Operating Model
Location Feasibility
Operating Model
Process Efficiency
Intelligent Automation
Location Feasibility
Finding a strategic location for your SSC or GBS is an important and challenging decision that can impact your cost efficiencies and long-term talent pool. There are many criteria to consider and stakeholder preferences to manage including:
- Strategy Alignment
- Proximity to existing business
- Access and competition for talent
- Risk and infrastructure
- Total Operating costs
Following our structured approach to selecting a geographic location, our specialists will work closely alongside you as part of a joint team and provide the right data to gain stakeholder buy-in.
Operating Model
It is still true today that the business case behind many SCC or GBS models is first and foremost a cost-reduction exercise. What has changed significantly is the means to accomplish this and the accompanying operating model. Shared Service Centers were often functionally led and governed in their inception in the 90s. Processes and policy were determined at a regional or business unit level and would operate within a silo with fragmented technology. This has been replaced by integrated models, which combine transactional activities with strategic alignment.
Proservartner can help bridge the gap between strategy and practicality. In order to produce an informed design and plan of action we will undergo a detailed data capture covering workforce information, system landscape data, organisational charts and other relevant sources of information. This core data will provide a benchmark for current practices against desired outcomes.
We can then form a plan of delivery incorporating: a detailed communication plan, technology and work environment plans, service management model, change management plan and knowledge transfer plan.
With a clear plan of action, our seasoned professionals will work collaboratively with your team to implement all transition plans and our support doesn’t stop there.
After a new operating model has successfully been installed and stabilised, Proservartner can then assist with the ongoing measurement, analysis and improvement of process efficiencies, staff capabilities and through the implementation of technology.
Process efficiency
A growing number of organisation are realising the benefits of taking a process-orientated approach as a form of total quality management and continuous improvement. Whilst Shared Service models were often started with cost-reduction in mind, today’s challenge is in translating cost savings into value creation. Proservartner see successful centers as cornerstones of business intelligence, analytics and operational excellence.
Implementing any kind of change whilst continuing business-as-usual activity is always difficult and it can be expedient to bring in outside expertise to help you review and adapt your processes in an efficient manner.
Proservartner’s approach to strategy development is comprehensive, rapid and collaborative; using our senior team in a workshop environment with client stakeholders. Our structured approach will inform your thinking to quickly take you from considering a new way of working to being confident in a practical way forward. We focus on design that is simple, agile, cost-effective and that will deliver the outcome and value required.
Our team will roll up their sleeves and work alongside you, solving problems, overcoming barriers and marching everyone towards a common goal. We can oversee both project management and change management elements and successfully transition your operations into smarter, streamlined ways of working.
Intelligent Automation
Rules-based processes that are carried out in volume by your team are ripe for automation. SSC and GBS have significant scope for standardisation and time savings through the implementation of automation.
Shared Services and GBS should consider working cross-functionally to define a path forward that benefits the business and its employees. Developing a comprehensive stakeholder management program at the outset can help ensure buy-in, especially from senior management and IT stakeholders.
Proservarter can help to ensure Shared Services leaders are applying RPA to the right processes and activities. We will form a framework for the testing and monitoring of these bots across large data sets. Not only do our onshore team of developers create bots, but we also monitor, maintain and optimise them to deliver best-in-class results.
case Study
Our client, a global Japanese technology business diversified their offerings as they found new applications for their technology. This had meant that they had grown in a fragmented manner and now were looking for opportunities at cost reduction and standardisation within their back-office functions.
The history of diversification within the organisation meant that the client had multiple offices offering a wide variety of products and services across Europe. Each of these operations had backoffice functions working independently of each other with wildly different working practises. In terms of cost effectiveness and service, we could see that there were huge opportunities to be gained from breaking down these silos. Identifying and unravelling the ‘what, where, when and how’ of moving diverse internal services was understandably complex.
The leadership team selected Gdańsk in Poland as the site that offered the most benefit, both in terms of short term gains and their longer term strategy. This became the European centre for all process within Finance and later HR, with elements of IT service being delivered by an outsourcing partner. Our pragmatic phased delivery approach meant that an ambitious roll out plan was bought into and delivered. The initiative has achieved significant cost savings, around £1.5 million per year meeting the targets of the business case.