The 7 Relationships Vital to a Shared Services Organization’s Success

This week, Susie West ran a webinar with Jamie Lyon, Head of Corporate Sector at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) to explore the ‘7 relationships vital to a shared services organization’s success.’

Relationships are absolutely fundamental to shared services. Not only are shared services organizations (SSO) there to support the wider business, but they have also been established to deliver services to it.

If a shared services organization is functioning without successfully communicating with its customers, how could it ever possibly understand is client’s needs? And how could it then deliver anything of real value?

Jamie Lyon explained that value is based on building and strengthening relationships. So, if an SSO has an ambition to continue to move up the value chain, and deliver services of even higher worth, communication, and not just with the business, is imperative.

The 7 relationships Jamie identified as key to maintaining and developing successful shared services operations were:

• The customer and the business.
• The user – those using the tools and systems.
• The suppliers – the entire vendor database.
• The partners - outsourcers, technology providers or consultants.
• The functions – departments within the organization, e.g. procurement, accounts payable.
• The leadership team – managers within the SSO.
• The shared services centre team – all employees.

At every layer, optimizing relationships are crucial to achieving broader strategic goals and objectives.

For example, perhaps the business has an objective to make bigger savings over 2015 and wants to outsource some of its functions. By handling its relationship with the partners correctly, both the SSO and the outsourcing services provider will know exactly what each has promised along with the details of the commercial agreement. If the relationship is strong enough, the SSO may even ask its partner what it can do to help it deliver on its cost-savings objective.

According to Jamie, there are several ways an SSO can optimize its relationship with its partners, such as:

• Ensuring each individual partnership has an owner, and this owner is accountable for ensuring all the deliverables in the contract are met.
• Always being available and responsive.
• Knowing your escalation points and when to use them.
• Scheduling regular project reviews and knowing where you should be against your target.
• Meeting your account manager pre-contract, and only locking them in if you like them – you will have to work closely with them after all.

I think it can be easy to forget that building relationships in business are very similar to the ones we experience in our every-day lives. The tips that Jamie gives are simple, but effective.

If, in our personal lives we do not get on with a person, we do not attempt to build a friendship with them, and the same may be applied to his example of partner relationships. We should ultimately choose our partners based on how well we work together.

We cannot always be so lucky, however, and in many cases people who would otherwise be disconnected in reality are brought together in the work-place. In this circumstance, if we choose to nurture these relationships in the same way that we would nurture the friendships in our personal lives, we are striving for a better outcome.

Building relationships and communicating effectively will always help to create a sense of understanding, trust and respect between two parties, which results in enhanced compliance and service delivery to reach a shared ambition.

If you missed Jamie’s webinar, you can now catch up on the full webinar online. Watch ‘The 7 relationships vital to a shared services organization’s success’ now.