CFO Studio Magazine with David Chambers, CFO, Jaguar Land Rover NA

3rd QUARTER 2016 WWW.CFOSTUDIO.COM 13 would have a contingency plan if a hurricane or other disaster occurred. Meanwhile, the vendor began recruiting personnel. In June and July a team of Sutherland Global Services employees traveled from Kingston, Jamaica to Elmwood Park, NJ to conduct “a knowledge transfer, sitting side-by-side with our own internal staff, the subject matter experts, and learn the jobs,” says Mertens. When those trainees returned to Jamaica, using a train- the-trainer approach, the remaining people who had not traveled got instruction. Training was complete and the partner started handling the day-to-day work in September 2014. Not Without Difficulties Looking back just over a year later, Mertens assessed what was gained. With labor arbitrage being the single biggest cost benefit, “we have achieved all our goals in the cost-savings area,” he says. But the customer order management group got off to a rough start. Stabilizing it, he says, took a bit longer than expected. The group was answering calls and processing orders, but the quality was not immediately there, he adds. The fault proved not to be with the new vendor’s vetting or training processes. Rather, “some of our people had what is known as ‘tribal knowledge’ or ‘institutional knowledge,’ meaning something they know without having it clearly documented. That is always more difficult to transition.” Mertens says the 80-20 rule applies here, as to so much else. “The 80 percent you transfer fairly well, but the 20 percent can be a problem. If you do not keep enough people on hand for a long enough period of time to help with that knowledge cascading and stabilization, then you’ll have a problem.” He says that the missing “tribal knowledge” buffeting the new trainees’ job performance was not an issue with accounting functions, just with customer service. The last of the former Agfa employees stayed on until March of 2015, with all who left having received severance. Those who helped with the knowledge transfer received additional compensation. All employees did an outstanding and professional job during the transition. In response to a question on morale, Mertens says that at first, Agfa’s remaining workforce was “dismayed about [the decision to outsource] because these are their friends and colleagues who have performed well, and the reason they’re being let go is just a cost-savings process the company is executing. But once the project was up and running, and they saw that people were being dealt with in a professional manner, and they started working with the vendor and saw what the vendor could bring to bear in new technologies, such as CRM, call recording, and service-level agreements, they were reenergized to bring renewed efforts to work on making the business better.” C