3 STEPS TO MAKE YOURSHARED SERVICE ORGANIZATION

A DIGITAL POWERHOUSE

GUIDE

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Shared-service organizations (SSOs) are about to get a digital upgrade. For de-cades, SSOs have empowered enterprises to generate efficiencies of scale, re-duce processing costs and cycle times, and increase the quality and accuracy of services. By combining transaction functions such as HR, finance, procurement, IT and legal into a consolidated service hub for the entire company, SSOs have deliv-ered significant business value. In fact, according to Deloitte’s 2017 Global Shared

Services Survey, 3 out of 4 respondents saw productivity increases of 5% or more in the past year.

But this is not the end of the journey - due to advances in automation and digitization, SSOs have the unique opportunity to ex-pand their scope, integrating increasingly more knowledge-based processes along-side transactional processes, and folding more functions into SSOs. On top of that, Ro-botic Process Automation (RPA) has become a core tool for SSOs, shifting their value proposition from labor arbitrage to technol-ogy that seamlessly connects manual and automatic activities.

While the future looks bright for companies that are successful in digitally transforming their SSOs, companies that don’t evolve and

rely on manual processing will see the benefits of their SSOs deteriorate. In a recent study of McKinsey, it was found that only a quarter of SSOs have started to build the digital capabilities required to improve internal processes and interact with custom-ers and partners more efficiently.

In this guide, we cover 3 key strategies to make your SSO a digital powerhouse.

IN THIS GUIDE

STRATEGIES

USE YOUR DATA TO CUT THROUGH COMPLEXITY

MAKE YOUR AUTOMATION SMART AND DATA-DRIVEN

MAKE PROCESS OWNERS HEROES OF PROCESS

EXCELLENCE+5%

Global Shared Services Survey

75% of companies saw

productivity increase by 5% and more.

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USE YOUR DATA TO CUT THROUGH COMPLEXITY

1Process complexity is a major driver of process costs within businesses. Imagine a company that has several hundred ways to book an invoice. These types of inconsistent processes are difficult to teach, slow to exe-cute, 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.

SSOs often inherit complex processes and are tasked with standardiza-tion. In fact, according to Deloitte, 85% of companies begin to standardize their processes during or after the migration to an SSO. As a consequence, the processes shifted to an SSO are often complex, slow and expensive. Consequently, SSOs are able to achieve significant savings and efficiency through standardization.

“EVALUATE HOW YOU ARE DOING THINGS TODAY AND SIMPLIFY.”

THE “STANDARDIZED” PROCESS

THE “NON-STANDARDIZED” PROCESS

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Complex processes were a familiar problem for the global in-dustrial digitalization pioneer named ABB. Although ABB has maintained an SSO for Finance and Procurement for many years, they were challenged by inconsistent processes, re-gional markets with varying objectives, and an overall lack of conformance. Initially, different regional organizations handled their purchase orders in different workflows. When they shifted over to the SSO, it was hard to execute the Purchase Orders (POs) efficiently. Depending on the source of the PO, different processes had to be followed. It was clear to the management that more needed to be done to optimize the value of their SSO operations.

Faced with this challenge, ABB turned to a new technology in the field of big data analytics technology called Process Min-ing. This enabled ABB to find the root causes of their issues. Process Mining uses the digital event logs of all activities that are executed by the SSO to reconstruct the as-is processes. With the transparency that was created with this data-driven approach, ABB was able to quickly and easily identify the main drivers of process complexity.

USE YOUR DATA TO CUT THROUGH COMPLEXITY

CASE STUDY

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PROCESS MINING

CLICK HERE TO WATCH ABB‘S VIDEO TESTIMONIAL

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USE YOUR DATA TO CUT THROUGH COMPLEXITY

Using Process Mining, ABB discovered significant volumes of invoices that could not be processed without consulting the internal business units. The resulting additional rework and iterations in the SSO were significant. These time-consuming inefficiencies affected the performance of the processes. In addition, cash collection was delayed, and working capital was far from optimal.

With the aid of Celonis Process Mining, the SSO discovered the root causes of the frequent cases where clarification with the business was necessary, and implemented solutions - like targeting specific customers to resolve problems at the start of the process. Celonis also supported the Accounts Payable process to make better use of cash discounts and to increase the automation rate of handling incoming invoices.

As a result of using Celonis, the share of bookings that are processed automatically was increased by 25 percent, and the SSO must now intervene manually less often, which ultimately saves valuable time for all stakeholders.

HOW ABB STREAMLINED THEIR ACCOUNTING

INCREASEDAUTOMATION FOR INVOICE HANDLING

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Tackling the traditional challenges of standardizing processes with a technology in the field of big data analytics 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 com-pany culture comes with clear risks: if your SSO is not good at analytics, it is not ready for AI and ad-vanced automation.

USE YOUR DATA TO CUT THROUGH COMPLEXITY

SUMMARY & ACTION PLAN

Scan your SSO-sup-ported processes to

get full transparency in as-is processes

Prioritize your stan-dardization efforts

according to business purpose and level of

complexity

Continuously monitor the conformance of your

processes to maintain standardization

TO DO

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MAKE YOUR AUTOMATION SMART AND DATA-DRIVEN

2 Automation and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are quickly becoming an important initiative for Shared Service Organizations. According to a re-cent study from the Process Excellence Network (PEX), nearly 60% of the surveyed companies are either implementing or 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 for SSOs, but there are equally significant challenges to realize that potential. In fact, ac-cording to Ernst and Young, half of the RPA implementations fail due to lack of adoption, and the cost of training robots can surpass 10x the cost of the robots themselves.

“PRIORITIZE THE PROCESSES TO AUTOMATE TO DELIVER MAXIMUM ROI”

6 OUT OF 10 COMPANIES ARE LOOKING INTO RPA, EXPECTING ABOUT 60% SAVINGS ON THEIR PROCESS COSTS

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

Once your processes are standardized, it is time to identify where you have the most potential for automation. Most sys-tems 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 spe-cific cases, by geography, vendor, material, etc where manual work is widespread. By comparing automation rates, you will be able to uncover low-hanging fruit where automation could have a substantial impact.

MAKE YOUR AUTOMATION SMART AND DATA-DRIVEN

1. ASSESS THE MATURITY OF YOUR PROCESSES

2. PRIORITIZE YOUR AUTOMATION POTENTIAL

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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.

Evaluating your current processes and prioritizing automation potential not only helps save time and maximizes 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. Se-nior management teams are unsure of the value of RPA, and RPA project mem-bers pursue different priorities during the RPA implementation. So how do you make sure you get the right people behind the project? By building a thorough business case. Using current automation rates and benchmarks, it’s possible to create a forecast of cost and time savings from an RPA initiative. And by prioritiz-ing your RPA potential, you can better scope out the project and align your team.

CUSTOMER VIEW

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 ex-perts to drive RPA initiatives. Using Process Mining, the team was able to iden-tify processes within their Claims Handling department with low complexity that were robot-ready. By analyzing current automation, the team was able to under-stand the root causes of manual intervention and pinpoint where they wanted to focus their RPA robots. The successful deployment of RPA robots resulted in a significant decrease of the cycle times and lowered the manual work require-ment in the process. Today, the company has been able to deploy more than 50 RPA robots and decrease both process costs and throughput time.

3. BUILD THE BUSINESS CASE

MAKE YOUR AUTOMATION SMART AND DATA-DRIVEN

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

SUMMARY & ACTION PLAN

Identify processes that have maturity for

automation

Prioritize your automa-tion efforts according to current automation

rates and potential

Build a clear business case based on a struc-

tured approach to secure management

buy-in

TO DO

MAKE YOUR AUTOMATION SMART AND DATA-DRIVEN

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MAKE PROCESS OWNERS THE HEROES OF PROCESS EXCELLENCE

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 of their Global Shared Services 2017 Survey Report have already established re-gional or global process owners as part of their governance model. Overall, process owners focus on driving end-to-end efficiency and effectiveness in their respective processes. The cost of services and throughput are typical-ly at the center of their score card.

To achieve this task, the process owner role has a wide range of respon-sibilities - from resolving pressing issues within the current process and monitoring performance metrics, to managing and reviewing SLAs, to fun-damentally changing the way the process is executed.

“ESTABLISH SUSTAINABLE OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE THROUGH VISIBLE CHANGE”3

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For process owners, Process Mining provides the core capability to steer and own the process that they are responsible for. Process own-ers can continuously monitor performance in real-time with KPI dash-boards. Using advanced analytics, Process Mining can even proactively identify areas of high and low performance, as well as the root causes. And when they initiate a process redesign, they can easily spot the im-pact of their changes, monitor for unexpected errors, and benchmark performance.

MAKE PROCESS OWNERS THE HEROES OF PROCESS EXCELLENCE

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

SUMMARY & ACTION PLAN

Build a governance structure that introduces ownership for process

KPIs.

Empower your organization with tech-

nology that let’s them be proactive about driving

process KPIs.

TO DO

MAKE YOUR AUTOMATION SMART AND DATA-DRIVEN

Implementing robots can be tedious, with a lot of iter-ations to improve your robots.

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REALIZING THE BENEFITS OF YOUR SHARED SERVICE CENTER

The ability to successfully digitize an SSO will directly impact its scale and role within an organization. For SSO stakeholders and process owners, the time has never been better to maximize offerings and expand the scope of shared ser-vices within their organizations. Sophisticated technologies, like RPA and Pro-cess Mining, have created new opportunities for higher profitability. With the right approach, a successful digital transformation of shared services is achievable and offers long-term dividends.

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

USE YOUR DATA TO CUT THROUGH COMPLEXITY

MAKE YOUR AUTOMATION SMART AND DATA-DRIVEN

ENCOURAGE OWNERSHIP OF PROCESS OUTCOMES

Establish full process transparency with Process Mining to identify and prioritize your standardization efforts.

Assess your current processes to understand where you have the best potential for automation.

Provide a process governance that establishes owner-ship for process KPIs and empower your organization with analytics to be proactive about these KPIs.

ABOUT CELONIS

Celonis is the leading enterprise-ready process mining platform. Leveraging modern data analytics and artificial intelligence, Celonis enables management and operational teams to streamline processes and implement initiatives like RPA, Lean Six Sigma, and Process Excellence. Over 300 global companies use Celonis to run efficiently and deliver better service.

HOW TO GET STARTED

DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION HAVE AN SSO OR ARE YOU PLANNING ON

ESTABLISHING ONE?CONTACT US TO SEE HOW CELONIS CAN HELP!

Get more information: www.celonis.com