In this video transcript, Borderless Executive Search’s Consultant Director Andrew Kris talks about setting up a client relationship and delivering the right set of services in a Shared Services Center. Shared Services Centers are all about change in behaviors and attitudes that comes from delivering shared services with cost, quality and timelines that are more competitive compared with alternatives—in other words, it is all about running a business. Shared Services Centers often enable companies to benefit from lower cost as well as better quality, but it’s important to benchmark this performance with what was delivered by the former organization. Customers need to see the added-value they get. Shared Services Centers are not only about delivering services to customers. They have to deliver services people want at the right price. They also need to establish relationships with your customers. This means having people manage relationships with a particular customer or a group of customers. You will need to establish relationships with your customers, which probably means having people manage relationships with a particular customer or a group of customers.

The Hackett Group's Director of HR Consulting Practice Karim Zerhouni explains how Shared Services Centers are vital resources for Global Human Resources Transformation. The increase on the total cost of the Human Resources function corresponds to an intended evolution. The future of companies’ Shared Services Centers is to move toward global business services. Human Resources must strategically assess and set the level of ambition for its organization’s 3-5 year horizon. It’s a multi-stage journey. The first stage is consolidation, while the next stage is standardization. Once these requirements have been fulfilled, Shared Services can move to the global business services level.

Gianni Giacomelli, Head of Strategy & Marketing at SAP’s BPO business unit, discusses important factors on designing the retained organization from a technology perspective. The organizations must run as if there were no boundaries, no fracture points. This means that the outsourced and the retained organizations are integrated, not just interfaced. Process and technology are designed together as are the retained and the outsourced organizations. To guarantee integration, consistent vocabulary must be used. A sufficiently large exchange of data sets is also required. Working out your master data design and related business logic is the key to a successful extended organization.

Michele Gray, Senior Director of Global Consulting for ADP, discusses the factors on getting the business case right. Depending on needs, two types of business cases can be identified. The first one is the high-level and indicative business case. Another form is the detailed business case. Both forms of the business case are useful and have to be used according to whether the situation calls for securing funding at the initial stage of a project or having a project finally validated by the board members. The business case is designed to determine future costs, split responsibilities and detail the savings as well as the way they will be generated. The role of a business case is to enable a company to articulate different objectives in a single document in order to validate the feasibility of its project. A business case is designed to offer a detailed view of a problem and the potential solutions for the company.