Andrew Kris, Consultant Director of Borderless Executive Search, identifies ways of building an effective Shared Services Center. Shared Services Centers are about much more than just consolidating to gain efficiency. They are also, primarily, about running a business. Businesses tend not to be very useful or sustainable without customers. The same thing applies to Shared Services Centers. The reality is that even before you start your Shared Services Center, you have to assess the current internal cost of services that are going to be delivered by the center. Bear in mind that even if not visible, all processes and services delivered internally have a cost. 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.

In this video, Karim Zerhouni, Director HR Consulting Practice, The Hackett Group, discusses Human Resources costs as well as the challenges and the future of HR Shared Services Centers, and how to measure their performance. The total cost of the Human Resources function has increased a significant 40% over the last ten years. The more advanced organizations have chosen to optimize the cost of transactional activities while at the same time, choosing to increase HR investments in talent management processes. Fifteen years ago, who would have thought that Shared Services would become the norm to manage General and Administrative services and especially Human Resources? If we take a close look at the current situation, Shared Services have fulfilled initial expectations. Research recently conducted by the Hackett Group shows that more than 60% of organizations studied have realized a 20% increase in productivity. Their next step is to create additional benefits and greater value for end users.

During this 60 minute webcast, Bonnie Skelly, Director, International Payroll, Finance Operations at Microsoft, Barbara Paterson, Director and People Development Specialist for Paterson Consultancy Ltd., and Patrick Nolot, Global Program Director at ADP, discuss HR BPO hot topics such as: dealing with the complexity of transitioning multi-country HR BPO projects, managing the challenges related to people and transition, and maintaining employee engagement over time.

Gianni Giacomelli, SAP BPO’s Head of Strategy & Marketing, discusses designing the retained organization from a technology perspective. The goal of outsourcing agreement is not to create an efficient outsourced organization. It is to create an efficient extended enterprise that leverage the specialization, and hence the effectiveness, of the newly re-configured outsourced and retained organizations. Technology can automate and facilitate processes, meaning few resources are required and output quality is improved. Designing the data and configuring the platform must be done according to the required business logic. The best answers are situational, but there are best practices that a provider can reuse from one customer to another, thereby ensuring process optimization and economies of scale. In the past ten years, we have consistently noticed that successful design depends heavily on the decision making process, particularly the engagement and empowerment of the right people.

ADP’s Senior Director of Global Consulting Michele Gray discusses the importance of business case as well as getting the business case right. It is crucial to understand the timing for the business case as well as its decision-making cycle. Put simply, the business case makes sense only if its purpose is clearly identified. Companies that are working on detailed business cases are often doing it when they are in the contract finalization phase with their service provider. The business case is used to validate the savings that can be expected in the end. The high-level form of the business case is often used as the first justification for a project. In most situations, putting together a business case is the best opportunity to assess the quality of the information available in a company. After all, building a business case is all about putting the right data together in order to make projections. Getting the business case right is all about timing and purpose. The purpose of the business case won’t be the same according to your project’s status and the objectives you want to achieve in your organization. The ultimate goal of any business case is to convince an audience to support a specific project.