SSON’s European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week: Final Thought
Posted by Chris Gayner on Fri, May 20, 2011 @ 02:34 AM
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Pensively looking back at SSON’s European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week, a thought crossed my mind.
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If your Shared Services (or Business Services) center is currently processing 100,000 invoices and the business feels satisfied enough to shift more work your way (which, in this example, usually means increasing the number of invoices), the usual answer is to simply increase the number of FTEs that sit within your center, increase KPIs and targets, implement more stringent SLAs and look at automating as much of the overall process as possible – All of which requires a labour intensive effort, lost time while getting people trained up and increased capital expenditure.
Could an alternative solution be to instead question the number of invoices that are being generated in the first place. What if instead of increasing resources and capital to handle more invoices, we looked at the start of the process, even before the purchase, I am talking about the demand / need identification stage and ask the business:
- Will this solve your business need most cost effectively and can it be scaled across the greater business reducing the number of vendors we are using to deliver the output that is required
- Can we centralise this process to ensure we are gaining optimal economies of scale from this transaction
Coming back to my initial thought pattern, rather than increasing your center's human capital to constantly fire fight growing invoice numbers, is the solution to actually question what and how the business is buying?
What are your thoughts – is this possible for today’s Shared Services leaders?
If you would like a copy of our presentation from the event, please email info@proximagroup.com and we’ll get it out to you.
Related Link: The 2011 European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Event Wrap Up