Review of Six Sigma for Shared Services – Mar 2007

I was not expecting to be inspired by an event titled “Six Sigma for Shared Services”, but I had my free media pass and so suitably dressed in my best anorak and armed with sufficient work that could be surreptitiously dealt with while appearing to be completely captivated, I attended the one-day case study that followed the previous day’s workshops.

This event was breath of fresh air; we had the theory linked to practical case-studies, delivered by line management, not black belts or any other belts.  We were told by Simon Smith (Sales & Marketing Director for GE Money EMEA) that "a one size fits all" approach does not work.  After five years of effort primarily focused around techniques and tools, GE Money realised that their efforts were not realising the top line benefits; re-focusing their effort on delivering a better customer experience was the solution.  He continued by saying “we were using Ferrari tools to build a Lada... it just doesn't work!”  As if, the revelation that tools were a switch off was not enough of a hand-grenade to an audience who were clearly interested in Six Sigma and Lean, he continued to challenge us that too often the ‘business intent of the whole process’ is overlooked. The intent should be to continuously deliver better customer experience.  End to end process improvement that neglected the strategic business intent of the whole process is futile.  "If your front-line staff don't know their personal effect on the customers business, then you have a problem before you start".  Winning hearts and minds for process improvements is much easier once the linkage is made!”

Simon highlighted that Voice of the customer has limited effect ..."do you really listen to the voice... 90% of businesses don’t ... and they’re even less likely to drive immediate action from what they hear."  Armed with two simple philosophies: Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Experience Council (CEC), GE has addressed the problem and re-aligned their processes, organisation structures and culture to deliver improvements that focused on the customer effect & impact..."if you don’t effect the customer...what are you effecting and why are you doing it"...?

Net Promoter Score (NPS):  on a scale of 0 -10 “would you recommend our service?”
Scores from 0 -5 are rated detractor, 6-8 neutral, 9-10 Promoter.  The simple ‘why’ question to follow up the rating, provides customer-facing staff with the opportunity to make an immediate difference.  The hope for GE Money is that they make an ‘intervention' for the customer to improve their experience on the spot, where required..."turn a potential complaint into a long term relationship opportunity".

Customer Experience Council (CEC):  was defined as the forum by which the CEO and Senior Management changed their 'mindset'.  It makes us all stand in the customers shoes every week and experience what our customer experience...it is not just another meeting...they share the 'worst customer experience' & worst behaviours... CEC is a way to change the way we should 'value' our customers..."the first step to healing the problem is admitting you have a problem by walking in the customers shoes"

Simon ended by saying, "long term scaleable growth together with your customers is your target, not projects & tools in their silos."

David Biggs (Partner – Aurora Experience) took a different tack, in many ways just as valid and complimentary “what’s the value of process analytical tools if you don’t change behaviour” he said. ”Winning the hearts and minds of the organisation leads to long term sustainable improvement.”

He outlined a case-study with a private hospital (Princess Grace Hospital) where he and his team had made a significant contribution to cultural change in the organisation.  The use of a business simulation game had helped leadership through to janitor make the connection between their roles and actions and the results of the organisation.  We heard a lot about the importance of ‘end-to-end’ process during the course of the day so it was good to hear about ways of bringing cross-functional teams to a state of collective engagement.

So, one might ask, how does this all apply to shared services – the panel session comprising Simon and David plus Marcus Demgenski of Basell – tackled this question admirably!  For example, F&A shared services ‘customers’ may include supplier, cost centre manager, regulator, shareholder, statutory accounting authority, tax authority and general management extended in an outsourced arrangement to include a second layer of interested parties – understanding the linkage between the process activities, roles and responsibilities and the end customer needs to be clear.  If the linkages are not clear there is a potential risk that the activity is not adding value and might even be disrupting the added-value activities.  Tools like ‘Lean’ that speeds up the velocity of a process, and six sigma, which reduces the numbers of process failures, are well and good but if the process is not creating a better customer experience (value) there is no point in optimising it.

A lively discussion on whether certain activities in F&A add value to the ‘end customer’ suggested to this listener (agent provocateur) that David’s game would be a powerful one if it could be genuinely applied from top-to-bottom of an organisation to expose the inordinate waste of resources that many budgeting and other management information processes divert away from the value adding end customer activities, often because of flawed incentive schemes.

Discussion with delegates such as Csaba Kis (Cemex – Hungary) indicated that the preceding day’s workshops had also been valuable (I was unable to attend), particularly for him as he looks at the tools and options available for further optimisation of their finance and accounting shared service processes.  No doubt he like so many of us will be asking ourselves two key questions of all processes:
1. Do they improve the customer experience?
2. Do management, functions and roles (cross-function), linked by the process, understand their contribution to it?

Thanks once again SSON for another event where you were brave enough to tackle the subject matter from several angles!

SSON - Shared services and outsourcing network is a division of IQPC