added value contributions
• Assessing business partner capabilities across a population of FD's and creating a change road map to deliver the required shifts in behaviour and performance
• Working with an IT leadership team to develop the role and contributions of business unit IT Directors
• Developing the HR business partners role and capability across a global corporation

We work as expert guides with our clients to:

• Review and assess current business partner capability
• Create the functional change agenda, plans and priorities
• Design and facilitate development programmes and conferences
• Design and implement new functional planning and control processes
• Coach functional leaders on their role and behaviour to achieve specific performance or change goals
• Advise on functional changes, review progress and  measure impact

The result of our work with functional leaders in this area is sustainable change in business partner capability to drive performance and deliver strategic change.