We’ve certainly had a full dose of the “How can HR Outsourcing find its rhythm” discussions over the years, and the consistent theme has been one of reducing operational complexity and increasing the focus on the retained HR organization, to help companies actually add some value to their HR operations throughout the whole outsourcing experience.
We sent our HRO diva, Mindy Blodgett, out to investigate where some of the leading minds are focusing in this post-recession environment, and her first port of call was with Erica Volini, one of Deloitte Consulting’s leading Principals in the HR transformation field.
Erica Volini has been working with HR on the elusive goal of HR transformation for 12 years, with a particular focus on HRO for the past eight. She has therefore had a privileged perch and a decidedly insider’s view from which to assess HR’s struggles with outsourcing and other solutions – and she knows what works, and what doesn’t, when implementing HRO. When not advising organizations on their HR journeys, Erica loves to explore her home base of New York City. She also professes to loving 80’s music and secretly admits to being fascinated with the latest entertainment news. She took a break from her grande, skim caramel macchiato to chat with us about the direction she sees HRO going in today.
Mindy Blodgett: How is it that you are working with HR organizations today?
Erica Volini :My focus has been on helping organizations figure out how to take HRO and get it up and running. This is no easy task. When I first started, multi-process HRO was all about “big bang” and people viewed implementing everything all at once as the right answer. Now, buyers are starting to understand how complex it is and everyone is trying to figure out how to simplify in the hopes of increasing success. In that way, HRO has almost followed a reverse maturity curve.
Mindy Blodgett: We’ve heard so much about HR transformation as a goal of HRO – but that concept seems tired and overused. What is your view of whether HRO can achieve true organizational transformation?
Erica Volini: When HRO first came along, it was viewed as THE answer to transformation. We all realize now that outsourcing is only an enabler of transformation and that it takes a lot more than HRO to truly transform. Organizations need to start looking at HRO as a way to increase operational efficiency and organizational credibility. Then they need to leverage that credibility to drive transformation. And they can’t forget the retained HR organization. If the focus is only on the provider, and what the provider brings, transformation will never be achieved.
Mindy Blodgett: What is wrong with the way some organizations approach HRO?
Erica Volini: It comes down to too many organizations taking a vertical, silo-ed approach. A typical HRO contract is set up in silos – so the benefits team is defining one set of services while the recruiting team is doing another. The problem comes in when trying to drive integration among them. Unless they start looking across the silos, it’s hard to see how services and activities need to connect. Without finding ways to embed that interconnectivity into the HR solution, it will always fall short. HRO providers have the capability to look across processes – but the challenge is taking that integration capability and turning it into a set of services that providers can offer and organizations can measure.
Mindy Blodgett: How are the providers positioned to provide these integration services?
Erica Volini: A lot of the large providers are well positioned to do this because of their breadth of services – and a lot of the offshore providers are extremely well positioned, because their legacy of BPO and ITO taught them how to connect disparate systems and processes. But on the buyer side, the problem is that integration services don’t jump out on an organizational chart. It doesn’t automatically come up when purchasing services because there is no single role in charge of integration. The buyers need to start saying to the providers, “I want to purchase integration services because I know they’re key to optimizing service delivery. I want you to own cross-process activities such as data monitoring and vendor management. I want SLAs tied to it and I’m willing to pay for that service so that I know it will be done right.”
Mindy Blodgett: Why is focusing on integration so important for organizations engaging in HRO?
Erica Volini: Because providers can’t deliver services in a vacuum. If their services aren’t integrated across the end-to-end process and if they aren’t working hand-in-hand with retained HR, they will always fall short of delivering what the organization needs and expects.
If you look at the typical HRO challenges, integration is usually the issue. Retained HR can’t be strategic because they’re left filling the administrative gaps in the delivery of services (such as end-to-end process integration, data clean-up, workflow routing); SLAs fall short because providers don’t have the accountability for the hand-offs between processes which is where the majority of operations-related issues lie; and customers are unhappy because they get bounced around when trying to get their questions answered. Each one of these issues points to a lack of integration, so if we don’t fix the integration issue, I’m not sure how HRO can succeed.
As we shift from the one-provider-does-everything model to best-of-breed, integration becomes even more important. While a best-of-breed approach can offer customers the best individual solutions, it creates an even greater need for integration amongst them. You can’t just tell your providers, hey, please go and integrate with each other. But when you turn the concept of integration into a service that providers can sell and organizations can buy, you’re on your way to making it work.
Mindy Blodgett: What do you foresee as an answer to this integration challenge in HRO implementations?
Erica Volini: The new world of HRO will emphasize customization – not in terms of processes (which has been the focus in the past) – but in terms of which solutions and providers can be pulled together to form a comprehensive HRO solution that can best meet the buyers’ needs. That means changes for both buyers and providers.
Buyers need to figure out what capabilities they need and communicate that effectively to the provider community. And HR needs to engage the full organization to figure out what those needs are. Finance, IT, Legal, Procurement, business leaders – they all have a role to play in making integration happen.
Providers will need to think more out-of-the-box in terms of what they offer and how they partner with other providers to create an integrated HRO solution. Consider payroll as a prime example. While very few providers have the capability to do global payroll by themselves, many have figured out how to partner with other providers to offer it as an integrated service. Best-of-breed doesn’t always mean that the buyer needs to be the glue holding it all together.
And finally, the buyers and providers need to work together to form an integrated approach to implementing HRO. We need to stop thinking about HRO as the implementation of a provider solution and start thinking about it as a way to embed the provider into the broader service delivery model. It may sound overly simplified, but if we want to make HRO succeed moving forward, integration is key.
Mindy Blodgett: Thanks so much for your time, Erica, am sure our readers will enjoy reading this discussion.
Erica Volini(Pictured) is Principal in Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital Practice. You can read her full bio by clicking here.
The setting sun in Savannah… and it’s also time to sunset those inefficient processes
We’ve talked a lot about thefear of change when companies explore radical steps to overhaul their global operations, and outsourcing undoubtedly represents a major change for most organizations used to running things a certain way for a very long time.
People are scared right now – they feel threatened and are struggling to visualize where their careers are heading, where their organizations are heading, where the economy is heading. But why be scared? Shouldn’t we be filled with hope with this revitalized quest for improvement?
Having just spent two rather pleasant days with the excellent Sourcing Interests Group, enjoying (too much of) the carbohydrate-infused southern hospitality of Georgia’s Savannah, the common theme of discussions was centered on this relentless pace of change, and the in-exhaustive corporate pursuit of cost elimination that is gripping the post-recession economy. And executives are worried. But why should they be?
Why we need to stop worrying
We’ve entered into an era which we have been demanding for a long, long time: companies finally waking up, prepared to take definitive action to improve their global operations. That means getting better at how efficiently they can close their books, pay their staff, hire new staff, manage their suppliers, collect their debts, support their customers and access accurate, timely data to make decisions. Essentially, this entails ironing-out broken or inefficient process flows, sourcing better applications to enable them, and engaging talent to support them that doesn’t cost the earth.
The fear comes from the fact that better automation and better process flows ultimately means organizations need less people to manage them. But won’t that mean these organizations will be able to re-invest some of these newly-acquired efficiencies into areas that can help them develop new products or services, increase their sales staff, enter new markets, better manage their supply chains, investigate the potential of Cloud computing or video conferencing technology, or even, heaven forbid, develop their staff?
What we are witnessing is a re-distribution of human capital in today’s economy – not necessarily a reduction of human capital. Many of us will need to explore role transformations where we take on jobs or responsibilities that we never imagined a few short years’ ago. This change is one of new learning, new experiences, new challenges. It’s about improving our own talents. One thing is clear: we won’t have a choice not to…
After last year’s now infamous “Obama to ban offshore outsourcing” April Fool’s gag, we didn’t suspect that even more of you would fall hook, line and sinker for this year’s little effort.
As much as we would love to advise President Obama, even I doubt I’d receive a “personal tweet” from the President to announce the news…
Again – you’re a great community, you’re great sports, and keep on smiling 🙂
We’re deeply honored to be selected as the exclusive analyst advisor to the Obama administration on offshore outsourcing issues.
As part of the contract award, the Horses analyst team will be invited to quarterly white-boarding sessions at the White House to discuss the latest market dynamics in IT outsourcing and Business Process Outsourcing, in a quest to help the administration make onshore locations more competitive for white collar jobs. The contract will be ongoing until the next US general election.
Commenting on the award earlier today, the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, added, “Washington needs to be ahead of the curve when it comes to offshore outsourcing. Far too many of our jobs have been shipped off to China, India, Central Europe and the Philippines, and it’s time to do something about it. Now Healthcare Reform is assured, it’s time to turn our attention to the next burning issue on the Obama administration’s agenda: reversing offshore outsourcing and creating new jobs in the United States of America. “
In addition, the administration cites Horses for Sources social media impact as a core reason for selecting the research firm as its chosen outsourcing advisor. “We realized the importance of Facebook and Twitter when we won the last election, and are impressed with the extensiveness with which Horses for Sources uses its blog, LinkedIn group, and, most importantly, it’s prolific use of Twitter, to be the outsourcing research organization most in touch with the needs of industry.”
President Obama personally tweeted the news of the announcement to Horses for Sources CEO, Phil Fersht, this morning.
Michael Buffer calling the Horses to action
“It was most appropriate to receive this contract award via a tweet from the President”, stated Fersht earlier today. “We are deeply honored that the Obama administration has selected us as its advisors – we hope to host a guest blog from the President soon where he will succinctly set out his agenda to bring more white collar jobs back onshore. We assure all our readers that we will make every effort to avoid any grammatical errors, or spelling mistakes”.
Horses for Sources successfully beat the Black Book of Outsourcing to secure the contract in a bake-off aural that was supervised by Vice President Joe Biden and Michael Buffer.
I thought Michael Buffer was the big give away! Thanks for being good sports 🙂
Thanks for all of you who helped support the first “public” appearance of the Horses for Sources research organization in the lovely Orlando last week for SSON’s “Shared Services and Outsourcing Week” event, which achieved over 900 delegates. (And yes, I was symbolically middle-seated on my journey home…).
Our “Thundering Hooves” session, which was based on the Family Fued game show (Family Fortunes in the UK) was highly entertaining and we’re excited to stage this again (with real sound effects) in Edinburgh in May. Thanks to Lee Coulter (HfS), Deborah Kops (WNS), Tiger (Genpact), Graham Russell (Astrazeneca), Jay Desai (Northern Trust), Rick Arpin (MGM Mirage), Joe Hogan (Alsbridge) and Mike Fraley (Everest Group) for being good sports. And a special thanks to Emma Beaumont and Sarah Clayton at SSON for making this happen. Now who, on earth, is this grinning idiot?
Cliff Justice, National Leader, Shared Services and Outsourcing Advisory at KPMG
Horses for Sources Research Fellow Lee Coulter distinguished himself at the Shared Services and Outsourcing Week event last week, where he steered clear of the golf course and his evil bar-propping companions, to facilitate a number of sessions at the show.
And one character who stood out this year was Cliff Justice, who last year elected to experience the management consulting delights of KMPG after an exemplary long-time career with sourcing advisor, Equaterra. Lee managed to grab some time with Cliff at the show. Here are his thoughts…
Shared Services Advice from KPMG? – On Cliff’s Edge
Orlando in March is supposed to be a great boondoggle destination. Fortunately for Shared Services Week, the Shared Services and Outsourcing Network’s (SSON) annual event, the ‘winter that wouldn’t let go’ down south meant more people were actually in the seats rather than in the fairways of the many good golf courses in the area.
One of the conference’s anchor events is the G8 panel. This is a panel of the industries leading providers and advisors that get together to discuss things pertinent to the whole industry. They are organized by region and this year was the first meeting for the US Chapter. Among the regulars we all expect to see such as IBM, Accenture and CapGemini, was KPMG. KPMG? Yes, and represented by Cliff Justice. Cliff is KPMG’s new US Leader, Shared Services and Advisory. This isn’t the first time that a major accounting services firm has placed a bet on getting into the shared services and outsourcing advisory business, and I was interested to find out more about how KPMG is moving into this space.
I caught up with Cliff later in the evening to get a little more insight. Cliff, who has been a leader in this industry for more than a decade with NeoIT (led their alliance with TPI) and then Equaterra, came over late in 2008 to build this practice for KPMG. In a pretty short period of time, Cliff has managed to get a name most often associated with audit and tax – KPMG – named one of the World’s Best Advisors by IAOP, and now shows up next to IBM and Accenture on the G8 panel. Hmmm.
I had a lot of questions for Cliff. The theme linking them all together was: “are you really doing this and is KPMG really committed to it?” The answer: a resounding yes. Despite my only-a-little exaggerated description of the challenges a newcomer to this space faces with solid competition, dynamic industry shifts, volatile political dimension, and uncertain economics; Cliff remained unfazed. I probed at the firm’s willingness to invest in the long sales cycle and time it takes to build a stable pipeline. Cliff assured me that KPMG was solidly behind him and this practice. I gave him my best “surely, you didn’t tell them everything” look, and he went on to tell me KPMG believes their strong CFO and C-suite relationships are a natural entre into the world of shared services and outsourcing advisory. Inevitably, the CFO has a strong voice in these initiatives. In many organizations, administrative and technological functions report directly into the CFO, and where the CFO doesn’t have direct control, there is usually a business case that passes the CFOs desk.
Beyond the conversation I had with Cliff, I talked to a lot of other folks at the conference that told me about KPMG hiring talent, responding to RFPs, and building shared services recommendations into their conversations with their existing clients. Does KPMG have what it takes to be a major player in this space? The jury is still out, but they do have a strong cliff hold, and appear determined to scale the peak.
You’ve undoubtedly heard the terms “public” and “private” cloud being bandied around quite loosely by every IT services provider trying to hitch themselves to the new trend towards the use of computing resources that reside outside of the enterprise and are delivered to multiple customers by a cloud services provider (read Bruce McCracken’s new article).
A very old friend and former analyst colleague of mine, Andy Milroy, who leads the Australasian IT and Communications practice for research and consulting giant Frost and Sullivan, poses an excellent question to those service providers today who may be confusing hosting services with cloud:
“To me, the term private cloud is a misleading way of describing hosted services. In fact, it is an oxymoron. It is a term that is used by providers of hosted services in order to hold onto lucrative contracts and prevent the loss of customers to companies that provide public cloud services.”
So we dragged Andy away from his didgeridoo class to explain further…
Is a Private Cloud an Oxymoron?
The IT community is now strongly focusing on the impact of cloud computing on their businesses. This can largely be explained by the fact that the rapid growth in the use of cloud services in recent years, massively disrupts traditional IT delivery models. But, there remains much confusion regarding the nature, scope and definition of cloud computing. The situation is becoming cloudier (excuse the pun) as major IT suppliers start to re-brand existing offerings as ‘private clouds’.
Attributes of cloud computing typically include, scalability, elasticity, multi-tenancy, payment models that are linked to usage, resources delivered from virtualized environments and the provision of all support and management tasks by a cloud services provider.
However, the emergence of the marketing term, ‘private cloud’ challenges common definitions of cloud computing and creates confusion. It is a term that is commonly used by those with vested interests in existing computing paradigms.
In my view, the use of private clouds is not cloud computing since key attributes of cloud computing include, the use of computing resources that reside outside of the enterprise and that are delivered to multiple customers (multi-tenancy) by a third party (cloud services provider). Private clouds deliver IT resources from within the corporate firewall and to one customer. To me, the term private cloud is a misleading way of describing hosted services. In fact, it is an oxymoron. It is a term that is used by providers of hosted services in order to hold onto lucrative contracts and prevent the loss of customers to companies that provide public cloud services.
Companies that offer services from the public cloud such as Salesforce.com are undermining traditional on-premise business models. The business case for sourcing resources from public clouds will soon be indisputable. In the next few years, business unit and IT managers will need to provide business cases for not using public clouds and for keeping resources on-premise.
Services that share the attributes of public cloud computing, have, of course been with us for many years. For example, the Application Service Provider (ASP) model of computing was expected to deliver services from the Internet to multiple clients. The ASP model did not mature for a variety of reasons. However, the planets are now aligned for an explosion of public cloud activity. Today’s virtualization technology, application acceleration technology, the widespread use of OpenSource and faster average broadband speeds are enabling the rapid adoption of public cloud based services.
In many ways, the use of public cloud services is creeping up on us by stealth. Although, the use of platforms, infrastructure or/and applications delivered from public clouds may seem to be comparatively immature, most people are using public cloud services. Each time we use Google’s search engine or a social networking tool such as Facebook or LinkedIn, we are using public cloud services. From an enterprise perspective, payroll processing services offered by companies such as ADP, are also a form of cloud computing. Now, if companies can send the personal details of their employees, their salary details, their tax details and their identification details to a datacenter that is operated by a third party such as ADP, are privacy and security concerns legitimate reasons for not wishing to use public cloud services?
Andy Milroy
I believe that a mix of groupthink and blind conservatism is at play in many cases when objections to the use of cloud services are raised. These objections tend to be centered around security and privacy. It is argued that private clouds address these concerns. In my view, private clouds simply re-inforce the conservatism of many in business today by giving them an excuse not to use the public cloud. In a few years time, those that simply revamp their existing datacenters to provide private cloud services and those that refuse to use cloud services for security and privacy reasons, will give the impression that they simply cannot grasp their very straightforward and obvious business benefits of using public cloud services.
Andy Milroy (pictured) leads Frost and Sullivan’s Australasian ICT Practice. He has previously held senior analyst positions at both IDC, where he led its European IT services research organization, and at NelsonHall, where he started its US business.
So you may have picked up that we just love the Cloud at the Horses. As we’ve discussed at length, we see Cloud Computing as the coming-together of business process and IT delivery in a fully outsourced model (see earlier post).
Cloud’s not simply about outsourcing the heavy-duty computing grunt – it’s about the delivery of real business services, enabled by the applications needed to support them, and powered by the requisite computing and network infrastructure to host and deliver them. Moreover, Cloud computing represents a crucial next layer of cost-elimination from the corporate infrastructure. While many moons off being actual reality, the seeds have been planted and we see entire industries scurrying to develop applications, datacenters and managed services to support it.
So we asked our new senior research analyst, Bruce McCracken (sorry Bruce…) to investigate some new trends, based on an interesting study recently conducted by Cloud based SaaS email management provider Mimecast, involving 565 respondents from the US and Canada. Over to you, Mr S…Cloud – The Delicate Sound of Thunder
No, this is not about a Pink Floyd performance on DVD. It is about improving IT performance and reducing costs while increasing server capacity on demand as needed, right here/right now. A recent survey shows who is doing what, and why (or why not). While many mull the onslaught of perspectives on the subject of Cloud, we will succinctly submit yet another for you. There are a few important points and takeaways that we want to zero in on:
• Even smaller organizations can gain immediate benefit from Cloud now.
• Setting up a road map to move the least critical, complex and risky applications first pays immediate benefits.
• Service providers are now offering robust tools to significantly alleviate the pain of accessing the Cloud.
• Are concerns about security déjà vu all over again, reminiscent of similar worries regarding SaaS and outsourcing providers several years ago?
How Cloud is going to revolutionize IT and which industries are using it
Cloud essentially involves pay as you infrastructure for applications and storage from a third party provider. Cloud gives organizations an inexpensive, easy, and quick way of adding new servers and hosting new Web based applications with little upfront investment. Through Cloud, data centers can be built out without having to expand the physical floor space and hardware procurement. The “on demand” nature of Cloud allows for a rapid expansion of the data center without the hassles of server maintenance by internal staff. The business will also see a marked reduction in its utility consumption. The value proposition for adopting Cloud is compelling to say the least.
Cloud based SaaS email management provider Mimecast, released results in February 2010 of its Cloud Computing Adoption Survey, involving 565 respondents from the US and Canada.
There was a suggestion recently (see “Busting the Innovation myth”) that innovation in back office operations wasn’t important and it’s all about the “front” office. We would argue that achieving innovation in the global support operations of businesses, is often the only lever most firms can pull to remain competitive in this economy.
In most cases, it’s not enterprises’ products and services that have to change, but the speed and efficiency with which they can adapt to the changing environment, that now provides the competitive edge. Here’s an overview of the secular changes impacting the very core of today’s industries:
Can BPO engagement models broaden to help businesses stay ahead of secular changes?
Our research delves into the heart of major industries, to understand how sourcing engagement models can enable firms up and down their entire supply chains. Let’s take a closer look at a few examples:
Life Sciences and Manufacturing
In the pharmaceutical business, for example, the increase in the use of generics is bringing the issue of cost and speed-to-market into play. In previous times, innovation was focused primarily on research and development of new blockbuster drugs, but with those becoming fewer and further between, combined with the massive M&A activity in the sector, the innovation focus has quickly shiften to the support operations and the supply chain. With generics, there really isn’t much you can do to differentiate by product, but you can compete on price and respond to market demand quicker than your competitors. Driving down production costs across both manufacturing and business operations processes is critical, and having a global support infrastructure to get these products to market, and keep inventory levels optimized is how to stay ahead of the competition.
Core sourcing challenges: BPO providers need to step up their competency delivering managed supply chain processes that encompass master data management processes and other supply chain functions, to help their customers. It’s not simply about payroll and payables anymore; life sciences firms need to drive their providers to invest in taking a greater interest in creating new ways to reach their markets faster and more intelligently.
Media and Entertainment
In the media business, the impact of web 2.0, social media etc., hasn’t altered the actual “products”, but the way in which they are delivered to – and consumed by – the end-customer. For example, the diminishing need for printed media products is shifting the focus to driving out as much cost from the operation as possible so media firms can invest in quality content to remain in business.
Core sourcing challenges: The bottom is getting ripped out of the media business at an alarming pace and media firms have no choice but to eliminate as much cost from their distribution channels as quickly as they can, in order to survive. Many media firms have run out of time to go through gradual transformation; in most cases, they simply have to find providers which can enable rapid lift and shift deals to rip out as much short term cost as possible. Then they have to streamline the operations in the BPO environment as quickly as they can to take advantage of the cost take-out (see Surviving the Aftermath of a Lift and Shift Transition). Being able to grasp – and live – with such rapid change, and find a provider which can work with you to ahieve that is the only way forward. Selecting the wrong provider in this market could be fatal.
Financial Services
In financial services, the appetite to move away from captive-only support models is helping many firms find new levels of cost-elimination, but also new flexible models for improving the delivery of their current services. Banking and insurance services aren’t changing that much per se, it’s how effectively they are delivered to market that is providing the competitive edge. Deploying more flexible and sophisticated global sourcing models, is the only way to go for most financial services firms today. By staying with jaded and often expensive captive operations, is holding many financial services firms back from being exposed to new ideas, new process flows, and the new energy some BPO providers can bring to the table, based on their experience with many other enterprises.
Core sourcing challenges: The majority of financial services enterprises are busily shopping their captives at present, and only a few will find willing service providers to buy them. Most providers now have the scale they need, and are only interested in specific niche competencies that give them new capability. Many financial service firms are facing the prospect of having to phase out their captive operations in order to move into a blended, or fully-outsourced, operational support environment. They will need to decide whether or not to write-off years of investment in their captive operations, in order to transform their delivery model.
The Bottom-line: We’re caught in a relentless pursuit of cost elimination and efficiency
We’ve spent the last few weeks having intense dialog with buyers regarding how the uncertain, but recovering, economy, is impacting their stance on outsourcing, and the common thread is one of speed and urgency. There’s a genuine impetus from business leaders to act on new efficiency drives that were formulated during the recessionary months – and global sourcing strategy is right at the heart of these. The conversations dominating this week’s SSON show in Orlando left us with the phrase “the relentless pursuit of cost elimination and efficiency” firmly etched on our minds.
Our argument with current BPO engagement models is that they have to encompass more than simply a few administrative processes to be truly effective. If your BPO provider is only fulfilling a few standalone functions such as purchasing, or invoice processing, it’s going to be very difficult for them to achieve much more than a few dollars shaved off the labor cost, and perhaps some elimination of duplicate tasks and unnecessary process steps.
In order to find that next level of performance, you need to take a broader view of your entire global business operations and find ways to bring your BPO partner into the heart of your critical data management processes, so they can help you source unique and creative ways to be more productive and source new avenues for growth.
Folks – it’s not too late to make the trip to the charming Georgian town of Savannah for next week’s Global Sourcing Summit. The Horses will also be present, co-leading session on Cloud Computing Delivery with Mayer-Brown, in addition to hosting an all-star panel entitled “The Future State of the Sourcing Industry: what the future holds, and how on earth we can manage it better” (hmm, who could have thought that one up?).
Featured guests (pictured above, left-to-right) include Michael Koontz (Aditya Birla Minacs), Mike Atwood (Horses for Sources), Ben Trowbridge (Alsbridge), Cindy Morrell (Clorox) and Dan Masur (Mayer Brown LLP).
As usual, we’ve twisted their arm to offer a discount to Horses readers.
