How to Raise The Profile of Your Shared Services

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Editor Coda
Jul 23, 2013

One of the most thought provoking sessions at our recent summit for Leaders in Finance Shared Services was from Paul Bartley, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Program Support at the US Department of Health and Human Services

Paul has done some really interesting work in the Program Support Center fo the Department of Health and Human Services, the shared services of a department of the U.S. federal government.

The key takeaway for me was: if you don’t give your project a name and identity, it is much more likely to fail. In order for people to buy into your organization, you need to have an identity and a brand. There are two elements to this, your organizational identity and your product identity.

Organizational identity

If you want your shared services to be the destination that your customers naturally come to, people need to understand what your organization is and what it does.

To promote the shared services as a place to go to for solutions, they promoted GovZone, a web portal that provides service details and contact information for shared services that PSC customers use.  Govzone was developed with a vision for being the destination for customers to research and request federal shared services, positioning PSC as the first and best source for federal shared services.

Product identity

Paul also gave an example of a branded initiative, "Start with a Yes", an initiative to improve customer service. He showed a video about this that stated, “Customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude.” While your customers don’t expect you be perfect, they do expect you to be able to fix things. Start with a Yes aimed to put people in a can-do attitude. Paul said that he would get people coming to him saying that they solved problems by starting with a yes.

So how do you improve your brand?

You don’t need to spend a fortune on this. Giving your internal initiatives a catchy name that people can remember, and when you refer to it – people know what you mean. Putting some thought and time into what your initiative or department is trying to do is important. Communicating your intentions clearly from the beginning will save you from having to explain yourself over and over again.

Have you tried to brand any of your departments, products or initiatives? We would love to hear your stories.

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