Optimising Shared Services: What’s in it for you?

Mindset Group are exhibiting at the Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Conference at Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre this week.

In today’s market, both global and local markets are highly competitive and with the rise of inorganic growth (through acquisition) across the globe, organisations are constantly on the search for solutions to improve their operational efficiency. This is where Shared Services can be seen to drive cost benefits and operational excellence in a consistent measure across an entire organisation via the standardisation of processes / systems etc and leveraging the size of the entire organisation for economies of scale.

Shared services refers to the provision of a service by one part of an organisation or group where that service had previously been found in more than one part of the organisation or group. Typically organisations may choose to adopt a shared service approach across one or more functions that are duplicated within different entities / divisions of the company such as Human Resources, Information Technology , Finance, Legal and Purchasing.  With the sharing of such services across multiple entities within an organisation / group, the expectation is that the business benefits by reducing operational costs, process efficiency, timely access to information, governance,  consistency and quality of service.

The risk with moving to a shared service is the thinking that designing and implementing the solution is simple, and that companies can just ‘morph’ into the new state of being – of ‘sharing’.  Anyone looking at a children’s playground can easily see that sharing is not always so simple, and adults are no better.  Moving to a shared service is fundamentally ‘transforming’ your internal back-of-house functions and therefore requires a change strategy that allows your organisation to ‘design for success from Day one.

Mindset and Cogniti will launch a new shared services optimisation solution at the 15th annual Australasian Shared Services and Outsourcing Week. This event will be held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre from April 16-19, 2012. Drop by Stand 20 and say hello!

Don Holley
Managing Director

————————————————————————————————————-

Many Australian companies are looking at business transformation initiatives such as Shared Services to achieve some level of organisational improvement. This requires significant amounts of change to occur in the organisation, both at an individual and enterprise level.

In Make That Change: Tips for a successful transition to Shared Services, Mindset Group Founder and Managing Director, Don Holley, shares his top tips for how your organisation can successfully manage the transition to Shared Services and see the benefits of your investment on time and meeting targets. Click here to download the report.