The development curve for shared services organization is never ending. Leading shared services organizations and the enterprises that rely on them are engaged in a cycle of continuous change. More is expected all the time, more capacity, more capability, more services, more value. There is no status quo or ‘good enough’ point where only maintenance is sufficient to meet the objectives of the enterprise. As the Shared Services Organization evolves their engagement with customers across the enterprise must evolve too. In the early phase the focus is on reliability, stabilization and surpassing the performance levels of the previous organization. At a later stage the focus moves to continuous improvement. With that the expectations of customers across the enterprise change. Simple processing of transactions accurately and on-time is not enough, they look for additional services and more value from their shared services delivery centers.
A critical point of inflexion for any shared services organization is when they start charging the business units across the enterprise for the services they deliver. Whether this is a step in evolution or part of the operating model from day one, if you charge for services the dynamic with your customers is different. They expect different levels of engagement, support and customer service. If this point arrives in the evolution of the Shared Services organization as a formal transition from an earlier ‘free to the business’ model to a charge back model the exposure is even greater.
At that point the best performing shared services teams are thinking very explicitly about high customer impact and their ability to secure financial leverage from that impact. The foundation will always be the value in the services being delivered. But in parallel there should be a focus on the quality of experience the customer has around the information the Shared Services team are delivering to their customers. Does the customer feel a deep sense of engagement? Do they receive information proactively? Do they see by the way in which the SSC team engages with them on how they are performing that they care about service and customer experience?
The most serious question the head of shared services can ask his organization is: If we have to compete for this business would we still win it? Best in class shared services organizations put the customer at the heart of their governance process. Capturing, analyzing and distributing all relevant information about the past, present and future of Services Relationships is the heart of governance. The SSC doing this consistently for all customers is demonstrating high capability governance. By demonstrating high capability governance they validate their capability in all other areas and are putting themselves in a strong position to win more business.
No leading shared services organization can deliver on customer centric governance without the right technology platform to enable their governance capability.
