Posted by: susiewest on: November 5, 2009
Globally there is a shift in shared services. And the recession has only oiled this movement. Shared services ten years ago was mostly, if not exclusively, about transaction processing. In the past 5 years there has been a development which means shared services organisations are keen take on finance activities which are more strategic, yet [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: November 4, 2009
October is a busy time for conferences – first there was the exceptional Deloitte Shared Services Conference in Prague. Every year Deloitte host an excellent event for 400 or so practitioners. Then there was the Hackett conference in London, and finally there was sharedserviceslink.com’s SAP conference for shared services operations running off SAP. I am [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: October 9, 2009
Next week in Prague Deloitte Consulting is hosting their huge annual shared services conference. I remember going to one of the early ones in 2004 when I worked for an e-invoicing company. The scale of the event has mushroomed over the past few years, and the conference this coming week will probably cater for over [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: September 29, 2009
One chief KPI in purhcase to pay and shared services, as we all know, is the number of invoices processed per FTE per annum. In 2008 The Hackett Group shared with the world, that the top performing shared services orgnisations were processing 35,000 invoices per FTE per annum. Seeing that the average productivity was just [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: September 22, 2009
In the past 18 months, the world economy has fallen and lifted. This has arguably been a ‘good thing’ for shared services. Especially Accounts Payable.
1/ The significant emphasis on cost control during this period, in order to protect margins, has made shared services an even more valuable corporate asset today than it was during our [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: September 16, 2009
Yesterday I was talking to the Global Accounts Payable Owner of one of the world’s larget companies. They process 5 million invoices annually and each one costs $9 to process. Doesn’t it hurt when you realise it’s costing the company $45 million each year to pay suppliers? Ouch! You can buy sizeable companies for that. [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: September 8, 2009
You may have heard the recent news that Kofax has just bought 170 Systems. For any shared services organisation or purchase to pay operation looking to sign a deal with an AP automation suite over the next 12 months, this will serve as interesting information. 170, a US registered company, always appeared to have a [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: September 4, 2009
There is a block of cloud the size of North America passing over the United Kingdom. It has been doing so for months, and as we near the Equinox, the promise of our Indian Summer seems increasingly incredulous. Which is one reason why I’m so pleased I spent 2 weeks in August in Italy under [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: May 13, 2009
Over the next few weeks I will be sharing with you some of the gems that came out of the March event on 15 Well Ket Secrets to Shared Services Success (sponsored by market leaders OB10 and Basware). Where to start?! With Secret No. 4, of course: ”Practise Lean’ led by Marks and Spencer. All this is [...]
Posted by: susiewest on: May 11, 2009
I have just come off a call with the company that is hosting our webinar later this month. Proactis. We talked about the content and what nuggests listeners would be taking away. What value will they get from dialing in for 60 minutes of their massively busy day? We went through the session and, in conclusion, [...]
