4 tips to maximize Shared Services' impact in the new borderless business environment

As internal and external barriers melt away, how do business services make the most of new opportunities? For 2013, technology is REBRANDING the borderless enterprise, internally as well as externally. The dramatic shift we're seeing in terms of external borders melting away and internal functional divisions increasingly disappearing is revolutionary, according to recent Hackett Group research. The firm's Chief Research Officer, Michel Janssen, says this means that business services will see a mass of opportunities to impact the oranization, but the reality of budget constraints are causing some roadblocks. With external growth no longer limited by physical borders, and functional borders between internal business services operations vanishing, companies are finding themselves on the cusp of a dramatic opportunity to improve agility & flexibility, and achieve new levels of efficiency & effectiveness through standardization, globalization, and new technology-enabled models for service delivery. What's limiting developments, however, are budget constraints, and one other crucial factor: most companies are still finding it a challenge to get to one view of their products/services, their clients, and their financials. This threatens to undo much of what technology is offering. Here are four of the most popular strategies companies are ramping up to support the new borderless business environment: build on the agility needed to achieve profit goals when revenue falls short of expectations; business services functions to add value without adding to headcount and budget; invest in process improvement efforts to move toward a more standardized and global approach to business services operations; mature the concepts of process ownership beyond the basics of process standardization; creating value by working across functional, business unit and geographic borders; derive actionable strategies from the mountains of potentially valuable data generated by business services activities. Other things that emerged from the research: • Growth will be enabled through maximizing enterprise process ownership: across business services, more than 90 percent of all companies expect to have either full process ownership across the entire enterprise or at least multiple geographic/business units in two to three years. • GBS, while a major pillar for establishing a global growth platform, is struggling to meet expectations outside of cost savings – including alignment with corporate and business strategic goals and delivery of productivity improvements and high-quality service. • Business intelligence is a priority: business services functions will be making strategic investments in business intelligence in 2013, and furthering data stewardship initiatives such as master data standardization and cleansing. This is being driven by the increasing need for knowledge about customers, suppliers, employees and operations. Full press release Get the full Hackett Group report: Enterprise Key Issues Research Insight (registration required). [eventpdf]

4 tips to maximize Shared Services' impact in the new borderless business environment

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