Coca Cola Hellenic: Designing a model to maximize impact

One year of Shared Services yields successes – and some challenges

Coca Cola Hellenic provides bottling services in Eastern Europe as well as Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Ireland. The company is supported by a Shared Services Organization based in Sofia, Bulgaria, which provides Finance and HR services. Just over a year old now, the SSO has already been through 20 transitions (including 19 countries). John Hall heads this project, leveraging his 17 years of shared services experience (DHL Europe, American Standard, and DFM) to smooth the transition and avoid costly mistakes. He's previously managed implementations both with and without ERP platforms, and explains the pros and cons. He is completely committed to hybrid models as offering the best of both worlds. It's no surprise to learn, therefore, that Coca Cola Hellenic is designed to leverage outsourcing where it makes sense - for example, to avoid costly capital investments.

John warns that you tend to get a lot of "value-add" sales pitch from BPO providers, but it's important to check whether they can deliver the basics, first. If you're not careful, a BPO partnership can leave you exposed and unprotected. It's very important, he emphasizes, to make sure you have clarity not only on whether the provider has done what they are promising to do, before; but also – and crucially – how they plan to leverage this inhouse knowledge and expertise for your account!

John shares all this – plus three tips on how to choose the right outsourcer – in this interview.

Listen now.