Reconfiguring Working Space

  There is significant pressure on organizations to be financially nimble, lead the people and cultural aspects of the organization, standardize and globalize operations, consumerize service experiences and cut costs. While meeting these new challenges, corporate functions providing internal service are also being required to be more business-oriented. Terms like “strategic,” “business partner,” “scalable,” and “value-added services” are frequently used to describe the ideal functional organization. In general, the new model leverages different delivery channels to distribute products and services to meet the unique needs and demands of customers. While elements of delivery models may vary slightly by function, most models rely on a fairly consistent makeup of delivery channels. These include channels for the delivery of customer-specific products and services; administrative, transactional, or specialized products and services; and skill-based and policy/programmatic products and services. Each channel serves specific constituencies and delivers, as the channel descriptors imply, a specific type of product or service.