60 Seconds on GBS – with Hans Frölich of Nordic's SCA

Hans Frölich Vice President Digital, IT & Global Business Services (GBS) SCA–Hygiene and Forest Products Company

Q: What does Global Business Services mean to SCA and how does it provide more value for multinationals like SCA? HF: As far as Global Business Services is concerned, the key words are QUALITY and EFFICIENCY. For example, regarding ‘Quality’ we are putting in place things like Master Data, Internal Control, etc. For ‘Efficiency’ it is about Standardizing Processes, Tools, End-to-end, etc., to drive this efficiency. But in truth, it is also about having an organization where you can have strategic discussions around what “back office” services mean and how they are being redefined; and how they can increasingly support Marketing, Sales, etc., to support key deliveries.

Q: What is the main hurdle to overcome in adopting GBS? HF: Key issues are stakeholder management, and to have a clear business case for new GBS services, to show efficiencies and quality gains. Most important is to have senior management support the transformation or new service adoption.

Q: What is the main benefit of Global Business Services? HF: The main benefit depends on how you define GBS services. Is it, for example, just Finance services? Or does it include multiple functions, from Finance to HR, IT, Procurement, Facility management, etc. … It’s especially important to understand its role within the “business”. If you have a clear Supply / Demand model, and GBS is doing the majority of Supply, you would need to have very clear ways to access the services – with Service portals, full end-to-end services, clear will KPIs etc.

Q: What are some issues in terms of an ideal governance structure? The key challenge is that you have many dimensions in a corporation. For example, you normally have several global business units, so that is one dimension. Then you have the regional / geographical dimension. The functional dimension like Finance, HR … and then, of course, you have the senior management dimension. All of these need to be taken into consideration.