Business Process Management

Shared Services Centre

Abstract
A Shared Services Centre available for various company functions, such as Finance and Administration, ICT and HR, is the business solution adopted by Groups or enterprises operating in many business areas and/or markets; with a Shared Service Centre companies can effectively manage processes in support to the core business, deploy strategic actions aimed at creating value  for the stakeholders and reducing structural costs. Steps such as:

  • Process costs reduction as a consequence of the operations standardization;
  • Achievement of economies of scale and improvement of individual performances;
  • Curb on the investments required to implement/update homogeneous technology solutions and applications  (such as ERP, Document Management and Alternative Archiving Systems, Electronic Invoicing, etc.) with relevant maintenance costs reduction;
  • Cut down on costs linked to the introduction and  maintenance of Governance, Risk and Compliance systems, therein enclosed any software supporting them;

Allow companies to free resources which can be assigned to the deployment of actions aimed at   enhancing the core business.

A Shared Services Centre also allows to significantly speed up the integration among companies in the event of extraordinary operations (such as mergers and joint ventures); moreover, the existence of  common processes, technologies and data enables to reduce relevant costs and investments.

A Shared Services Centre can also be beneficial to a possible sell off  process of companies (in case of Groups) or any part of them (e.g. Lines/Business Units) thus contributing to increase the realizable exit value.

In addition to the advantages measurable through the costs reduction, the creation of a Shared Services Centre also enables to achieve quality advantages generated by the implementation of customer-supplier logics within the process management. These logics are defined by and agreed between the parties in Service Agreements, Service Level Agreements and relevant Key Performance Indicators (SLAs and KPIs), i.e. operating tools governing the customer-supplier relationship;  for the Shared Services Centre this entails a regular monitoring both of the service level delivered and customer satisfaction achieved with a sound motivation to continuously improve them.

Key experiences

Reply Consulting has gained significant experiences in projects envisaging feasibility studies, implementation of Shared Services Centre and initiatives aimed at optimizing already existing Shared Services Centers within the Manufacturing and Service industries.

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