What Is Operations Support?

Operations support is the provision of named people to do a firm's operational work, working inside the firm's own systems and to its own documented processes, while the firm keeps the function, its priorities and every approval. It is a way of getting the work done without recruiting and managing the people who do it.

What it covers

Operations support covers the work that keeps a firm running rather than the work a firm sells. Accounts payable, payroll, onboarding, records, CRM maintenance, reporting, research, deal administration: the tasks that are not optional, grow with the business, and rarely justify a hire on their own.

Named people, allocated to one client, not a queue or a shared pool
Work done inside the client's own systems, under access the client grants and can revoke
Documented processes, so the work does not depend on one person's memory
Formal quality checking against the client's own process
Cross-trained cover, so an absence is a handover rather than a gap
A senior team lead managing delivery, and an account director holding the relationship

How the people are arranged varies with the work. It can be a team across many workflows, a named person in one ongoing role, a specialist with particular technical experience, or a combination.

What it does not cover

Three things get confused with operations support, and the differences matter.

It is not consultancy. A consultant tells you what to do. Operations support does the work. We do not advise, interpret or make recommendations about how your function should be run, and nobody in an operations support team makes a decision that belongs to a qualified person on your side.

It is not temporary staffing. Temporary staffing fills a gap with a body. Operations support is an ongoing arrangement with documentation, quality checking and cover behind it, managed by us rather than by you. The point is not that someone is there; it is that the work is reliably done.

It is not a managed service. A managed service typically takes the function over, runs it on the provider's own platform, and reports against the provider's service levels. Operations support leaves the function with you. You keep the priorities, the approvals and the systems, and the work happens where your own team expects to find it.

It also does not extend to work requiring professional judgement rather than documented execution. A controller, an HR business partner, a head of marketing: those are roles you hire. Operations support staffs the work underneath them.

Who normally owns it

The function owner keeps the function. A finance lead who brings in operations support for accounts payable still owns accounts payable: the priorities, the approval thresholds, the supplier relationships and the decisions.

What changes is who does the processing, and who manages the people doing it. On our side that is a senior team lead for day to day delivery and an account director for the relationship. On the client side, nothing needs to be added.

That distinction is the whole proposition. The alternative to operations support is not usually doing nothing; it is recruiting, paying and managing the same people yourself.

How Clandon supports it

We build the team around the work, train it on your processes, and manage delivery. Most engagements start with one function or one role, and widen once it is running.

Related resources

What Is a Capabilities Team?

A team working across many documented workflows, coordinated through one team lead.

What Is Role Based Support?

A named person in an ongoing role, recruited for the experience the role needs.

Operations Support vs Hiring Internally

Cost, speed, cover and control, and the circumstances in which hiring directly is the better answer.

Which of your functions is costing you the most?

Talk to us