Shared Service Centres
Delivering Value from Effective
Finance & Business Processes
Management Briefings Executive Series


By Andrew Kris & Martin Fahy
Financial Times / Prentice Hall
November 2003
ISBN: 0-273-66310-0
188 Pages, Illustrated
$247.50 paper original


As organizations struggle to create and sustain shareholder value, executives are continually challenged to deliver effective business processes. Increasingly today's market requires companies to standardize operations in order to remain competitive. And, an effective way of keeping costs down and improving efficiency is by moving certain functions to one central location.

An increasingly popular and effective way of meeting this challenge is to establish a shared service centre. This briefing explains how and why more and more organizations are turning to shared services solutions. It explains how organizations can tap into the wealth of opportunities that shared services provides by clearly outlining processes for evaluation, planning and implementation. It examines the structural diversity of shared service centres and the role that good centre design plays in the quest for really effective shared services.

Shared Service Centres considers the face of shared services today and tomorrow - and looks at the challenges posed by the market place, increased outsourcing, and the consulting boom. Providing practical, experience-driven examples and offering sample presentations, tools and templates for immediate use, this briefing offers expert advice on the process, tools, design and implementation of shared service centres.

Essential reading for those considering implementing SSCs, as well as those interested in revamping existing SSC operations. This briefing will help you to:

understand the shared services approach "
explore the strategic issues that inform the SSC decision "
become familiar with the management, technological, and process challenges "
develop a unique methodology or framework to support SSC deployment "
deploy a shared services culture which supports sustainable value creation "
employ best practice processes and systems "
investigate the opportunities for e-shared services and business process outsourcing

Contents

1. Shared services: It's not just about cost saving - it's about value harvesting
The nature of SSCs
Origins and rationale for SSCs
Whirlpool - an early player in SSCs
The aims and objective of shared service centres
Isn't this like outsourcing?
A good SSC takes time and resources to establish

2. Shared service activities
Introduction
If the future looks like anything it looks like Oracle IeBC
How SSC processes work at Oracle
Some lessons from IeBC
It's not just about cost savings

Conclusion 3. SSCs - people, processes and systems
The need for strong foundations
The importance of information technology
The limits of IT - enterprise application integration
Emerging best practice from SSCs
Conclusion

4. Location and migration
Why location matters
Do I have to move?
SSC locations - criteria for decision making
Whirlpool's rationale for choosing Ireland
The global geography of shared services today
Conclusion

5. Business process outsourcing
Introduction
Why outsource internal services
Tips for the outsourcing decision
Managing the outsourcing relationship
Conclusion

6. Change, leadership and stakeholder management
Introduction
The nature of change in SSC environments
Stages involved in migrating to the SSC model
Lessons learned from SSC implementations
Realizing the benefits from the SSC implementation
SSC management
What to expect from the leader of shared services
Coping with culture and distance
Conclusion

7. What's this thing called culture
Introduction
Culture and the SSC
Areas where culture affects the SSC
Culture shock and international adaptation
Conclusion

8. Performance monitoring and benchmarking
Introduction
What business unit clients want from their SSC
The role of SLAs measurement and reporting
The SSC scorecard
Measurement without improvement is just bean counting
Comparing performance - the role of benchmarking
Conclusion

9. E-shared services
Introduction
How the web is transforming bean counting
How the web is transforming shared services
Challenges for e-shared services
Lights-out processing: vision or hallucination
Conclusion

10. Future directions
Trends for the future of SSCs
Conclusion

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