Participate in the survey and the free web-seminar that looks at these issues

Not so many years ago Finance and Accounting, Human Resources and IT would have been unable to contemplate their fiefdoms in terms of efficiency.  The typical annual performance review might have included a few vague subjective assessments and one over-arching measure ‘operating costs must be less than budget’.

Nowadays performance of support activities receives the sort of examination once reserved for ‘core’ activities.  Today’s leading organisations are as aware of output per FTE and cost per unit for support activities, as they are for core manufacturing.  As part of the strategy of delivering greater value at lower costs leaders look to shared and outsourced services.  The cycle is unstoppable; homogeneity, location neutrality, scaleability create the economic condition that drive the search for even greater scale, increased automation and lower cost locations.  When the available internal scale is reached then economic forces drive increased outsourcing, or insourcing.

Leading shared service operators are passionate about performance; continuous improvement, process-thinking, benchmarking, six-sigma, lean, service quality, customer focus are inculcated in staff.

Characteristics of First Quartile Performance – shared services

The drive for first quartile performance is in itself one of the key characteristics of those that reach it.  In other words, they have a clearly articulated vision of ‘being the best’ and they know what that means in terms of measures and practices.

So let’s examine what first quartile looks like.  Statistically it means being in the top 25%, but what are the characteristics of those reaching these heady heights.

• They have a clear, well-articulated vision and leadership that is consistent, determined and tenacious in driving towards it
• They have strong process-thinking exemplified by ownership
• They are well–supported by IT
• They are continuously looking for better ways to do things 
• They are excellent at training and motivating there staff
• They know their customers needs
• They are aggressive in their examination and elimination of deviations
• They capture, share and implement best practices
• They have excellent mechanisms for collecting, disseminating and acting upon performance data
• They are fair and caring about their staff
• They continuously educate and train their staff

We are currently running a survey about the questions uppermost in the minds of shared service leaders and how they are addressing them.  Preliminary results are interesting: 60% of shared service organisations rate efficiency as their top concern and 13% of multi-process managers spend more than 40% of their time on performance management issues.

Participate in the survey and the free web-seminar that looks at these issues