The Common Challenges of Common Practices Tips for Effectively Moving to a Shared Services Center

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The Common Challenges of Common
Practices: Tips for Effectively Moving to
a Shared Services Center
an eprentise white paper

The Common Challenges of Common Practices: Tips for Effectively Moving to a Shared Services Center
© 2014 eprentise, LLC. All rights reserved.
eprentise® is a registered trademark of eprentise, LLC.
FlexField Express and FlexField are registered trademarks of Sage Implementations, LLC.
Oracle, OracleApplications, and E-Business Suite are registeredtrademarksof Oracle Corporation.
All other company or productnamesare used for identification only and maybe trademarks of their respective owners.
Author: Helene Abrams
Published: May 6, 2014
www.eprentise.com
Copyright © 2014 eprentise, LLC. All rights reserved. www.eprentise.com | Page 2

Introduction
Moving to a shared services model reduces costs and optimizes performance, but taking the right steps is
necessary for a successful outcome. Explore the initiatives and challenges of a common chart of accounts
and calendar for companies moving toward enterprise-wideshared service center operations. This paper
will focus on how standardizingthe data streamlines business processes, eliminates silos and facilitates
the new functionality of Oracle® E-Business Suite Release 12.
Shared Services Centersin Today’sMarket
A shared services center (SSC) is an operational entity which performs all of the non-core business
processes for all of the divisions within an enterprise (e.g., accounting,human resources, etc.). Rather than
having to dilute resources on back-office functions, each division is able to focus more closely on its
intended objectives, which instead can be performed on a consolidated level by an SSC. Companies
seeking to remain competitivein today’s market are gradually shifting to this model, because it
streamlines operations and reduces costs.
As early as of 2009, more than 93 percent of the world’s 1,000 largest companies, based on revenue, were
capitalizing on the use of shared services centers according to a Hackett Group survey. The number of
companies that transitionedhas only increased since then. Some notable corporations who rely on SSCs
include Siemens, McDonalds, Federal Express,Microsoft and American Express.[1] Even for smaller
companies with revenues below $1 billion, the shared services center model is becoming more common.
The primary appeal of implementing an SSC for any company that takes the initiative to implement is the
financial savings. Moreover, operating an SSC helps mitigate risk as there are fewer control points and
variations when completing a transaction.Considerations to account for include deciding how your
enterprise wants the SSC to be set up and what organizational challenges need to be met, as will further
be discussed in this white paper.
How Shared Service Centers Operate
The effectiveness of an SSC is based on the principle of an economy of scale. The more that common
business processes can be standardized throughout the divisions of an enterprise, the greater the amount
of transactions that the SSC can handle. Similar to the way a production plant operates,personnel are
trained to perform specific tasks efficiently, such as preparing invoices. Therefore,fewer employees need
to be dedicated to common operational responsibilities,although they are still able to complete them at a
significantly lower cost due to the high volume.
According to a 2013 study by Deloitte, of the more than 270 companies surveyed, 74 percent were
headquartered in the US, Canada or Western Europe, and 54 percent of companies had SSCs in the same
regions[2]. The current trend is to locate shared services centers in regions where labor costs are low, such
as Tennessee or Ireland. Additionally, 75 percent of the organizations polled for the study operated in
more than ten countries, and 58 percent indicated thatthey had more than one SSC. Although multiple
shared services centers within an organizationcan be the result of different specializations,there are also
instances where several of them are performing the same tasks due to sheer volume, or because they
have some strategic purpose.

For example, the business practice known as “Follow the Sun,” which was originally coined and developed
for American Express, relies on multiple SSCs functioning in coordination with each other on a 24 hour
timeline. In order to keep the business operating without interruption,each of the centers is
approximately equidistantfrom the other, in terms of time zones. This way, as the business hours of one
region ends, the responsibilities are rolled over westward to the next region’s SSC. Not only does this
prevent a global organizationfrom relying on the local office hours of a particular office, but it also allows
the company to offer around-the-clock customer support.
Companies that decide to transition to a shared services center are faced with the choice of insourcing
their operations to an internal entity, or to outsource them to an external third-party,which is also
referred to as a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).An internal SSC is comprised of your own company’s
employees, acting as a profit center. Althoughthe principle of economy of scale continues to be a driving
factor for its implementation, a more popular reason in recent years has been the desire for high-quality
work which can be achieved thanks to a staff specializing in a particular set of tasks. Conversely, certain
organizations desiring to benefit from SSCs, may not have the resources available to restructuretheir
company, and so will rely on an external BPO service acting as a cost center. Popularproviders, such as
Verizon Business partnered with Accenture, offer expertise and support to transitioning companies. BPO
services tend to offer cheaper rates than an internal center because they have many customers. However,
since it is external, none of the capital stays within your enterprise as it would with an internal center.
Another distinction betweenan internal and an external SSC is that with an insourced model, your
organizationcan standardize its processes in a way that suits it best; whereas an outsourced model comes
with the disadvantage of having to conform to the BPO’s operations.
Challengesand Critical Success Factors for A Shared Services Center
If your organizationis going to take on an ambitious project like an SSC implementation,then you will
need to take certain steps to ensure its success. This is accomplished throughdata and process
standardization, creating a common chart of accounts (CoA), and introducing the appropriate accessibility
and governance rules. The moment thatan enterprise is not meeting these conditions,it is no longer
recognizing cost-savings benefits.
As stated in the previous section, cost savings are possible because of a high volume of transactions,
which reduces the cost of individual processes. However, for that to happen, there needs to exist a
common format for business processes and data entry. You do not want your SSC employees to waste
time consolidating information from disparate sources. Moreover,if your enterprise has multiple ways of
performing a task (e.g., each division has its own payroll system), then not only will more time and
resources be spent on training an SSC employee in every method, but it will also result in different levels
of data, which increases complexity and makes it more challenging to get accurate information regarding
business performance.
Global organizations using SSCs also face the challenge of observing local and statutory requirements.
Although this has always been a daunting task for enterprises with legal entities throughout the world, it
can now be easily managed in Oracle® E-Business Suite (EBS) Release 12 (R12). Within this latest version,
Oracle introduced a transformative featureknown as secondary ledgers, which makes operating off of a
single global instance easier than ever before. Reporting requirements are addressed by setting up a
single operating unit (OU) in the primary ledger, and by then adding a secondary ledger for each legal
entity. With such a setup, data will only need to be entered once for it to post everywhere it needs to,

thereby eliminating possible errors. Finally, streamliningyour EBS will grant your company’s leadership the
ability to review the organization’s status in real-time.
Multi-Org Access Control (MOAC) is another new feature of R12 that may seem like an alternative to
consolidating to a single operating unit – especially since it permits transactions across OUs. However, this
feature has limitations which lead one back to the model discussed in the previous paragraph. The
biggest problem is that MOAC does not ensure that standards (e.g., pricing, discounts, credit limits, etc.)
are translated across operating units. Inconsistencies among operating units will not only affect the
efficiency of a shared services center, but also your company’s bottom line.
Even if a business is not operating off of a single primary ledger or instance, a common chartof accounts
(CoA) is essential to any enterprise capitalizing on a shared services center. Incongruences between CoAs
will be reflected in the data quality. Even if your SSC staff managed to consolidate the information derived
through disparate charts of accounts without error, the process would take significantly more time, which
again, further cuts down on potential savings.
Another factor affecting your return on investment is data accessibility. Data access is configured
appropriately based on a user’s position and responsibilities. Therefore an SSC employee may be granted
permission to access all transactional data of a certain type enterprise-wide, whereas a manager reviewing
quarterly figures will be granted full permissions relating to his or her division. Any information silos that
popped up over time are no longer viable and need to be broken down as well. By the same token,
governance rules are adopted to segregate data based on its appropriate sources. For example, if you
outsource your financials to a BPO and they have no way of discriminating amongst your divisions, then
the subsequent errors will cost your organization time and money. Finally, if there is data that you do not
want accessible for everyone, then you can implement cross-validation and security rules, as well as limit
access by requiring additional permissions.
Roadmap to Implementation
Whether your company decides to implement a shared services center internally or externally, it needs to
develop a roadmap to ensure a smooth transition and a maximum returnon investment. Below, you will
find a series of generalized steps that will help you prepare your own roadmap:
1. Determine what processes the SSC will cover. Initial evaluations of business processes are to
reveal which of them share the most overlap amongst the different operating units.The more
common the process, the greater priority it has for implementation.
2. Standardize commonbusiness processes. Althoughthe different divisions of your enterprise
perform similar tasks, their methods may vary. Any processes you wish to consolidate to a shared
services center need to follow an aligned methodology that still meets the needs of every affected
division.
3. Identify common data. The input information for the business processes also needs to be
standardized.When an SSC employee spends additional time consolidating information from
disparate sources, then the cost associated with that process increases.
4. Measure current operating costs. A shared services center implementationneeds to be justified
quantitatively by predicting the potential savings. Your organization’s initial cost per process
needs to be determined to establish a baseline.
5. Acquire benchmarks. Market research companies offer compiled data providing insight regarding
benchmark maximums, minimums and averages for enterprise operating costs. Your company can

use such information to see how you currently stack up against the competitionand what the
best practices for improving your performanceare.
6. Set up a service agreement.Since your shared services center is going to be operating either as a
profit center or as a cost center, your company needs to establish prices and conditions for what
each division is responsible.
7. Implementbetter business practices. Introducinga common chart of accounts and standardizing
ledgers will streamline your organization’s informationas well as improve the efficiency of the
SSC. Secondary ledgers reduce the complexity involved with statutory and regulatory reporting,
and also allow you to post data across multiple ledgers with a single entry.
8. Recognize the actual return on investment. After your shared services center has been
implemented,the final step of the project will be to compare your current operating costs with
the original ones, and determine what percentof the actual benefits were realized.
Conclusion
Shared services centers provide a cost-cutting, streamlined solution for non-core business functions by
relying on an economy of scale and standardizing common business processes. An enterprise interested
in a transition to an SSC model needs to evaluate its current operations and meet the challenges
associated with data quality prior to implementation. Although a company can expect a direct financial
benefit, it is also reasonable to anticipatea reduction of errors and redundancy.
In order to recognize the return on investment, the organizationmust first quantitatively measure the
costs of doing business both prior to, and after the implementation.This way, with proper planning, the
business can recognize the benefits.
[1] http://www.slideshare.net/ssonetwork/global-business-services-gbs-performance-study-2012
[2] http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-
UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/IMOs/Shared%20Services/us_sdt_2013GlobalSharedServicesSur
veyExecutiveSummary_022613.pdf

Curious?
For more information, please call eprentise at 1.888.943.5363 or visit www.eprentise.com.
About eprentise
eprentise provides transformation software products that allow growing companies to make their Oracle® E-Business
Suite (EBS) systems agile enough to support changing business requirements, avoid a reimplementation and lower the
total cost of ownership of enterprise resource planning (ERP). While enabling real-time access to complete, consistent
and correct data across the enterprise, eprentise software is able to consolidate multiple production instances, change
existing configurations such as charts of accounts and calendars, and merge, split or move sets of books, operating
units, legal entities, business groups and inventory organizations.

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