The Moreira Chronicles: What's Next? Preparation and Training

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Pedro Moreira
Pedro Moreira
11/02/2016

Over the past year, Pedro Moreira has written a series of columns for SSON summarizing his experience in rolling out an enterprise SSO model to a subsidiary, emphasizing the pros and cons of this approach.

Following the conclusion of this series, Pedro interviewed two well-known practitioners – Tom Bangemann of the Hackett Group and Kai Zabel of Heraeus Group, both highly respected practitioners in the field of Shared Services, with decades of implementation experience. Over the next two months, we are sharing a transcript of these interviews right here, covering the role of the SSO, its evolution and future trends; implementations and operations; and a discussion around GBS and new robotic technology.

Moreirazabelbangemann

Left: Pedro Moreira, Shared Services Expert
Middle: Kai Zabel, Head of Shared Services for Accounting, Heraeus Group
Right: Tom Olavi Bangemann, Senior Vice President Business Transformation at The Hackett Group

Preparation and Training

PM: You both have published works before which are valuable and reference in the field of shared services. In terms of publications and works in the future, what can we expect?

TB: Well, from my side, I’ve probably written hundreds of articles but I do them when someone comes and asks, it’s not something that I do as my main profession. Then, within Hackett, there is research here and there where I participate.

For the last several months, what  I’ve been producing is a huge GBS training program that Hackett is introducing, together with CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants). We’ve put our heads together with the logic that we have the knowledge on GBS but we’re not a training company; and CIMA obviously is a training company, known for their core qualifications in finance and accounting. They understand that they need to move into GBS now but that is not their core competency, so we merged our efforts and created a three-layer training program*. Two are now done and a third one is in production. For the second layer training that was just finished, I spent six months developing and producing it and I am very happy with the result. It is essentially an e-learning, with lots of animations and pictures so that’s it’s easier to go through, but it’s a real training with testing, certification and designation, the way that CIMA does it. So, that’s what’s coming from me as a next product.

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PM: This concept is extremely interesting and is in line with what we were discussing before, about preparing and training professionals for this shift in competencies. What are the objectives and the benefits of this training, for the organizations and the professionals?

TB: This is the first GBS training in the global market. It enables individuals to train and develop and ultimately differentiate themselves in the market. For the employers, this training helps guarantee everybody knows the basics, and the wording used, and can utilize the knowledge to the benefit of the employers. We have over 100 organizations already utilizing this training. They use it to convince people to start an initiative, to train project teams and stakeholders, and to improve capabilities in operations. The management level training is taken by GBS Heads and center leads mainly, and enables them to become real experts on every dimension of this service delivery model. And there is a knowledge center that you can keep using after certification, to keep updated on developments.

PM: Kai, Tom, I thank you very much for this interview and for sharing your insight and experience in the field.

 

This 8-part interview has been one of the most popular reads on SSON's website. For ease of reference, we will be posting the entire intervie in a single content format, later this month. Please do check back.

*Notes:

http://www.thehackettgroup.com/expertise/gbs-training/

http://www.cimaglobal.com/CIMA-in-business/global-business-services-qualification/

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