The real value of Shared Services and GBS

Interview with Mick Myers, Principal Consultant and VCI Change

Mick Myers is a senior finance executive with considerable

experience in building and leading the transformation of

finance and shared services organisations in hubs located in

Australia, SE Asia and the UK. Mick has over nine years

international experience in General Manager and Interim

CFO roles across four major mining & resources companies,

each with a global operational footprint. Mick cut his teeth

at Deloitte, where he gained broad experience in accounting

roles and advisory work over 18 years. Mick has delivered

major successes in transforming finance functions, business integrations and creating multi-

functional shared services in diverse and complex environments.

What are some of the current trends you’re seeing that are having

an impact on global business services?

If you’d asked me this question five years ago my answer would have been about

outsourcing as a means to an end – ie reducing costs, removing headcount and “non-core”

activities.

Since then we’ve seen a paradigm shift in terms of rapid technological advancements and e-

enablement. The current focus on agility, responsiveness to business change and business

demands for value-added services will continue into the future.

The top 5 big trends I’m seeing at the moment that will continue to shape shared service

offerings are:

1. The evolution and alignment of business operating models with global process

ownership

2. the push for global process delivery with a single integrated ERP to drive process

excellence and efficiency

3. The demand for enabling technologies, apps, and push-the-button performance

dashboards to aid executives and managers receive and interpret financial and

nonfinancial information

4. Leveraging of low cost country sourcing models; and an

5. “big data” opportunities

What big data offers is the opportunity to leverage collection of data from business process

flows across the business. By using BI tools we have a microscope through which we can

look into the organisation, and we can now focus with greater clarity on the picture of how

an organisation procures, pays, accounts for, costs and reports transactions such as stores

We can see breaches in polices like invoices processed where no PO was raised. We can see

where this occurred, how often, who created and approved it and when. And we can do

that for the whole business, or we can focus on a transaction type or drill down into a region

or business area. It's an opportunity for a GBS to convert mass data into useful information

or to quote from the CEB, "to shift from process executors to value deliverers"

What are the real value benefits of establishing a ‘shared’ or ‘global

business services’ model?

1. There are economies of scale from deploying a standard way of doing things across all

parts of the business through global processing centre or strategically located hubs

2. Process Centres of Excellence provide stronger process control, visibility and a single

source of the truth

3. Operational agility that provides a competitive advantage with the ability to integrate

new businesses

4. The ability to look across the whole business and see things that individual parts of the

business can’t see - ie end to end process views rather than a silo or functional view of

a part of the process

If we can unlock the value of global business service we can give customers:

� better information;

� faster access to the information and trends

� faster turnaround of problems or queries

� all at a lower cost than today

What are the key problems or pitfalls encountered in the journey?

One of the key learnings from my experience is how critical it is for the executive group to

ensure operational leaders buy-in to the concept of delivering activities that are routine,

repetitive or rule-based through a centralised offsite shared service.

One of the biggest issues I see again and again is the inability to clearly articulate the

business’ operating model and the roles and relationship of operations, functions and the

shared services - AND how these differ from the silo-based, divergent or disconnected

model you have before you start on the journey.

Another major problem is tolerating those business units who successfully argue “we’re

different” and can’t or won’t comply with the mandate given to the GBS. This results in work

arounds and non-standard systems. And no surprise here – they usually aren’t that different

at all.

The third pitfall is trying to change too many processes at the point of transition – it is far

more effective to identify and then fix the top handful of processes. This way you can add,

significant value immediately, and the team is not distracted by optimising processes that

only offer small incremental improvements. Biting off only what you can chew is critical to a

successful shared services implementation.

The final key learning is don’t underestimate the extent of project and change management

required when embarking on the journey – strong governance, discipline and leadership is

needed to build a new model to render the existing silo approach obsolete.

What areas are you focusing on over the coming months, where do

you anticipate innovation and growth?

With VCI Change I am supporting an energy resources company through a major

transformation including establishing a Business Services Centre in a developing country in

the Pacific region. A key part of my remit is to migrate all finance activities from Australia

before the end of the year..

1. My key focus will be on:

Define the roles and responsibilities of over 100 shared service and corporate finance

personnel;

2. Develop clear policies and standards for the finance and shared service functions;

3. Create procedures and process maps for the finance and accounts payable functions;

4. On-boarding and training around 50 new staff, most of whom will be local;

5. find innovative ways to standardise and fix the 3-4 highest value process levers during

transition; and

6. Lift and shift around 30 finance and accounts payable processes from the Australian

corporate office to their new home.

It is a fairly big challenge. I am excited by the opportunity to establish a robust and

sustainable shared services hub that will deliver significant business benefits – and also

empower and grow the local workforce to build skills that will benefit them, their families

and the country well into the future.

Five steps to move a mid to large organisation to a SSC or GBS model

Define clear

processes, roles

& accountabilities

Set service

standards, KPIs &

deliverables

Determine how

services will be

deployed

Determine the

Service Delivery

Model

Establish the

Operating Model

1

2

3

4

5

©VCI Change

Define clear

processes, roles

& accountabilities

Set service

standards, KPIs &

deliverables

Determine how

services will be

deployed

Determine the

Service Delivery

Model

Establish the

Operating Model

1

2

3

4

5

©VCI Change

Five steps to move a mid to large organisation to a SSC or GBS model