What role can exceptional process management play in setting up and running shared services effectively?
Posted by: susiewest on: February 15, 2012
How does one go about merging three local back-office departments together into one centralised shared services? How can your newly established shared service operation then prove that they are delivering on all that has been promised? The answer lies in process management. Let me explain.
As part of their finance shared services transformation, BAE Systems had this very task. They wanted to reduce costs, improve financial control and compliance, and enable continuous improvement of their service delivery. Faced with downsizing at times, their finance shared services delivery needed to be run as efficiently as possible.
If three locations were going to be merged into one, there was a real need for one single consistent format to be used at the newly merged site. Staff tried MS Word and Excel previously for documenting their processes. As you would expect though, with the complexities of handling 280 processes and over 300 work instructions, these very user-unfriendly formats caused a huge reluctance for staff to be involved in process governance, in turn leading to difficulties in keeping user control. So what changed?
BAE Systems implemented a How2 tool from Nimbus Partners, part of TIBCO, to document all their processes. All language barriers and terminology differences between the three sites were agreed into one single language. Now BAE Systems’ finance shared services can demonstrate that they are in control and on top of things. With all processes documented, staff can demonstrate compliance with their finance policy manual. Everyone in a process uses the How2 tool so it is continuously updated and decisions can be much more informed.
The tool is very simple. It allows you to storyboard a process, showing the finance shared services customers and back-office staff what to do to complete each step. Task lists, i.e. what the shared service operation sells to their business units, are all now automated (previously a long A3 sheet was passed around). This gives instant visibility and proof that tasks have been done.
In essence, process management leads to service excellence – the BAE Systems How2 tool provides a great framework to achieve this. So what three things have a process management tool like the Nimbus one brought BAE Systems?
- A single repository of all knowledge of service provided by the SSO;
- Three different locations speaking the same language;
- A platform for further change.
To hear more about the speed in capturing BAE Systems’ process in detail and implementing the process management system, and hear how process management enabled their finance shared services transformation, see this video: http://www.nimbuspartners.com/nimbus-tv/clients/bae-systems
