Cummins Business Services Now Striving Towards a 'Follow the Sun' Operating Model for the Future

Ahead of his upcoming session at the 9th Shared Services & Outsourcing Week China, we spoke with Andy Wang, Regional Leader at Cummins Business Services Northeast Asia. In this interview, Liu talked us through the key survival tactics and growth objectives being deployed to maintain service delivery and to excel through the disruption.

Andy's interview is also featured in recent report The Future of Flexible Work in China’s Shared Service Centres.

Q: "Andy, in what ways has digitalisation enabled the continuity of operations within your shared service centre during the pandemic?"

A: "The COVID-19 pandemic was completely unexpected, and many organisations found themselves unprepared. The level of digitalisation within shared service centres is becoming a key factor in ensuring continuous operations, most especially for when employees are not able to come to the office. Fortunately, we started our digitalisation approximately 5 years ago, meaning we have been able to keep our operations running almost as normal. For example:

For supplier payments, we introduced a platform to digitise paper invoices so that our staff could work more effectively on e-invoice processing; we implemented systems on Purchase Order management, ERPs, e-invoice platform, and integrated all these systems into one platform. The integration provides us with an efficient and effective way to process our work, no matter where our workforce is.

For employee reimbursement, we utilised e-invoices and photographs of paper invoices to process employee expense claims remotely. All travel-related matters such as booking tickets and hotel reservations were moved online. Policies and procedures were also published online to support paperless reimbursements, and the mobile application was also developed and rolled out."

Q: "How do you envisage the future of flexible work within both Chinese and global shared service centres?"

A: "We are thinking about flexible work by first considering what the “new normal” actually means for us. For example, we are currently updating our Business Continuity Plan (BCP) in case any new and unexpected events occur. In our China-based SSC, we have set up a small group outside of the central team in varying locations to provide additional on-site support for employees, which provides us some level of flexible work arrangement. On the other hand, there are now backup plans within our global SSCs which are consistent with one another, which ensures a good level of continuous and consistent support across locations. We may also consider a ‘follow the sun’ operating model in the future."

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Keen to hear more from Andy? Join him and many other key speakers at the upcoming 9^th Shared Services & Outsourcing Week China - click here to register.