2016 Excellence Awards Winners in Europe Impress with Impact

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Happy Award Winners at SSON's 2016 European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week

Last week in Dublin, SSON honoured a dozen Shared Services Organisations whose outstanding performance, passion, culture and contribution impressed our esteemed judges – all veterans of Shared Services themselves and long-time supporters of excellence.

The winning SSOs all demonstrated the significant impact of modern day support organisations on enterprise performance, and offer real learnings for the industry.

We will be sharing winning applications online over the coming weeks – so keep an eye out – to foster learning and best practice across the industry.

Here are the winners:

Process Improvement & Innovation

Winner Lexmark (below)

Lexmark’s application highlighted the culture and control that surrounds a successful process improvement initiative, along with innovative use of technology to provide more value add and support to business clients.

Runner up – Sonae

Culture Creation

Mature

Winner – Diageo

Culture is the foundation of a successful shared services operation, and Diageo, for whom shared services has long been a key business enabler, impressed the judges with its emphasis on embedding a can-do culture as core to its team.

Runner up – Microsoft (below)

Microsoft has long been famous for its "One Finance" initiative, which was first launched more than a decade ago. With an outcome oriented focus, the key to this strategy has been effectively governing and managing people and attrition.

Start up

Winner – Deloitte (below)

Deloitte’s cross functional shared services team is relatively new, has successfully reduced costs, and leverages an India- as well as a UK-based center. The key focus in the early days was to eliminate the silo mentality and drive end-to-end accountability. The challenges presented by job losses have been significantly overcome through a combination of honest and open leadership and people engagement.

Runner up – Royal Mail (below)

Royal Mail floated on the stock market in 2013, and built up its shared services capability via a Center of Excellence. It also encouraged its staff to present new ideas for improvement on the basis of which it met the challenge presented by the businesses to deliver more value.

People & Communication

Winner – Avon (below)

Avon’s shared services journey has evolved from an early start in Warsaw 10 years ago, to shifting to a hybrid model in 2015 to capture some benefits from BPO as well as move to a Global (EMEA) model. It has made People Management a core plank of its existence.

Runner up – Johnson & Johnson

Johnson & Johnson's HR shared services has gone through a significant transformation supported by a thorough and effective communications strategy. A Global User Council has been key in providing support to this approach.

Best Shared Services Team

Winner – Thermo Fisher

Thermo Fisher's P2P operation is centered in Glasgow. The success of this team has been supported by the use of scorecards to drive improved transparency across the process. The focus on metrics and rewards, along with an approach based on partnering with the business, has yielded significant results.

Runner Up – EMSS

The challenge for the East Midland team lay predominantly in wrestling with legacy systems and poor service, exacerbated by a split location and lack of real identity. In addition, they needed to overcome the lack of understanding of stakeholders and partners – all of which has been successfully managed in the course of this impressive evolution.

Transformation

Winner – DFP Enterprise SS

Transformation presents a significant challenge, but the agility that defined DFP Enterprise SS’s application impressed the judges. Successful transformational is basedon, first, clearly defining the target phase, and second, offering consistent and reliable support throughout the transition. DFP Enterprise SS displayed both.

Runner up – EMC and Accenture (below)

EMC’s application was based on its successful RPA implementation, which included supporting new business development and using predictive analytics. It based its new service proposition on a Value Creation Office, which is now partnering with different service lines to promote value.