You know what shared services can do, but do you know what an award-winning shared services center looked like back in 2005? 

13 years ago, Phil Searle, Founder of Chazey Partners, sat down with Marco Besseling of DuPont. Marco was the Center Manager, DuPont European Financial Service Center (DuPont FSC), and Marco and Phil had a conversation about how and why the DuPont FSC won SSON’s Best Mature Shared Services Center Award that year, what the key factors for success were, and what the strategy would be for the DuPont FSC in the future.

The interview was recorded, and this fireside chat is a remarkable testament to how the shared services approach was delivering benefits more than a decade ago, how technologies were leveraged to drive greater process efficiency, how advanced methodologies such as lean six sigma were being applied to achieve process excellence, and last, but not least, how data processing and analysis was already a key area of focus and value add.

The DuPont Financial Service Center was established in 1997 in Spain. The location was a classic brownfield site pick for DuPont. The services provided started with Accounts Receivable for Europe on one system – SAP, and then expanded to include other Finance processes such as Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Inventory Accounting, and so on. The center didn’t just provide services for European operations but also for the US and Asia Pacific as well.

Travel back in shared services time to watch this interview, to unveil the secrets of this award-winning shared services organization, and compare how your own organization stacks up against it today.