Five Keys to Successful Collaboration

Organizations that believe a successful outsourcing partnership is built on a 400-page contract, an abundance of SLAs, and the sensation of stinging non-performance penalties are the same ones that, two years into a deal, spend millions of dollars on consultants to undo what went wrong. Avoiding that kind of scenario requires an outsourcing relationship that leverages five essential activities of collaboration:

• Vigilantly Select the Right Partner
• Identify and Retain Talent
• Set the Goals Together and Share the Responsibility
• Pair Functions to Support Alignment
• Keep Both Sides of Senior Leadership Involved

In this report, HfS examines how to build a collaborative partnership, specifically through the lens of an industry prototype that Genpact and AstraZeneca have established together. Neither organization would have been able to reap the benefits of collaboration independently, so they focused on putting in place the right team and functional structure to work together effectively as partners and generate results over time.