What Are the "Hot Buttons" for SSO Leaders?

At this year’s SSOW conference in Dublin, I was able to get a real measure of the Shared Services community’s pulse through the various sessions I took part in. Data, leadership, engagement, alignment … those were the real highlights for me. There is, of course, still a lot of talk about process and cost, but with automation eating into more and more of the "delivery" (there was an interesting session by Smith & Nephew on how they’d partnered with HP to implement robotic process automation very effectively), it may be that cost, as a single factor, will become less relevant. What is relevant is business intelligence. And here, though a surprisingly low number of even the more mature operators (as per a show of hands in the GBS track) have actually set up analytics groups, I am betting on more activity in the coming years. There is no doubt that data is the "new oil" for Shared Services in future. But in order to use it, you need to, first of all: find it, track in, mine it, understand it, analyze it – and then share it with the people who can make a difference. In other words, good analytics can only drive business success if they are managed properly. Again, it’s early days for real life examples, though Umberto Larizza, Head of Business Transformation at UniCredit, who presented in the "Data" track, blew his listeners away with what he’s been doing. The Shared Services business case pointed to, first, outsourcing; then insourcing; and perhaps, at a later stage, outsourcing again. It’s all based on … you guessed it … data. [inlinead] The other surprise for some was how well the public sector did in this year’s Awards. In the categories of Innovation and Improvement, Value Creation and also "Practitioner of the Year", the public sector (coincidentally or not, all representing the UK) enjoyed the spotlight, winning in all three sections. The common denominator was customer-centric thinking – each pound invested has to go a long way to serving the end-customer (and try that with budgets cut in half, as was the case at Surrey County Council). The other factor that struck me, listening to the London Borough of Hounslow, Surrey County Council, and Glasgow City Council, was that they have all shown incredible creativity in getting their services to the end user, and in making it simpler for customers to engage. They’ve also recognized that smartphones are the obvious channel of communication, and have invested there. So as far as "mobile" goes – the public sector might be taking the lead... Finally, a word on digitalization. There was a fantastic session by David McCandless whose message was "data in context", with the emphasis on visual display. You’d have to Google him to understand (or read this review), but the audience was immensely impressed with his advice on sharing information in context, rather than data in isolation. A visual data display tells the whole story – from cause to result – in the second it takes your eyes to take it in. You could talk for a long time with a PPT slide and not get the same result. Connecting the dots even further: Apple’s previous creative lead, Ken Segal, shared a strong message of simplicity. And lest you think an iPhone has nothing in common with Shared Services, think again! If you are throwing too many reports and charts around, coming up with too many targets, too many KPIs, and conflicting strategies, you would be well advised to take a big step back. What are you really trying to deliver? How will it help your business partners? That’s where you should stay focused.

What Are the "Hot Buttons" for SSO Leaders?

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