Business unit accountability: Partner in continuous improvement initiatives

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As the Business Units engage in the Shared Service Organization (SSO) and gain experience with the new model, they're in a position to give feedback to the SSO.  One way they can do this is through the formal Shared Service governance process.  Representatives of the Business Units can work with their counterparts in the SSO and in Corporate to further refine the quality and timeliness of the service delivery as well as expand the delivery capabilities of the SSO.  The feedback that Business Units are giving the SSO can feed into the continuous improvement efforts.

Here are some of the issues that can be the focus of continuous improvement efforts:

  1. Process maturity.  Processes can always be made more efficient.  What is the current error rate compared to best-in-class companies?  How effective is the service delivery in cycle time?  What additional activities within these processes can be moved into the Shared Service Organization to create additional economies of scale? 
  2. Technology maturity.  What are the current efforts to further optimize the supporting technology?  Are there multiple instances of the same software that can be consolidated.  Are there any manual inputs that can be automated with interfaces?  Are there data extracts that can be automated?  Can any activities be moved from the Shared Service Organization to a self-service model for customers, suppliers and employees?
  3. Organizational maturity.  Are there still resources in the Business Units that can be moved to Shared Services?  Are there Business Units who are still out on their own and could be brought into the SSO?  What are the current skills sets of the SSO employees?  Can they be improved with additional training or job rotations? Do the policies and procedures of the organization reflect the current business environment?
  4. Information maturity.  What's the quality of information currently being delivered?  How about the level of granularity?  Is your company's management information mostly financial and historical in nature?  Or are you producing rich operational data that provides a forward look into the operations?  Is the current delivery mechanism electronic or paper?  Does information get pushed onto end-users or does the technology enable end-users to pull their own data when they need it?

By focusing on process, technology, organizational and information maturity, the Business Units and the SSO can work together on their journey to high performance.