Optimizing your SSO is not about making it bigger. It’s about making it better. This article guides you through the “better-cheaper-freer-bigger” roadmap to deliver the best service you can to support your customers, improve service, and continuously add more value.

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2014
APRIL
Shared Services Optimization

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IntroductionYour Shared Services is stabilized, the technology is fully implemented,
and the post-transition support teams have returned to their home
departments or moved onto other projects, but your work is just
beginning. Shared Services is about striving to serve your internal
customer, finding new ways to add value and continuously improve.
Whether you have just implemented Shared Services or have an existing
organization that is performing sub-optimally, the next step is Shared
Services Optimization.
“Shared Services Optimization is about much
more than just getting bigger; if you simply
increase volume and scope, you risk making any
current issues of your SSO larger and actually
increase your risk of failure”
Chas Moore
Managing Director, Canada
Chazey Partners

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THE ROAD MAP
There are four basic stages to Shared Services Optimization, as shown in the figure above
It is not strictly necessary to follow these steps in sequence as an organization may decide to complete several
of these steps at the same time. Although we caution against skipping a step, as this may result in your Shared
Services optimization initiative running up against barriers later in the project. For example, a specific service
issue may be relatively minor today, but if not addressed and your organization’s scale is increased, this minor
issue could grow into a significant hindrance.

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GET BETTER
The foundation for Shared Services Optimization is to
really “delight” your clients and stakeholders by delivering
on your promises and providing consistently high quality
serviceinfullcompliancewithagreementsandregulations.
This word “delight” is often misused and rarely really
delivered in practice, but it should be the ultimate goal of
any SSO.
Deliver on your Promises
The first step is to review the goals, targets and
promises that you committed to at the start of your
Shared Services journey. Ideally you have a business
case to refer to and this business case was refreshed
and re-confirmed though the design/build/deploy
phases of the project. If you do not have a business case,
refer back to your project charter, meeting minutes,
performance plans or other documentation that gave
you a mandate to establish Shared Services. Clarify the
commitments you made at the start of the project and
conduct an honest assessment on how you did. Before
you start making new promises, it is critical to be honest
about the journey so far. Once you have delivered on
your promises, you need to focus on exceeding them:
the next step is continuous improvement.
Listen to your Clients and People
The world is continuously moving and this includes
your clients and your people (staff of SSO). Their
expectations as to what Shared Services can and should
achieve will likewise continue to increase. Functionality
that seemed exotic a few years ago is a basic standard
today, whether we are considering anti-lock braking,
smart phone technology or cloud computing. Shared
Services Organizations (SSOs) need to be proactive,
continuously improve, and set those new targets before
you are assessed against standards that you didn’t even
realize existed.
Leading practice SSOs have a continuous improvement
culture. At its most basic level, this is simply about
listening to your clients and the people who provide the
service. Support them with a team that is dedicated to
continuous improvement rather than expecting that
your managers will get to optimization somewhere in
betweentheirday-to-daymeetingsandemails. Leverage
a formal process that includes phases for planning,
implementing and evaluating the improvement. The
goal is to achieve continuous improvement that is
described by clients and providers as being transparent,
effective and accountable.
Assess the Client Interaction Framework
Without client engagement, there is no Shared Services.
The Client Interaction Framework (CIF) provides the
structure for a client-focused organization, which is
outward looking and proactive. If the needs of the
client are not adequately considered, the service will
not be fair or sustainable. One of the best ways to
ensure that the customer is fully considered, is to adopt
a rigorous CIF. A comprehensive and robust framework
distinguishes a leading practices SSO from a simple act
of centralization. It also promotes a spirit of partnership
between the SSO, its clients and its key stakeholders.
(Chazey Partners offers a free online tool where you can self-assess CIF for your organization and optionally
receive a report that compares your result to the average of assessments from across the industry. Go to www.
chazeypartners.com/CIF for more information.)
The nine key components of a comprehensive and robust CIF in support of Shared Services

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GET CHEAPER
Once your SSO is better, you can move to the next step
on the roadmap, getting cheaper. You are not optimizing
your Shared Services if you move to cheaper without also
ensuringthatyouaregettingbetter. Itispossibletoachieve
short term success with a focus on cost containment, but
your Shared Services will not be sustainable without the
foundation of better service.
Standardize
Multiple standards are expensive. Now may be the time
to re-evaluate the compromises made in design/build
regarding end-to-end process standardization. Now
that your SSO is stabilized, has delivered on promises
and is focused on improving, your clients and people
may be willing to further standardize processes in order
to achieve cost savings. At the same time, look at driving
down the number of exceptions and deviations against
your existing approved standards, but remember that
ultimately you must meet client needs (even where this
may involve some sort of “exception” to the approved
standard). This will also require working closely and in
partnership with your internal clients, who in turn will
need to engage with you.
Automate
Technology investments can lead to improved services,
but after go-live and the achievement of the initial
targets, it can be more difficult to build a business
case to fund new technology investments. In addition,
initial investments in automation can fail to meet the
anticipated benefits, sometimes due to inadequate
business engagement or due to poor training. At
the same time, technology becomes cheaper over
time, so what wasn’t funded in the initial phase may
become affordable later in your journey. Now is an
excellent time to refresh those assumptions, re-engage
with business users, update and commit to training,
update cost estimates and determine whether a new
technology investment might pay for itself within a few
years, generating ongoing savings into the future.
Improve Processes
Improving processes works together with
standardization and automation to optimize not just
yourserviceoffering,butalsothecostofyourprocesses.
The focus needs to be on the required outcome rather
than how clients (or your people) want the process to
work. Review the decisions made in establishing your
SSO and confirm/refresh end-to-end process redesign,
silo breakdown, and clear accountabilities. Eliminate
duplication and unnecessary steps, minimize repeat or
non-value add authorizations, and identify constraints
and bottlenecks.
Benchmark Efficiency
Benchmarks for the cost of service are readily available.
It is important to choose the right comparator. Start
first with the overall cost of the function, such as the
overall cost of financial services, human resources
and information technology as a percentage of total
revenue; it is readily understandable, relatively easy to
measure and requires less precision in choosing which
services to include. With experience, you will be able
to move to more refined benchmarking by focusing on
specific processes and confidently compare to external
standards.
MakingsurethatyourSSOisbetterandcheaperenables
the next two steps of Shared Services optimization:
becoming freer and bigger.
Benchmark Effectiveness
The first and easiest benchmark is your own current performance. Many organizations do not know what their
current service and quality levels are today. This needs to cover the full Performance Measurement framework
of input, operational and output Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that link to the goals and values of your
organization. Once you are on track to improving on past performance, it is time to compare your performance
to relevant external comparators. Keep in mind that the choice of comparators is critical in order that they are
considered realistic to your people, relevant to clients and real to your executive.

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An SSO that is freer is one that removes constraints on
its clients, and indeed itself, and operates with more free-
market principles.
Where possible, a key enabling factor for Shared
Services success is to initially establish your SSO with
a strong mandate and non-voluntary participation. This
allows your SSO to achieve initial economies of scale,
stabilize, and work through transition issues before
facing an existential crisis. Once you have moved to
optimization, it is time to consider giving your clients
more freedom of choice. This could include the client
choosing which services to keep within the SSO,
repatriating the service or potentially outsourcing the
service to a third party; however, the timing for doing
this and the extent of opening up options will depend on
a range of factors.
For some SSOs, this will be a de-stabilizing proposition.
For others, they always had the voluntary participation
of their clients and operated in a competitive
environment. Regardless, freeing your client to choose
to use your service will remove a mental barrier that
may have been restricting service partnership. This
will enable greater engagement of the client and allow
further optimization of processes. For example, a client
that is forced to participate in a SSO may be more
reluctant to standardize, because they might feel the
need to assert their independence with the few levers
available to them. Whereas a client that chooses to
engage in service partnership may embrace the concept
more fully.
In order to adopt more commercial principles, your SSO
needs to review its recharging methodology (service
pricing). Ideally you are able to compare the SSO
chargeback to the cost of other providers, including
third partyoutsourcers. Thisallows youtodemonstrate
your value against third-party benchmarks. Using a
chargeback also puts the budget in control of your
clients, so under the concept of making your SSO freer,
clients can choose how they use that budget.
GET BIGGER
Now that your SSO is better, cheaper and freer, you have
an exciting value proposition that will enable your SSO to
be bigger. Attempting to market your service is difficult if
your service is sub-optimal, expensive and your existing
clients are forced to use you.
Expand Scope
During the establishment of your SSO, there would
have been other services or priorities that were
deferred due to capacity, technology or other reasons.
Now that your SSO is stabilized, it may be time to see
if these opportunities are prime for implementation.
For example, your human resources Shared Services
may have initially focused on payroll services and is now
in a position to expand to other transactional services
within human resources such as onboarding new staff,
compensation management and/or staff scheduling.
Move up the Value-Chain
The initial focus for Shared Services is typically the
provision of “back office” services that tend to be more
transactional and administrative in nature. This is logical
astheseservicestendtobethemostappropriateforthe
initial adoption of Shared Services and tend to benefit
GET FREER

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significantly in the early stages from the key strategies
of Shared Services that include standardization,
centralization and technology enablement. Even
more importantly, well functioning transactional and
administrative services are the foundation for moving
up to professional and technical services. It is hard
to ask your people to provide value-added services
when they are absorbed following up issues related to
transaction processing.
Once Shared Services has delivered on the initial
promise of cost savings, improved visibility, control,
and process improvements, what is possible – indeed
expected, today – is a greater scope and depth of
services, including more professional and technical
services, that move higher up the “value chain”.
Go Multifunctional
SomeSSOsareprovidersofasinglefunction,forexample
they only provide financial Shared Services. The original
rationale may have been to prove the Shared Services
concept, other functions not being ready or capacity
limitations. Once your single function SSO is stabilized,
becoming multifunctional is an easy way to spread
the triple benefit of Shared Services (better service,
increased control and lower costs) deeper into your
organization. A multifunctional SSO can leverage the
Shared Services enabling functions such as continuous
improvement, change management, communications,
project management and governance across functions,
achieving the benefits much more efficiently and
effectively than could be done by multiple, stand alone,
single function SSOs.
Become Borderless
YourSSOmaynowbesuchacompellingserviceoffering
that it is time to think beyond your initial boundaries,
whether these were departmental, geographic or legal
entity based. Leading practice SSOs offer services
much as a commercial enterprise would, not limited to a
single client group, but to multiple third parties beyond
their original origin.
FINAL THOUGHTS
SomeorganizationsequateSharedServiceOptimization
with simply getting bigger and increasing economies
of scale – they do not follow the roadmap outlined in
this article. This makes any current issues of your SSO
larger and actually increases the chance of failure.
Follow the roadmap and optimize your Shared Services
by getting better, cheaper, freer, and then bigger, and
you will offer your clients and stakeholders a compelling
value proposition that is fair and sustainable well into
the future.

8. 8 | APRIL 2014 SHARED SERVICES OPTIMIZATION
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How to Reassess Your KPIs to Measure the
Shared Services Performance that Counts
While most operators prioritize Key Performance
Indicators and SLAS when launching Shared
Services, a year into service delivery results are
often disappointing – and that, despite these KPIs
being met. What’s the problem?
Read the article to learn 5 Steps to Develop KPIs for
Your Shared Services
Beyond Traditional Shared Services: Global
Business Services
Over the past few years, as Shared Services
management thinking as well as the awareness of
the value of data analytics has evolved, there is now
a more pronounced demand for better quality data
insights; increasingly globalized support strategy;
and more holistic, “enterprise-wide” decision-
making that is leading many organizations to aspire
to a more sophisticated Global Business Services
model.
Read the article in here to learn more about
understanding and managing Global Business
Services.

9. 9 | APRIL 2014 SHARED SERVICES OPTIMIZATION
AbouttheAuthor
Chas Moore
Managing Director, Canada
Chazey Partners
Background:
Chas has worked with Chazey Partners for two years and has 19 years of experience in business leadership, management
and Shared Services implementations. He leverages his extensive experience in the public sector and industry to help teams
innovate effective and realistic solutions for complex industries. As the Managing Director for Canada, Chas is provides
leadership, management and expertise on our Canadian engagements as well as acting as a technical and subject matter
expert for American clients.
Prior to his recent assignments he was the Interior Health Business Support Director for Corporate Initiatives leading
Shared Services implementations involving the Canadian healthcare sector. Prior to the formation of Interior Health, Chas
was the Chief Financial Officer of one of its 18 predecessor organizations. Chas led integration and innovation initiatives for
the five health authorities that operated in the Cariboo region.
He has extensive experience in project management, business case development, mentoring & coaching, and public speaking.
Chas is a Chartered Professional Accountant, Chartered Accountant and has a BSc Degree in Microbiology from the
University of British Columbia.
Specific Expertise:
Experienced project manager specifically focussing on the set up and running of multi-organization Shared Service Centres
Practiced in Shared Services, Business Transformation
ERP and technology implementation experience
Delivery of enhanced financial systems and controls
Development of business cases that drive innovation & efficiencies
Award winning public speaker
Key Companies:
United States Department of Health & Human Services, University of California Davis, National Research Council, Interior
Health, Northern Health, Fraser Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, Vancouver Island Health, BC Ministry of Health, BC
Ministry of Finance, Camosun College

10. 10 | APRIL 2014 SHARED SERVICES OPTIMIZATION
ChazeyPartnersChazey Partners is a practitioners-led global management advisory business. We bring together a unique wealth of
experience, empowering our clients to strive for world-class excellence through Business Transformation, Shared Services &
Outsourcing, Technology Enablement, Process Enhancement and Corporate Strategy Optimization. We pride ourselves in
having built, operated and turned around some of the world’s most highly commended and ground breaking Shared Services
Organizations, and for implementing many highly successful multi-sourced (shared services and outsourced) delivery
solutions. Over the last 20 years, we have delivered numerous programs globally, in the US, Canada, UK, Continental Europe,
Ireland, India, Eastern Europe, South America, Singapore, Australia, China, Middle-East and Africa. Our experience covers
both Private and Public Sectors, providing expertise in a wide spectrum of business functions, including Finance, HR, IT and
Procurement.
Learn more about us at www.ChazeyPartners.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+
If you would like to speak to a partner about this article, please contact:
Phil Searle CEO & Founder
Chazey Partners
philsearle@chazeypartners.com
David O’Sullivan Co-Founder & Partner
Chazey Partners
davidosullivan@chazeypartners.com
Grant Farrell Managing Director United States
Chazey Partners
grantfarrell@chazeypartners.com
Esteban Carril Managing Director, Latin America
Chazey Partners
estebancarril@chazeypartners.com
Chas Moore Managing Director, Canada
Chazey Partners
chasmoore@chazeypartners.com
Anirvan Sen Managing Director, Asia, Middle East and Africa
Chazey Partners
anirvansen@chazeypartners.com
Janey Jux Head of Public Sector Practice EMEA
Chazey Partners
janeyjux@chazeypartners.com
Christina Exarchou Head of HR Practice EMEA
Chazey Partners
christinaexarchou@chazeypartners.com
Emer O’Kelly Regional Director Europe
Chazey Partners
emerokelly@chazeypartners.com
Robert Towle Regional Director, East Coast, United States
Chazey Partners
roberttowle@chazeypartners.com