When I was invited to help Bank of America and Exult implement their award-winning alliance, they had already negotiated the deal. There was a contract in place, and the terms of agreement were settled. In some ways, it looked to me like a standard “outsourcing” relationship— what I consider a midlevel tactical alliance, since they would integrate some business processes. I was pleasantly surprised to learn otherwise.
If fact, while the baby steps they had taken were indeed tactical, the vision was much broader. The bank wanted this to be a hallmark alliance to demonstrate that the bank could be a great partner. As Bank of America’s Steele Alphin explained to me, “The bank is excellent at taking over other businesses. If fact,we’ve grown to be the third largest bank in America through a successful acquisition strategy. However, our corporate strategy is to focus on our core business— providing our customers with financial solutions to their businesses and lives—and not on the ‘human resource business.’” Exult is an expert in the human resource business. Alphin believed that it could provide the bank with higher quality service at a lower cost externally than it could provide internally.
