Best practices in Shared Services Centers

The Shared Services delivery platform: your key to effective Shared Services

Article

SAP AG’s Relationship Manager for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Phillip Booth and Vice-President of Solution Management Shared Services Bernhard Fischer discuss effective Shared Services delivery platforms.

Shared Services has established itself as a common optimization strategy for cost, quality and risk control.

Today, many Shared Services Centers operate on whatever legacy system that existed before the inception of the Shared Services Center. This may include efficiency enablers, but still leaves the Shared Services Center exposed to running numerous and different backend systems depending on the internal client it is serving or the external provider it is connecting to.

The Service Delivery Platform should be specifically designed for and supportive of integration with multiple back-ends of varying vendors, providers and software releases.

Our principle is to identify the incremental services that can be bolted onto the business processes used at the internal client or services provider. These bolted-on services will be similar or even the same for all internal clients, establishing a natural realm for the Shared Services Center.

SAP’s Human Resources (HR) solution had been designed for a scenario in which the Human Resources Department sees itself as a service provider to employees and managers.