NelsonHall recently published its 2017 Managed Services Programs (MSP)1 market analysis and NEAT vendor assessment, as part of which we interviewed the clients of leading MSP vendors to ascertain satisfaction levels across a range of MSP service criteria. And while we found that MSP is largely meeting or exceeding client expectations, there are a few areas that fall short of expectations and should be the focus of attention for MSP vendors.

Compliance and VMS Technology Clients Identify Areas Where MSP Vendors Need to Improve

Tim Leger joins Outsourcing Institute President, Daniel Goodstein, to dive deep into the digital transformation.

Take a look at the interview to learn about:

• What are today’s enterprise looking for today?
• Where should you start on your digital journey, and what mile markers should you consider?
• Why having a digital strategy is so important
• What’s different about the design thinking approach?
• When embarking on digital transformation, enterprises face the challenge of having too many legacy systems. Is this a valid concern, and is there an easy approach to overcome it?
• What effects will AI have on finance and operations?
• Advice & warnings to enterprises

Sutherland is sponsoring the Digital Convergence Conference, on September 27^th at PwC on Madison Avenue in NYC. Join us, and hear from Andrew Zimmerman, President at

Sutherland, who will discuss the art of blending innovation and operational excellence. To learn more about topics, speakers and sessions, take a look at the agenda.

Change management is often the most difficult part of an IT project, regardless of the technology that’s being implemented. Many companies struggle with getting buy in from key stakeholders and encouraging adoption when end users have been doing things a particular way for years and are resistant to change.

This is especially true when implementing solutions that are as transformative as automated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Enterprise Information Management(EIM). New technologies have the power to dramatically improve productivity, profitability and innovation. They also can cause significant changes to staffing needs, workflow and day to day operations. This often makes it challenging to ensure that the change goes smoothly and that the company exploits the full benefits of automation.

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Shared services are a well-established key lever in business transformation, leveraging centralized operations, standardization of business processes and platforms, and outsourcing to reduce costs of operations. Organizations are now taking the power of shared services to greater levels through digital transformation using agile applications to rapidly redesign, automate and optimize business processes.

View the replay for Digital Transformation – Taking Shared Service Models to the Next Level of Performance and you will learn how digital transformation and the new generation of shared services can drive these benefits:
• Simplify operations
• Lower cost to serve and provide analytics
• Continuous improvement in services

Whether your organization is working in a global ERP environment or in a best-of-breed multi-platform model, new, easily adaptable business applications are driving the transformation of shared services.

Paul Roehig joins Outsourcing Institute President, Daniel Goodstein, to discuss digital transformation in the enterprise.

The Interview Explores:

• Challenges For Service Providers Adapting To The Digital Age
• Advice For Legacy-Centric Organizations: How to Start Your Digital Journey
• How To Transform Your Enterprise Through Cost Saving Solutions
• Future Of Work: Advice To College And Parents

Join the Outsourcing Institute on September 27^th at the Digital Convergence Conference at PwC on Madison Avenue in NYC, to take a deeper dive into these topics. Take a look at the agenda.

This is the first and only association-run event, that focuses on enterprise transformation through IT, BPO and digital. Join us to meet members and industry peers from companies like Capital One, Citi, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, PwC, EY, Deloitte, ISG, Bristal Myers Squibb, Guardian Life Insurance and Verizon who are focused on gaining first-hand insight from case studies, industry successes and lessons learned from CIOs, CTOs, VPs and digital leaders from top companies like Merck, Procter & Gamble, Time Warner, PwC, Avasant, Salesforce and more.

To learn more about topics, speakers and sessions, take a look at the agenda.

We’ve had the opportunity to interview Kevin Parikh, CEO and Senior Partner at Avasant, a leading management consulting firm. Through this interview, he gives a short preview to his upcoming book on Digital Singularity and a case for humanity.

1. What is your opinion on some of the more exciting trends on the Digital frontier?

The most exciting upcoming trend we are seeing is the emergence of Digital Singularity. Digital Singularity is the point where the human experience and technological omnipresence converge. At this point, technology is part of everything we do and can enhance our experience.  What that means is that technology is becoming part of how we live, work, and play. Up until recently, technology was simply a physical tool, like a phone or typewriter, that was used to supplement our lives. Today, our relationship with technology has become much more cohesive.  In fact, technology is becoming an extension of us, which you can see in augmented reality and virtual reality today.

Digital Singularity is introducing humankind to a new world that is ultimately powered by a hyper convergence of technologies. Take the Nest Thermostat as a simple example. The traditional thermostat can be set to turn on and off at a set temperature, and that’s about as smart as it gets. The Nest Thermostat, in comparison, is a wi-fi enabled device. It gives you advice on how to best reduce or increase your temperature for energy efficiency. It learns about your house and your preferences. With this technological advancement, we’ve transformed the thermostat into a device that actually helps us regulate and manage our lifestyles. That’s what Digital Singularity is all about, and that’s what makes it the most exciting and interesting trend in technology today.

2. You are in the process of writing a book that talks to the societal impact of the emerging technologies. What prompted you to start this project?

The focus of the book is on Digital Singularity and a case for humanity. If you take the concept of Digital Singularity to its logical conclusion, there is a question about whether there will be a need for human workforce at all. Will we ultimately be eliminated from the workforce because of automation and artificial intelligence? My argument is no. If you think about the last 40 years of development, we’ve worked at a higher level of productivity than we ever have in the history of humankind. As technological innovation continues and manual tasks are taken over by digital solutions, there may soon be a time for us to focus on other priorities.  How many of us maintain relationships with our parents or children? How many of us invest time in our hobbies and passions? Technology adoption will result in fewer manual and process-oriented jobs, but it will also open the door for a higher level of thinking, innovation, and dreaming.

Corporate America especially has an opportunity to utilize digital trends to drive unprecedented levels of innovation within the organization. My book gives an understanding of what’s happening in technology now, so organizations can adapt to changing business models.

3. How do you see this all playing out for society? Are you hopeful or fearful?

I am certainly hopeful. There is a clear case for humanity in all this. I don’t believe what others are saying about AI diminishing the need for human labor. Yes, technology adoption will result in fewer manual and process-oriented jobs, but I believe that humanity will adapt accordingly. Even today, jobs are changing as a result of technology. We are now becoming both the employer and the employee. Today’s workforce is dynamic, changing, and not necessarily managed through a traditional employment model. For example, a young person today might be going to college, working a day job, and simultaneously running an eBay, YouTube, or other online business. In some cases, these young people may not be able to earn as much as their predecessors, but they’ll certainly have more flexibility in when and how they work and they’ll have more control over their schedules. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. It’s just different from what we’ve known. We’ll find new ways to economically create value from the work that we do, so the underlying question is who do we want to be and how can we use technology to improve our human experience?

Shared service solutions for accounting, document processing and other areas are seeing unprecedented adoption rates. In a 2017 survey on shared services, over 53% of respondents said they used shared services to perform three or more functions, up from just 20% in 2013. [1] The reason for this adoption is clear. Centralized services shared among business units help eliminate redundancy, improve consistency, increase productivity and reduce costs. Shared services are also continuing to contribute increasing value to companies, as 73% of respondents to the survey said adopting a shared service increased productivity by 5% or more, up from 70% in 2015. [1] Yet despite these benefits, as many as 72% of organization not using global shared services do not plan to implement them in the future.

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The days of shared service organizations (SSO) being responsible for manual, repetitive processes are coming to an end. Today, SSOs can use data and software to automate processes and run more efficiently. Learn how to use automation to transform your SSO into a digital champion.

In our webinar we walk you through key strategies to transform your SSO, including how to track the right metrics, implement automation, and align your organization.
You’ll learn how to:

• Assess and benchmark your SSO efficiency
• Plan and implement your automation strategy
• Get buy-in from key stakeholders

Transforming the SSO will deliver enormous benefits to the organization.

Introduction

Shared Service Centers (SSC) continue to deliver greater value year over year. In Deloitte’s 2017 Global Shared Services Survey, 3 out of 4 respondents saw productivity increases of 5% or more in the past year. Due to the success of SSCs, companies tend to expand the scope of shared service initiatives, integrating increasingly more knowledge-based processes alongside transactional processes, and folding more functions into SSCs. With the rise of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), digital technology has become a core pillar of SSCs, shifting the focus of SSCs from manual execution to a digital-driven technology hub.

The future looks bright for companies that are successful in building out their SSCs, and even brighter for companies who choose to digitize them. Improved process efficiencies and reduced costs provide better value to the business and become a competitive edge in the market.

Digital transformation is a critical task for SSCs in the modern era. In this article, we’ll go over three key strategies for digitizing your shared services to deliver better and more efficient results.

1: A Digital Approach to Standardization

Process complexity is a major driver of process costs within businesses. Inconsistent process are difficult to teach, slow to execute, and expensive to maintain. Furthermore, governing compliance for these processes is difficult to establish and monitor, especially as regional variations push up against global standardization. Consequently in SCCs, standardizing inconsistent processes contains significant potential. In fact, according to Deloitte, 85% of companies begin to standardize their processes during or after the migration to a SSC. Hence, SSCs often inherit complex processes and are tasked with standardization.

Complex processes used to be a familiar problem for global telecom giant Vodafone. Although Vodafone has maintained a SSC for their Finance and Procurement departments for many years, they were challenged by inconsistent processes, regional markets with varying objectives, and an overall lack of conformance. It was clear to management that there was more that could be done to maximize the value of their SSC operations.

Faced with this challenge, they turned to a new field of big data analytics technology called Process Mining to address the root causes of their issues. Process Mining uses the digital event logs of all activities that are executed by the SSC to reconstruct the as-is process. Based on this data-driven process transparency, Vodafone was able to quickly and easily identify the main drivers of process complexity: manual rework in their purchasing processes increased the cost of each PO, and rejected invoices with multiple blocks drove up costs in their Accounts Payable process. Leveraging the proactive analytics of Process Mining, Vodafone was able to standardize processes and reduce complexity, ultimately increasing the percentage of perfectly executed purchase orders up to 87%.

Tackling the traditional challenges to standardize processes by using digital technology like Process Mining has proven beneficial for organizations – both for short-term projects and larger initiatives to build the data-driven foundation of the future. Conversely, lacking an analytical company culture comes with clear risks: if your SSC is not good at analytics, it is not ready for AI and advanced Robotics.

2: A Targeted Approach to Automation

Automation and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are quickly becoming a must-have initiative for modern businesses. According to a recent study from the Process Excellence Network (PEX), nearly 60% of surveyed companies are either implementing or currently running RPA programs to transform internal processes like Accounts Payable, Purchase to Pay, and Order to Cash, all with the expectation of saving up to 60% on process costs. RPA has significant time and money saving potential, but there are equally significant challenges to maximize that potential. In fact, according to Ernst and Young, half of RPA implementations fail due to lack of adoption, and the cost of training robots can surpass 10x the cost of the robots themselves.

Assess the maturity of your processes

Before undertaking process automation, it’s absolutely critical to take a step back and assess whether your current processes are efficient and scalable, since deploying robots to run your processes is pointless if there are no standard processes to follow. Replicating a complex process with numerous variants using RPA is tedious and requires a significant investment. Moreover, the cost of maintaining and servicing your robots could outweigh your savings.

Prioritize your automation potential

Once your processes are standardized, it is time to identify where you have the most potential for automation. Most systems have some form of automation already in place, so looking at current automation rates within your processes is a crucial step to define your targets. Furthermore, there might be specific cases, by geography, vendor, material, etc where manual work is widespread. By comparing automation rates, you’ll be able to undercover low-hanging fruit where automation could have a substantial impact.

Build the business case

Evaluating your current processes and prioritizing automation potential not only helps save time and maximize benefits of RPA initiatives, but also tackles one of the key challenges of every RPA initiative: getting the organization behind the project and securing management buy-in. According to a recent study by PEX, a lack of internal alignment is the most common reason that RPA initiatives fail. Senior management teams are unsure of the value of RPA, and RPA project members pursue different priorities during the RPA implementation. So how do you make sure you get the right people behind the project? By building a business case. Using current automation rates and benchmarks, it’s possible to create a forecast of cost and time savings from a RPA initiative. And by prioritizing your RPA potential, you can better scope out the project and align your team.

In one case study with a large American financial service provider, the company calculated the potential for RPA and hired an external team of automation experts to drive RPA initiatives. According to the team lead, “It was like being dropped in the ocean and given the task of finding gold. Sure, there is a lot of gold in the ocean, but where to start looking is the huge challenge.”

Using process mining, the team was able to identify processes within their Claims Handling department with low complexity that were robot-ready. By analyzing current automation, the team was able to understand the root causes of manual intervention and pinpoint where they wanted to focus their RPA robots. By the end of the project, the company was able to deploy more than 50 RPA robots and decrease both process costs and throughput time.

When it comes to leveraging technology in SSCs, it is vital to focus on the low-hanging fruit at the start to build the trust within the organization. A targeted approach to automation has proven to be a key success factor on the digital journey of a SSC.

3: An Operating Model Which Encourages Ownership of Process Outcomes

A successful digital transformation does not depend solely on technology to solve the problems at hand. It is also essential to build an operations and governance model which establishes accountability for process outcomes, and which builds a bridge towards the business unit and its functions.

A typical governance model to serve these needs is the introduction of process owners. According to Deloitte, over half of the respondents in their Global Shared Services 2017 Survey Report have already established regional or global process owners as part of their governance model. Process owners focus on driving end-to-end efficiency and effectiveness in their respective processes.

For process owners, Process Mining provides capability to continuously monitor processes and to be proactive about process excellence. Starting from the top, process owners monitor performance metrics and are guided towards the most pressing issues. When they initiate the redesign of processes, they can easily spot the impact of their measures and can track the result of the changes in real-time.

Despite the increase in automation, people remain the key driver of the success of SSCs. Establishing an operating model that encourages ownership of process outcomes sets the right incentives for SSCs to generate sustainable and continuous savings for their organization.

Pulling It All Together and Realizing Benefits of Your Shared Service Center

The success of digital transformation of Shared Service Centers is built on three strategies:

• A digital approach to standardization
• A targeted approach to automation
• An operating model that encourages ownership of process outcomes

The ability to successfully digitize a SSC will directly impact the scale and role of shared services within an organization. For SSC stakeholders and process owners, the time has never been better to maximize offerings and expand the scope of shared services within their organizations. Sophisticated technologies like RPA and Process Mining have created new opportunities for higher profitability, and continuous improvement has gathered momentum in both thought and practice. With the right approach, successful digital transformation of shared services is achievable–and within reach.

Can the costs associated with financial processing be alleviated? CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, Blythe Masters, discusses how.

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