There is now clear evidence that Shared Services and Global Business Services organisations are shifting focus from transactional, human-based work, towards knowledge-driven activity enabled by data and automation.

The 2019 State of the Global Shared Services Market Report shows some interesting results, not least the focus on Centres of Excellence (CoE) which indicate an increased level of confidence from Shared Services/GBS leaders.

The report highlights interesting trends in the SSO landscape and operating model, strategy, talent, automation and the digital workforce as well as taking a look at tomorrow’s ‘Brave New World’.

However, in my experience, there is a more fundamental shift occurring, from ‘least cost operator’ to ‘enterprise value creator’, where optimising the outcomes and performance of global processes is now a key strategy. This is the essence of business transformation.

Despite the popularity of ‘global process ownership’, Shared Services/GBS only OWNS a small part of the end to end process. Future success is in driving positive change through influence across the end-to-end process without control and direct authority. This the ‘new normal’ and requires a level of ‘Business Partnering’ skills we have not necessarily required in the past. More on this, our current research, to come!

The full State of Global Shared Services Market Report can be found here.

Our ‘Something To Consider’ snippets are framed as small, digestible, ‘dashes of insight’ around the pillars of what we define as “World Class Finance” – Process Optimization, Financial Control and Compliance, and Risk Assurance, all underpinned by technology enablement and integration.