BUSINESS PARTNER
What is business partnering?
How do you apply effective business partnering? How do you create value with business partnering? How do you become a credible Business Partner? All relevant questions – often raising deeper questions around developing Business Partner competence and capability, that we can help diverse Business Partners within organisations and businesses with.
These core questions are addressed in the coaching and consulting services offered by Circle Coaching and Consulting. Moreover, Circle Coaching & Consulting offers focused coaching and mentoring for business partners in functional areas (Finance, HR, IT, Legal and other functional areas) that will help them become more effective and contribute to the bottom line.
Business partnering is essentially about driving better business/organisational performance. Business Partners are members of a function within a business or organisation e.g. Finance, IT, HR, Legal, who act as a connector, a bridge, linking functions and business units (at different levels, sometimes at C-suite level) to ensure that the functional (i.e. technical) expertise they have to offer is placed within the real and current concerns of the business to create value.
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These individuals have the potential to greatly improve integration within the organisation. They optimise the timely deployment of the functions’ skills and expertise within a shared understanding of business priorities. At any point in time, a Business Partner will be called upon to act in one of several roles.
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Apart from having raised your skills from basic knowledge of the business or organisation to actually understanding it and knowing the levers required to influence the business or organization outcomes, business partnering that drives impact requires a high degree of relational mastery and business acumen, to sit alongside robust functional expertise and experience. We have found that a focus on soft skills (stakeholder management, negotiation, contracting skills and a high degree of emotional and social intelligence) is an effective lens for business partners as they are often acting in the capacity of a consultant to their business unit(s). For instance, having independence of thought and action, even under pressure from stakeholders, is a vital needed skill. Being a successful Business Partner requires more than effective analytical skills every day to gather insight on business developments that can be shared with stakeholders. It is the soft skills and ability to turn the results of your analyses into insights that ultimately lead to better business decisions that makes a difference.
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Business Partnering Institute
We partner with the Business Partnering Institute (BPI) and can refer Finance leaders and senior Finance professionals who want to deep dive even further and who want to drive a sustainable impact as financial Business Partners within their organisation.
Need a HR Business Partner?
We can help your business or organisation with interim HR Business Partner support. With more than 20+ years progressive HR Business Partner experience in a multitude of industry segments, Henk Antvelink can provide robust strategic HR business partnering support, helping to address your interim HR business partnering challenges, by asking the right questions, providing relevant direction, timely advice to support your business’ or organisation’s strategic HR needs. We can organise and implement HR solutions and make strategic interventions as required, all to help achieve your ambitions.
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