Many Shared Services organisations struggle to get their internal clients to focus on the benefits of the new approach to service delivery. Internal clients tend to highlight the limitations of services and resources which are ’shared’ – immediately implying that there is a reduced level of service, a deterioration in quality and a lack of focus on their ’specific needs’. We are used to these objections and challenges – in some cases they are true – in most cases Shared Services teams can demonstrate that their approach leads to better service. The ongoing solution is to ensure clear communication and visibility of what is actually being delivered – nevertheless most Shared Services organisations still fail to communicate clearly to their clients exactly what service is being provided on an ongoing basis. As I have stated before the Hackett Group’s most recent study in this area highlights Best Practice Shared Services organisations as those who manage and communicate on Service Levels effectively. Here’s why…..
When you move to a shared service model, internal clients feel a lack of control and trust. They rightly believe that they are no longer the sole focus of dedicated resources – but rather one of a number of multiple clients. They are correct. It is important that the shared services team takes the following steps to ensure that internal clients understand exactly what is being provided:
- Ensure that the services to be provided are actually clearly communicated. This does not mean that service levels need to be particularly onerous. However it is important that clients understand what the service is – too often services are not clear to internal client because Shared Services team fear the measurment of very strict service levels. In practice your clients will value knowing what the services are. If they dont know what services you provide then they will continue to treat you as an operational function (after all in the absence of a clear service catalogue that is exactly how you are behaving)
- Make the Service Catalogue easy to access and easy to understand. Service Level Agreements and Service Catalogues should not be stored in word documents on network folders or simply in word documents. Getting your internal clients to understand that you now provide a service is a change activity. It only begins when the services are agreed – from that point on you need to ensure that your clients can ’see the change’. Try online SLA dashboards which everyone can access and understand.
- Ensure that each internal client has its own dashboard and can see exactly what service they are being delivered. Treat your clients as clients. Even if you deliver the same service across the organisation make sure you personalise the content to individual clients. If you do this very manually it can be time consuming – try a more automated SLA tool which will make the process simpler and cost effective.
- Conduct regular ’service review meetings’ with internal clients. There is a real tendancy to become focussed on issues. Ensure that you resolve and address issues. But maintain discussions at a service level – this will ensure that the relationship is service driven. You can only do this if you track and report on your SLAs effectively. Issues will be a key input into whether the correct services and service levels are in place – but if your discussions are solely around issues then you are more in the domain of traditional operations than Shared Services.
- Ensure that your Service Reporting is rich and informative at the first point of contact. Many SLA reports are flat percentage driven reports. The more information you provide to clients the better – information builds trust and minimises communciation issues. I suggest you always ensure that you report on absolute numbers as well as percentages (what are the numbers that make compliance 97%). Where service levels are below acceptable levels then include the reasons why and what is being done to resolve it. No one expects services to be delivered without issues – but they do expect effective communication.
Moving to Shared Services can cause ‘organisational noise’. This noise is caused by initial distrust and frustration. It can grow through lack of effective communication. By focussing effectively on service quality and communication of services delivered, Shared Services organisation can reduce and ultimately eliminate this noise!
