Top 5 Take-Away’s From SSOW Europe 2024

Last month, SSON hosted their largest Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Europe, ever! Over 900 shared services, finance and technology leaders met in sunny Lisbon to discuss what’s shaping the shared services market in 2024 and beyond. There’s been a plethora of take-away’s posted on LinkedIn, but for the SSON Digital team, the following stood out.
 
1.     Process Mining as the answer to sustainable value in GBS: It’s an expensive technology, which has been talked about for some time, but process mining shows no sign of going away. The conversation in Lisbon was focused on combining process mining with AI to create actionable insights and extrapolate the ROI. It was shown as a solution which can increase GBS value significantly both by freeing up manual labor for higher value activities and vastly improving productivity.

2.     Generative AI shifts from theory to practice: Last year’s there was talk about the opportunity and theory behind using Generative AI in Global Business Services, this year it became clear that (unlike Blockchain) it was not merely hype! A plethora of organizations such as Siemens, Mondelez and Akzo Nobel had put Gen AI to practical use in their service delivery, employee experience and finance processes. Interestingly many shared services had secured buy-in not just for one project, but widespread experimentation, indicating that organizations see Gen AI as something which must be implemented somewhere, somehow.

3.     CX and Service Excellence: There were more sessions than ever before on the topics of customer centricity and service excellence. It’s a little-known fact that very few shared services are mandatory, so understanding your customer and continually proving your worth is vital. Many shared services were exploring new customer engagement models and metrics.

4.     Female Leadership (or the lack thereof): Both during the SSO Women’s Day, and right through the conference, there was much talk about the lingering gender imbalance within the GBS industry. Whilst many organizations are satisfied with their male/female ratio of employees, this hasn’t yet permeated top tier management and there is still some way to go to remedy this.

5.     Unforgettable Fundamentals: In these kind of articles it can be tempting to focus purely on the new and shiny, but the attendance in sessions on topics such as change management, shared services 101 and continuous improvement, showed that enthusiasm remains for the basics. Whilst shared services 101 in the age of automation, might have changed slightly to what it was 20 years ago, starting off with a firm foundation and ensuring your team has the core skills needed for large-scale transformation, remains as important an ever.
 
Let us know if there were other topics that stood out for you, and of course, join us for the next SSOW event in Houston or London.