Real time insights on shared services strategy
After years of delivering major efficiency gains and cost savings, could it be that shared services centers have hit the wall in terms of value? Some organizations are already seeing signs of it. Think about it: the scale and scope of these centers have in many cases expanded to include thousands of employees in locations around the world. They are large organizations on their own terms–not just nimble teams focused on individual business tasks. Delivering incremental value back to the parent organization through labor-cost arbitrage and process improvement tends to become more difficult at this scale.
Meanwhile, these shared services organizations are becoming more sophisticated. Having done the same old things for years, many want to stretch into new areas–to deliver even more. It’s possible to fuse these aspirations and growing capabilities with the evolving needs of the organization. In the most sophisticated organizations, this tends to look like what we call a GRID—globally connected, responsive, integrated, dynamic shared services structures that operate as a single coordinated unit.
In this issue of Connectors, we’ll look at GRID basics–what you need to know to determine whether or not this approach warrants more exploration, as well as some considerations for moving ahead.