Achieving High Performance through Shared Services: Lessons from the Masters

In this research survey, Accenture outlines the questions that enterprises should be addressing as they formulate strategies to progress their own shared services organizations along the path to high performance.

Press Release
Mastery of Shared Services Can Sustain and Strengthen Enterprises for the Economic Upturn, Accenture Study Finds

Whether a shared services organization is run as an in-sourced or outsourced solution for common service delivery, shared services has proven it can deliver impressive results in cost, quality, productivity, customer service and other key business metrics. As the global economy struggles and companies look for ways to generate extra value from existing investments, high performance through shared services becomes ever more important.

Accenture undertook a global, cross-industry study of more than 275 executives with responsibility for shared services in their organizations to identify trends, priorities, issues and opportunities in shared services today. The resulting report, Achieving High Performance through Shared Services: Lessons from the Masters, identifies what characteristics mark those enterprises that have been extraordinarily successful in their use of shared services—to provide a snapshot of shared services mastery. In addition, the report provides a look to the future of shared services.

• The number of employees in a shared services organization does not determine shared services mastery.
  
  
• Shared services masters are three times more likely than other respondents to offer national, regional and global coverage.
  
  
• Shared services masters attach more importance to their shared services organizations’ objectives. These objectives range from the traditional (cost-cutting) to the visionary (using shared services to facilitate mergers and acquisitions).
  
  
• Shared services masters consider the barriers to success less significant than their counterparts.
  
  
• While no respondents claim their shared services objectives have been fully met, masters rate their performance against initial objectives roughly 40 percent higher, on average, than do the other respondents.
  
  
• Masters are twice as likely to have shared services leadership that has been in place for six or more years.
  
  
• Eighty percent of masters plan to implement continuous improvement approaches in the near term as opposed to 30 percent of other respondents.
  
  
• On the whole, survey respondents are making moves to shrink their performance gaps.
  
  
• In-company, onshore shared services sourcing models predominate (75 percent), with 25 percent employing outsourced, offshore models.
  
  
• Masters are twice as likely as other respondents to plan on increasing their use of offshoring over the next year (43 percent versus 25 percent).
  
  
• More than 70 percent of respondents rated attracting and retaining employees as very important or critical.
  
  
• Shared services masters recognize that wage arbitrage is not a sustainable benefit—they leverage all avenues to sustain performance.
  
  
• Shared services masters are twice as likely as other respondents to make use of all 17 enabling technologies included in the survey.

The ongoing Accenture High Performance Business research program shows that high performance is definable, quantifiable and achievable. High-performance businesses and governments achieve their results through a combination of the right market focus and position, the right capabilities and the right performance anatomy, thus creating a framework that delivers growth, profitability, longevity, consistency and positioning for the future.

This research shows that shared services masters operate within the same framework, operating their shared services organizations as entities on a par with the operating units they serve. These shared services masters constituted less than 10 percent of the survey respondents. Specifically, the research found that shared services masters shared the following five characteristics:

• The masters view shared services as high-performance businesses in their own right and craft their shared services strategy and investment plans accordingly.
  
  
• Shared services masters demonstrate a superior ability to target and secure their objectives.
  
  
• Shared services masters understand the value of different sourcing models and are far more likely than others to deploy these models in combination to achieve business resilience.
  
  
• While the majority of respondents rank talent management as one of the most significant criteria for success, the masters are more likely to take definitive steps to build the workforce they need.
  
  
• Shared services masters judiciously invest in the shared services best practices and technology tools that will sustain lower cost over time.
  
  

Explore the extensive Accenture High Performance Business research program, which has already surveyed more than 6,000 companies across most industries, including 500 that meet the criteria for high performance.

No practice or technology should be implemented without a clear view of how it affects high performance. To help companies move their own shared services organizations toward achieving high performance, Accenture provides the following questions to address when developing a strategy:

• Do you view shared services as a cost-cutting tool or as a strategy for organizational growth, profitability, longevity, consistency and a stronger future market position?
  
  
• Would you characterize your shared services organization as having a service culture or a transaction-processing culture?
  
  
• Have you determined what objectives you want your shared services organization to achieve now and in the future?
  
  
• Have you identified gaps in performance against these objectives and begun making the investments that will lead to closing these gaps?
  
  
• Do you have plans in place for dealing with expected barriers to future success?
  
  
• Are you confident you have employed the right mix of sourcing options to allow you to face changes in your operating environment, both negative (eroding wage arbitrage) and positive (future growth)?
  
  
• Do you have plans in place to deal with a scarcity of skilled talent as your goals for your shared services organization change?
  
  
• Do your top employees have training opportunities and compelling career paths?
  
  
• Are you familiar with industry-recognized leading practices and technologies and how they would apply to your shared services organization?
  
  
• Are you taking advantage of these practices and technologies?
  
  
• Have you built your shared services on a principle of continuous improvement?