Establishing Trust through a Well-Defined Shared Services Governance Framework

Shared services operations often fail because they are insufficiently trusted by their customers within the business. In this article, Accenture shows how to create a strong governance framework that will establish trust between shared services organizations and their customers, and so maximize their contribution to high performance.

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The concept of shared services is well established as a way to achieve process excellence and ultimately high performance—but the question of trust needs to be resolved first.

Service delivery is paramount to the success of any shared services organization. It follows then that understanding customer requirements and monitoring the organization's ability to meet them are critical. The governance approach drives the partnership between the shared services organization, its customers and key stakeholders. Governance frameworks focus on strategic and operational issues and, if tightly formulated, clear the path for smooth operations.

Accenture therefore believes that establishing a governance framework is essential to creating a shared services organization that delivers on business benefits envisaged, and ultimately contributes to the drive to achieve high performance. There is, however, no single magic governance formula that can be applied to every organization.

The shared services operation must attempt to operate as a "business within a business."

The first step to defining the governance structure of such a business is to select the correct leadership team—something that should be done at least six months before the go-live date.

Once the leadership team has been identified, three governance committees will play a critical role in ensuring success:

• Executive Steering Committee/Joint Review Board: Monitors the alignment of the shared services organization with overall strategy.
  
  
• Advisory Board(s): Provides functional guidance on processes, policies and procedures.
  
  
• User Committee(s): Provides function-specific feedback and service, acting as "process champions" in the operating units.

Accenture's experience shows that the sooner the end-state participants are identified and engaged in governance, the more efficient the stabilization process will be after the shared services operation goes live.

The standardization of governance processes is as important to the success of a shared services operation as the standardization of functional processes.

The governance committees own the governance processes, which focus on strategic issues, whereas the shared services center owns the management processes, which focus on the operational dimensions.

The level of committee involvement in governance and management processes varies by process, committee type and degree of change. Shared services functions should, to a certain extent at least, own responsibility for supply and demand.

The success of any shared services operation rests on the trust of its customers. A strong governance framework is essential to building that trust.

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