Strategic business partnering can be a powerful way of improving organisational performance, through the creation of purposeful and committed relationships between shared services departments (e.g., HR, Finance, IT, Market Research and Legal) and their internal clients. And anything that might help add value to or further empower internal functions in playing their part in delivering organisational goals is worth considering, given all the pressures managers are experiencing currently. As organisations restructure to reduce costs, the pressing issue for many managers is how to avail of the opportunities arising from structural change. As people start working across new organisational boundaries; it can take time for responsibilities to clarify and for relationships to re-establish, or indeed for new relationships to form. In our experience, the organisations who cope best with this kind of upheaval are those who know how to develop authentic and effective business partnerships as the smart way to get things done.

We call this Strategic Business Partnering. It’s about moving away from a model of transactional service provision to a more equivalent, strategic way of working, which involves changes in mindset as well as in behaviour and involves both the business partner and the internal client working in partnership to ensure strategy execution. Such a change is as much about ‘unlearning’ and letting go of old attitudes and practices as it is about ‘learning’ a new set of skills.

So how can your organisation develop its business partnering capability and equip your people with the necessary skills?

It may be that these skills already exist in pockets – in HR circles, it’s a pretty well established way of working. But Business Partnering is now increasingly being applied to other functions, such as marketing, finance, IT, legal, procurement and risk management – any internal function that provides a service to the core business.

Our Open Programme in Strategic Business Partnering is designed for advisers, managers and consultants in these areas who need to collaborate as Business Partners to get the job done more effectively.

Sheppard Moscow’s Business Partnering programme aims to help you develop authentic partnering relationships with your ‘clients’, enabling you to move easily towards jointly agreed outcomes. This approach accelerates change, helps you jointly respond with urgency to the pressures coming on your business and builds and maintains relationships.

This is a highly practical Programme, drawing on Sheppard Moscow’s long and deep experience of consulting and the breadth of our understanding of different functions and industry sectors.

To find out more about Sheppard Moscow’s Business Partnering Open Programme and see how it might help you unlock your organisation’s partnering potential now call Debbie Hodge on 020 7929 9650.

Or take a look at our
Open Programmes Brochure

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