“Summer is here – Is it time to get lean?”

Moderator:

Paul Jasniach, Director, PwC Shared Service Practice

Speakers:

Marcin Mikiewicz, Director, PwC, Operations Excellence
Tomasz Magda, CI leader Heineken

Objective

The objective of this session is for Shared service leaders to gain some perspectives on areas that they could focus their efforts on for already established shared service centres. Krakow and Poland has a wealth of shared service centres that were established a number of years ago, shared service leaders need to be thinking about how to continue to evolve and develop their centres. Establishing a shared service centre in Poland isn’t the end of the journey, it is just the beginning. So now that your centre is established and stabilised (or not) what next.

Setting your improvement goals – what do you really need

This is an absolutely critical question, but very often glossed over. Many think improvement is just about getting more efficient and getting the cost down. But this is not always the case, their is no doubting it is important, but really it is for the organisation, both SSC and the business to establish what are the improvement goals. Some considerations –

• Customer service – is the customer experience the best it can be
• Quality – is the quality to the level that it should be, in both dealing with the business and customers, performing processes, and delivering outputs. In the control environment not creating any additional concerns from an audit and reporting perspective.
• Information – is the exchange of information happening, through reporting, feedback, analytics happening to allow the business to make decisions
• Timely – is the SSC operating in a timely manner, that allows the right time for planning and for fulfilment of both customer and business goals
• Efficiency – is the SSC operating as efficiently as possible, so that value for service is being achieved. Are there areas where the costs could be brought down without effecting service.
• Flexibility – is flexibility being achieved for the business, so that new products or customers can be taken on quickly and without large delays
• Performance measurement – how do you know what to improve, if you don’t know how your performing. Often performance hasn’t been measured by the business in the past. An SSC is a great place to start, and do this across all business.

Voice of customer, both external and internal are crucial in this case, to understand what the SSC is getting right and what it needs to improve. As is understanding the goals of leadership of the organisation. Where do they see the business and the support functions going, are there any significant changes planned in the business or industry that need to be taken into consideration.

Improvement option – process based organisation, standardisation, process improvement

There are many elements of undertaking shared service improvement and many ways to undertake improvement. Some choose to use consultants and undertake improvement or change projects, looking for quick impact and change. Other establish a continuous improvement organisation, or allocate such roles amongst team members. Others and what we see most often is a mix. Identification of improvement projects and opportunities undertaken with consultants, and the implementation of such projects shared. Big impact projects earlier to allow for internal learning.

Areas that can be part of the improvement initiative.

• Governance – how is the SSC structured. By country or by process. Who is responsible for processes. What is the reporting to the businesses.
• Standardisation – why are processes done differently for different countries. Sharing of tools and specialising/industrialising in different process areas.
• Performance reporting – are we measuring thre right things. Is the effort and time to measure, providing value to the business. Are we making decisions based on what the performance measures are showing us.
• People – are we effective in the hire to retire lifecycle. Are we providing the same benefits and opportunities as others on the market. What is our employer branding, does it match what we think it is.
• IT/infrastructure – do we have the tools or automation in place, to help us be as effective as possible.

Process Improvement, Lean method, how do you make it work, real examples.

The lean process improvement methodology is a good approach to helping you establish where your organisation is in the process improvement path, and establishing the next steps to go forward. What are some of the key considerations, and how do you move forward, to make using the Lean methodology real. We look at why it is better to start with Lean, rather than six sigma. If processes are not yet mature, should we be doing statistical analysis. We look at the key elements of the lean methodology and real examples of waste, and elimination of waste. We talk through how to do value stream mapping, how and if it works in a SSC setting. Finally we talk through some real examples:

SSC case study first steps – From Krakow SSC

SSC Improvements is a topic that is often spoken about in the future tense. Something that we want to do, plan to do, know it is part of the SSC lifecycle. However doing it, and realising it is a learning process, and involved the same fundamentals as setting up a Shared service centre – change management, good communication, good implementation is something that has no standard approach. Much like the set up of SSCs over the last 7-10rears the challenges and unexpected difficulties vary from organisation to organisation. However there are some real examples and lessons, in how to get started, and what to be aware of. Here we look to engage the audience and talk through different experiences and lesson …