Interview: Distributed, Dynamic, Digital: Developing GBS Towards a Platform

Kai-Eberhard Lueg, Executive Supervisor GBS at EY, loves working with people and with international teams, and likes building or changing structures. His key experiences and strengths are in the area of internal administration, process management and organization. Key improvement lever going forward will be process automation, which he finds an extremely interesting area. After 15 years in Shared Services and GBS he sees great chances ahead, especially with process digitalization gaining speed and great new platforms developing.

See how EY is contributing to the SSOW DACH 2023 conference in our conference agenda!

What ups and downs did Siemens Global Business Services experience while implementing systematic development?

I will be frank: we experienced many ups, and yes, also some downs. I am happy to begin with the ups: the whole development journey of Siemens Shared Services has been very successful, which makes me very proud. I am looking back in total over 15 years: starting with the bundling of activities (and exploiting labor arbitrage), then stabilization and professionalization of service management, continuing with process management capabilities and responsibilities (which we had to fight for) and digitalization (the same applies here – and it cannot be separated from process management). And finally: innovative end-to-end solutions and the successful build-up of technical / engineering services. And most importantly, I feel immensely proud of our now nearly 12,000 Siemens GBS employees worldwide who keep pace very well despite many challenges such as COVID 19. They have a great attitude to change and are always driving innovation. Coming to the downs, here’s what I do not like: continuous and lengthy discussions about who is deciding what regarding digitalization, even if relating exclusively to Shared Services processes. And losing good people in a thriving Shared Services industry.

Working towards a distributed service network: how did you implement work package routing for a flexible connection of supply and demand?

I love the question, but to be honest, so far we have implemented only a fraction. But I see great potential going forward. Having said that, I openly admit that not all my colleagues agree yet, and that the overall concept remains to be proven. We are already successfully exploiting elements of it, with support for state-of-the-art ticketing solutions (Hire-to-Retire and Purchase-to-Pay) and with our NextGenP2P platform which we are currently rolling out. But there is much more potential. So, stay tuned.

Why are user experience and usage efficiency so important?

Speaking self-critically, workflow usability has typically not always been high on the priority list of Shared Services organizations. But that is in my opinion a huge mistake, because we need to look at the whole process – including customer efforts! We need to consciously consider customer usage efficiency and user experiences as well, not only our own (Shared Services) process productivity. So we need to look beyond the interfaces of our workflows. Together with more flexible connections between supply and demand, I call this the “New End-to-End” strategy. Our customers are increasingly conscious of it, and we need to deliver better.

What advice can you give to someone developing GBS towards a more platform-based approach?

I can only encourage everyone to be open to completely new approaches. In my opinion, if you want to be successful in Shared Services, you need to embrace change. Customer priorities, technological possibilities, geopolitical landscapes: life in Shared Services is a life of changes. Our vision is about “platformization”, which is by the way not really proper English, but the idea is that we want to use elements of a platform. I’ll stop here and would like to welcome you to my SSON keynote that I am honored to give to the Shared Services community in Berlin. SSON has always been a great platform to share innovative thoughts and align in a very innovative industry, with great and open community discussions. Thanks to SSON.

This interview was done in 2022 while Kai was working at Siemens AG as a COO (Siemens Global Business Services).

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