CIMA and Hackett Join Forces on Professional Development Offering
The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) and The Hackett Group have formed a strategic collaboration.
The specific aim is to bring to market what they describe as the first comprehensive talent management and professional development qualification programme specifically tailored for global business services (GBS) and shared services professionals.
“By working together, The Hackett Group and CIMA are seeking to respond to the clear need for GBS and shared services organisations to invest in programmes to hire, develop, and retain staff in order to grow the professional skills and knowledge needed to achieve and maintain world-class performance standards,” the two groups announced.
For companies with over US$1bn in revenue, Hackett estimates that more than 10,000 captive GBS organisations currently operate worldwide, with business process outsourcers operating more than 2,000 centres. In total, captive and BPO organisations employ almost five million professionals.
The estimates are based on an analysis of results from Hackett’s benchmarking and GBS performance studies, in combination with public data. The group also believes that in the past 10 years, the number of business processes which are in scope of the GBS services portfolio has increased from about 20% to 60% of all functional business support processes.
However, in general training and development programmes still target traditional functional organizations and have not adapted to the dramatic service delivery model transformation that has taken place.
The two groups will be relaunching CIMA’s existing certificate in shared services as a co-branded GBS qualification, which will provide a base level of training that can be implemented consistently across all markets, establishing measurable global standards.
The qualification incorporates empirical data, insights, and other proprietary intellectual property in finance, procurement, IT, human resources (HR), and other key business services areas, derived from The Hackett Group’s extensive benchmarking, executive advisory, and transformation practices. In addition, it will build on the expertise of CIMA, the world’s largest professional body of management accountants, with over 227,000 members in 179 countries.