So, in most cases HR-transformation managed to drive efficiencies, but utterly failed to achieve the expected improvement in HR's strategic contribution. This article certainly could not have surprised us less. Actually, it reads as if it had been written to explain, why iProCon HCM was established in 2008. Our mission is and always has been to improve the link between an organisation's management of Human Capital (including, but not restricted to, the HR function) and its business goals: Leveraging Human Capital to improve Business Performance. We started this consultancy because we have seen far too many examples, where this link was broken.

However, as indicated in the economist.com article, HR-transformation as it is usually pursued is not set up to achieve significant strategic results. In most cases it was an exercise to reduce HR admin effort and then it was hoped that the freed up resources would make HR a strategic partner - with more or less the same kind of people, skills, line management involvement, executive roles, etc. Most organisations recognised quickly that this wouldn't work and reduced HR-transformation to a mere cost-cutting exercise - quite often a successful one based on a rightsourcing strategy.

At iProCon HCM we have a different proposition for HR-transformation: we developed the HCCEM as a framework to set targets and drive the transformation of people management throughout the organisation with a very clear line of sight to business goals. Alignment with business strategy AND organisational culture are 2 out of 6 dimensions monitored across all areas of Human Capital. The HCCEM is basically an HR maturity model, inspired by the CMMI used in IT, but with an even stronger focus on business impact. It also comes with a best practise template to allow a quick start and initial assessment.

This mini-case shows how a provider of outsourced services destroyed a client relationship because they confused Sarbanes Oxley  compliance with high quality customer service. It also illustrates that clients should invest more time in the pre-transformation work, becoming clear about their own objectives and constraints and then selecting a provider that is a good fit in terms of both culture and capabilities.