Shared services is the most popular strategy public sector managers are using to deliver budget cuts. This focus has led to surge in their implementation, but what can your organisation do to ensure your shared services scheme is set up as well as possible? This presentation looks at why shared services have the traction they do and offers a series of tips drawn from our experience of delivering shared services to help you make yours a success.

1. Shared services
in local government
UNIT4‟S TOP TIPS
(with a little help from some friends)

2. gorging
on their never-ending budgets
grew fat and slow
Pre 2008
Public sector back offices
2

3. 3
The public sector became
accustomed to
expensive, multi-year
technology implementations
that often went badly wrong.

SALES & MARKETING DIRECTOR
(UK & IRELAND) UNIT4 BUSINESS SOFTWARE
D A R R E N H U N T
3

4. In 2005 the Gershon Review called for
“sharing transactional support services
to achieve economies of scale through
clustering with other central
government bodies.”
BUT THERE WAS NO DRIVER TO DO
THINGS DIFFERENTLY AND NOT A
GREAT DEAL OF ACTION…
4

5. 5
THEN
EVERYTHING
CHANGED…
5

6. 6
WE WOKE UP
SOMEWHERE ELSE

7. 7
Buyers in local government faced and continue to
face real uncertainty over future budgets, they
have to transform and divert unnecessary back
office spend to frontline services.


MANAGING DIRECTOR
UNIT4 BUSINESS SOFTWARE
A N W E N R O B I N S O N
The Comprehensive
Spending Review was a
hammer blow
The UK witnessed the biggest cuts since World War 2
£81 billion public spending cuts in four years
Even now English councils will face an average
spending-power cut of 2.9% in the year 2014-15

8. 88
SHARED
SERVICES
became important
At least 337 councils
across the country are
engaged in 325 shared
service arrangements.

L O C A L
G O V E R N M E N T
A S S O C I A T I O N

77%
i G O V S U R V E Y
2 0 1 3 / 1 4
considered shared
services a priority
to reduce costs
ACTION
became imperative

9. 9
There have been
teething problems
Once it did
A GREAT DEAL OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY HAD BEEN SPENT


start to
go wrong
proper governance or
intervention from the Department
should
have rectified
the problems.
enough to adapt in
challenging times and
provide the best
possible value


Failing to be
flexible
for money.

10. 1010
DONE CORRECTLY,
SHARED SERVICES WORK.
but…
We have compiled some tips to help
you develop a thriving shared service; a
shared service that does things right,
the way Gershon envisaged.

11. GO Shared Services trims
£675,000 per year off the cost
of „back office‟ functions.
NHS Camden Procurement
Cooperative addresses NHS
Reform and saves
£2.7M in its first year.
Herefordshire County Council
saves £619,000 in first year of
shared services.
11

12. 1212
TIP 1
Get the vision right
up front
Make sure you understand
why
you are launching
a shared service.
This makes the
journey easier for
all stakeholders.

13. 13
Many benefits come from
standardisation, therefore
choose to share services
which are simpler.
We‟d recommend the back office first.
TIP 2
Choose the right
services to share

14. 1414
Look at the Return on Investment (RoI)
using principles such as
Activity Based Costing
Using comparable service levels, at what
price point does it become cost effective for
prospective clients to discard their own
infrastructures and share?
TIP 3
Do the maths

15. GO Shared Services is providing
Finance, Procurement, HR and
Payroll services to Cotswold District
Council, Cheltenham Borough
Council, Forest of Dean District
Council and West Oxfordshire
District Council.
15
Before the project GO Shared Services
calculated £3.7M savings over ten years.
Post implementation those numbers have
headed north to £675K each year.

16. 1616
I consider it essential that
all agencies quantify both the
back-office service levels and the
associated costs of their current
provision arrangements, and
that they use this as the basis
for determining…
…what improvements can be
realised through their own efforts.

S I R P E T E R G E R S H O N

17. 17
But it‟s not all about
the cost
Know the cost of everything, but
also know the value.
You want motivated staff…
and happy customers
Shared services is an opportunity to pool
knowledge, to improve services and to
release capacity to enable the introduction
of services that
were not possible before.

HEAD OF GO SHARED SERVICES
J E N N Y P O O L E


18. 1818
• Get buy-in from the top; political and
operational leaders
• Win hearts and minds – Involve stakeholders in
the process, hold workshops, implement their
ideas (where sensible)
• Communicate – no nasty surprises, no
unfounded rumours
• Provide training (new systems, new processes
etc.) – to hit the ground running
*This is often the biggest problem for failing initiatives
TIP 4
Manage the shock*
Sharing services is a scary time for
everyone, most of all employees.
HERE ARE POINTERS FROM JAMES
BOUCH, HEAD OF PUBLIC SECTOR SALES
AT UNIT4:
1
2
3
4

19. 19
TIP 5
Get your
governance
model in place
Make sure that at every level
everybody knows who
makes the decisions.
This compels individuals and teams to be
accountable - no heels will be dragged.
It speeds decision making, and
ultimately helps hit deadlines faster.
U N I T 4 T E C H N O L O G Y T I P
A virtual common workspace for all stakeholders will guide
the flow of work and ideas to the right person at the right
time, optimising collective energy and exposing bottlenecks
before they becoming problematic.

20. 2020
TIP 6
Plan, plan, plan
Establishing a shared service is not an
extracurricular activity, it‟s a major undertaking.
Getting the planning right sets the foundation for
the future, especially when working across not just
organisations and departments, but administrative
regions.
Get your resourcing right before the project kicks-
off, you will need full -time, dedicated
professionals from business operations and
technology partners to contribute different skills at
different times.
With change lies an opportunity to start
again with a blank sheet. What does amazing
look like to you? If the numbers work, go for it.

MANAGING DIRECTOR
UNIT4 BUSINESS SOFTWARE
A N W E N R O B I N S O N

21. 21
TIP 7
KISSKeep It Simple Stupid
Standardise where possible
and localise where necessary.
U N I T 4 T E C H N O L O G Y T I P
To speed up implementations use technology
that has inbuilt good practice for local
government
Never in any sector have I seen speed of
deployment be more important than it is in local
government right now…they
want day-one, maximum savings.

VP LOCAL AND DEVOLVED GOVERNMENT
BT GLOBAL SERVICES
P A U L R I N G H A M


22. 2222
My top tip to anyone
contemplating establishing a centre
would be to keep it simple; make
sure that the strategy is focused on
the scope in question and isn‟t too
wide reaching, with tangible goals
that are
realistic and achievable.

FORMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
GOVERNMENT SHARED SERVICES
AT THE CABINET OFFICE
P A U L M A R R I N E R


23. 23
You‟re not just selecting a
technology, you’re getting
TIP 8
Choose the right
technology partners
so choose the right one.
WEDDED TO
A PARTNER

24. 2424
U N I T 4 T E C H N O L O G Y T I P
Choose flexible technology: make sure
that post-implementation tech can keep
pace quickly, cost effectively and with
minimum disruption to customers.
The only
certaintyis that there is no certainty

25. 25
SILVER
LINING
Look for a
U N I T 4 T E C H N O L O G Y T I P

SALES & MARKETING DIRECTOR
(UK & IRELAND) UNIT4 BUSINESS SOFTWARE
D A R R E N H U N T

Think cloud so that the services can
rapidly scale for new customers, the
need for „big-ticket‟ hardware can be
removed, resources can be optimised
and information can be made readily
available on mobile devices.

26. 2626
Some of the most expensive
shared-service disasters stem
from a lack of customers.
Change must be carefully and
sensitively managed, but users
must be in no doubt that the new
way of working is to be the new
way of working.
Think about promoting your
shared services to other
organisations to grow members
and savings
– public relations, case studies,
events, and social media
can all help spread the word.
TIP 9
Mandate
& market

27. 27
The initiative for government
departments to share back-office functions
has suffered from an approach which
made participation voluntary and tailored
services to meet the differing needs of
individual departments.
The result was over complexity,
reduced flexibility and a
failure to cut costs.

HEAD OF THE NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE
A M Y M O R S E

28. 2828
Don‟t go with the flow, swim upstream
looking for innovation.
Introduce service levels, a dashboard
and a continuous improvement
programme for all processes.
Stockton and Darlington Borough Councils in
the north of England for instance have set up
a Continual Service Improvement (CSI)
committee that meets each month to review
progress in shared services.
TIP 10
Relentless
improvement

29. However in the true spirit of
advancement these approaches
will evolve further, would you like
to share your experiences of
shared services?
29
That‟s some of the lessons
customers, partners, UNIT4
and other thought leaders
have learnt.
Then use the SlideShare „Share‟ button
above to share and comment. And please
do share if you found this useful.