What exactly does a best practice Shared Service Centre mean and what is required to achieve it? it consists of those top 5% of Shared Service Centres which peform best against a criteria of both quality service delivery and efficient service delivery. The definition is a powerful one – and its not mine. So what exactly is these Best Practice Centres do that no one else is? Or what is it they do better? These were the questions asked by the European MD of the Hackett Group at today’s Planning and Implementing Shared Service Centre in London – thankfully he answered the questions…
In this year’s benchmarking exercise by the Hackett Group they identified that 1) effective and committed stakeholder and relationship management, 2) a clear focus on end to end service defintion and 3) effective Service Level Management or SLA management were the defining attributes of a best practice shared services centre. One thing that was specifically pointed out was that the biggest area of difference between the ‘best practice’ and ‘the rest of the pack’ is that the latter do not implement SLA management effectively. One would think that SLA Management or measurement of metrics was not a particularly difficult thing to do (afterall most SLAs have no more than 10 or 15 KPIs).
I decided to ask around – the feedback was interesting….as I expected a few said that the process of monitoring SLAs and managing Service Level Agreements is just quite time consuming and there is a lot of labour involved so it tends to get lost in the noise. More interestingly a few said that their clients really arent that interested in SLAs – that in the Shared Services context clients are more interested in informal communication. Now that I found really interesting. Internal clients aren’t interested in SLAs because it is not their job to ensure that a service culture is introduced to the company. If they ignore SLAs they can behave as if nothing has changed. It is the responsibility of the Shared Services team to drive the reporting of SLAs. If you dont have SLAs then you have simply centralised – it is only when you can show you deliver clear and measured services that you have a shared services centre (Hackett’s words — not mine!)
Furthermore, most people I spoke to who have been managing Shared Services centres for a while told me that SLA Management really becomes important 6-9 months into the new arrangement. It is at that point that real efficiencies are starting to be gained and shared services centre become confident asserting the scope of the services they deliver. In some cases they are being mandated by senior executives to stick to the scope in order to deliver on efficencies. The trouble is that if you havent been managing SLAs from the beginning – and if you havent been reporting on SLAs from the beginning then you have no common facts or performance metrics to engage with your clients on. Make sure you manage SLAs right from the beginning. Not because your clients will want to see them from day one – but because when they start asking questions about what you and are not doing – you will need them.
The importance of relationships in Shared Services was highlighted as an even higher priority than SLA Management - the truth is that if you dont have SLA information and SLA reports you dont have commonly agreed information on which to base the relationship. A good relationship is not just about the client being happy - a good relationship is where the client is happy because they know what you are delivering and they are pleased with the level of service. I guess that is what those guys in the Best Practice Shared Services centres are doing.
For those of you who might now be retempted to visit that business of SLA Management you know where I will point you so I wont go into my views on spreadsheets. Please stay posted. There are good speakers and good insights at this conference. I will do my best to share – and not bore you….
