Risk is a key element of best practice Shared Services Governance. Yet it is often overlooked in the context of customer satisfaction surveys and SLA reporting. Risk reporting is an important as it is the process of identifying the factors that may lead to a deterioration in either SLA performance and/or customer satisfaction. Risk management is about managing the future. But it is difficult. In order for risk management to work effectively it is necessary for all team members to be risk conscious and risk focus. The common practice of sitting down and ‘identifying’ risks just before a report needs to be sent to senior managers is at best unreliable and incomplete and at worst ‘window dressing’.
Risk management and risk reporting needs to be undertaken on an ongoing basis. The process for identifying, capturing and taking actions to mitigate risks ought to be simple, consistent and effective. All team members should have the ability to document and action risks as soon as they identify them – with risks being stored, tracked and analysed from a central source.
Historically there have been few solutions available to Shared Services Leaders to manage performance, issues and risks in a structured and consistent way. Manual efforts to drive consistency using e-mail and spreadsheets tend to be difficult and very labour intensive. By using ServiceFrame Shared Services Team move to one central portal to drive all reporting on SLAs, Issues and Risks – thereby driving world class governance. Importantly all team members can raise risks when they need to – assigning them to the relevant parties and driving the correct actions. Managers and Team Leaders can then download risk reports and risk dashboards when they need them.
Fig. 1 Capturing Risks using ServiceFrame.
Capturing Risks using ServiceFrame
