SSOW has a long experience of sharing the stage with champions. Since our live return in 2022, our all-star panels of Shared Service and GBS leaders have already been joined by a world cup-winning footballer and not one, but two, record-breaking distance runners. Those legends taught us much about what it takes to reach the top of your game – and then to stay there – building the resilience, humility and focus that characterises those performing at the very highest level.
Raising the bar on last year was always going to be tough, but if anyone can, its Jonny Wilkinson. A career rugby union fly-half – and generally considered to be one of the best ever to play the game – Jonny had a long club career in both the UK, where he played for the Newcastle Falcons, and France, where his team won two Heineken Cups and a Top 14 championship. His international career remains even more of a record-breaker. Winning 91 caps for his country, the England squads he was part of won 4 Six Nations Championships, one Grand Slam, a Triple Crown and, most famously of all, the 2003 Rugby World Cup, where Jonny famously scored a drop goal in the last minute of extra time to clinch the trophy against Australia. His tally of 277 remains the most points scored by any individual World Cup player – and he is also the only one to score in multiple Rugby World Cup finals. Retiring from the Game in 2014 and inducted into the Rugby Hall of Fame soon afterwards, Jonny today continues to coach England’s fly half in addition to his role covering rugby on UK television.
Jonny’s storied career on the pitch might imply success without drawback, but Jonny has been open about his long-running fight against anxiety and depression. The unrelenting demands of high-level sport and the parallels with our own industry are striking; the constant and often self-driven pressure to improve on what is already a high level of performance, to stay balanced when highs become lows, to find fulfilment whilst constantly seeking to raise the bar and to overcome stigmas around vulnerability to turn openness into a leader’s greatest strength. Jonny’s story has much to teach us, not just about winning, but about winning sustainably, inspiring a team – and sometimes a nation – without compromising on the fundamentals that enabled that success in the first place. Headlining the third final day of SSOW Lisbon 2023, Jonny will share his personal story via a wide-ranging interview, designed to confront those very human challenges that sit beneath our community’s day-to-day commitment to professional excellence.
With the ongoing cost pressure and ever-changing market dynamics, further exacerbated by the pandemic, GBS organizations need to create new capabilities and drive a disruptive digital-first agenda, to accelerate business transformation in operations. Manoj Nair, along with his esteemed panel will discuss key trends being seen that could disrupt and transform the future state of GBS.
• Hybrid and distributed ways of working are here to stay. How do organizations adapt to this new model while continuing to deliver on the promises of productivity and customer experience
• The need to redesign processes and operating models to enable a digital-first, automation-first approach to deliver GBS transformation at scale
• GBS organizations as beachheads that will drive effectiveness and experience transformation beyond efficiency and how will the GBS of the future look like 5 years from now and what can organizations do today to be future-ready
The future of shared services is inevitably wrapped up in the future of talent. Shifting from strictly location-based and brick-and-mortar model to remote and digitally enabled skilled workers is the future. In this session we invite the true pioneers to explore critical questions around the future talent:
· What is the future of work for shared services?
· What skills are required for shared services of the future?
· The growth of unconventional talent models including gig workers and digital nomads: How do they fit in your workforce model?
Since its inception, DHL Global Forwarding GSC has gone through a series of rapid transformations, focusing on evolving their service orchestration and delivery models. This session will share the latest phase of that journey focusing on how they are updating their charging and delivery model and what have been the key lessons learned.
· Moving up the value chain at a rapid pace through service delivery orchestration and re-modelling
· Moving service delivery from an FTE based to volume-based model: the key drivers, benefits, risks and challenges
· Driving the evolution of the service platform to drive standardization and customization at the same time
The key to advancing the maturity curve of shared services lies in the ability to level up your services, which will in turn significantly move the needle of cost savings. Join this session to hear practical insights from someone that has turned around services a few times in his career. Brian will be sharing some of the key methodologies and tips to help you level up your services as well.
· Moving from a customer service to customer experience approach: recognising where you are on the maturity curve
· Developing an intuitive and predictive service experience that anticipates where and when to streamline processes
· Leveraging helpful humans and effective processes to develop a service excellence framework
· Achieving significant monetary savings from focusing on service
With the big focus on efficiency, employee value proposition has not been the loudest voice in GBS. However, it is becoming ever more important for GBS leaders to shift their focus towards culture and people in the new reality. Join this session to hear how Yara has been developing their EVP agenda from leadership behaviour development to employer branding, from culture development to new hiring strategies.
· Culture as a No. 1 priority: Going beyond the slogan to focus on leadership behaviors to drive alignment on the employee level
· Balancing the brand’s heritage with the local context for brand authenticity and appeal
· Sharing experiences from “Growing a Tiara” programmes focusing on mentorship and leadership capabilities
In this session we’ve gathered together a panel of experts to dive into the realities of the challenges from the talent front and discuss:
· A reality check: how are we doing when it comes to attrition?
· Exploring the new needs and requirement from talent in 2023 for talent development methods
· The opportunities and threats of hiring and managing remote talent
Societe Generale Global Solution Centre has been maturing its operating model in the past decade and has gone through different expansion and transformation stages including Lean Six Sigma and Robotics. Instead of continuing to expand, the company has decided to venture into new ways of delivering strategic business value by developing capabilities.
· Building capabilities focusing on delivering business value
· Sharing examples on moving from transactional shared services to value-added centre focusing on building solutions
· Moving from back-office centre to a consulting and advisory captive to drive partnership and value
With significant past, current and future growth Shell’s Supply Chain Operations out of the GBS locations, the challenge of retaining and building capability arose. Shell translates this challenge into an opportunity to transform the organisation from execution to business partnering and commercial excellence.
The 2023 award winners will take the stage to share their journey which has led them to succeed in their categories. This is a unique opportunity to ask them what they have done differently and really gain crucial insights into what it takes for successful business transformation.
Today, shared services value is measured in cost, efficiency and productivity. In the near future, progressive companies will redefine value through intelligence, insights and strategic partnering. Join this session to hear what that would look like:
· How value creation has evolved in the past decade and what are the key trends for the next 10 years?
· Stepping beyond the term of “value-add” activities to understand what you can be doing to support your SSO and the wider organisation
· Stepping up the play through intelligence and insights: how important is that and what are the key steps to move towards this direction?
· Driving innovation around data, process and systems for greater value creation
What a week. As we wave goodbye with new ideas, insights and relationships we have built throughout the week, we look forward to hearing great stories on how you’ve carried out these strategies for the rest of the year. See you again in 2023!
Working Together Towards Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: How DE&I Will Enable And Accelerate Your GBS Path to Best in Class
GBS organisations can play a pivotal role in the DE&I agenda of a company, and significantly contribute to performance. The global nature of GBS naturally lends itself to diversity, but does your GBS reflect diversity at all levels of the organisation? Do you have an equitable and inclusive culture? Is this holding you back from becoming best in class?
This year at SSOW Europe, we have not just one, but TWO fantastic opportunities for leaders who seek to network and explore deeper conversations on the benefits of and methods to cultivate DE&I in GBS organisations. A first for SSOW, we are excited to launch a session which will focus on DE&I within GBS organisations, aimed at all GBS colleagues, regardless of age, experience, background or gender. The more diverse the better!
In addition, we will host a networking breakfast aimed at fostering stronger connections between female GBS colleagues, providing an environment to share, learn and inspire.
23rd May 7:45am – 8:45am
SSOWomen Breakfast Networking and Roundtables Discussion: Sharing stories of success, challenges, and the importance of community.
24th May 2:00pm – 4:30pm
The power of diversity, equity and inclusion in becoming best in class GBS - our collective ambition
· How we define diversity in GBS
· How GBS can lead the DE&I agenda in your company
· Working together Towards Equality: Building Allies and Partnerships with internal and external stakeholders
· Cultivating Diversity of Thought: Sharing practical examples on making an impact
· A question of gender- how can we achieve more equitable gender representation in senior roles, why this is important
Change management is a critical strategy in shared services, BPO and GBS organisations, yet it is often considered one of the hardest challenges. This deep-dive masterclass gathers a group of experienced executives that have successfully led their shared services through change, and they are ready to have a candid and honest dialogue around the key challenges, obstacles and hard decisions you have to make to lead through these important change programmes. It’s in-depth, insightful and packed with knowledge and real-life experiences from the speaker panel.
· There is no cookbook for change management. It’s situational but intentional – Sharing different scenarios of when change took place and how those changes are managed
· Change should be something taken together, not imparted – Bringing people on the journey with you
· Making hard yet necessary decisions: What are these hard decisions and how can we make them easier?
· To be able to walk the walk with clear alignment and communications: What could happen when communications fall apart?
The two most important goals of a GBS or shared services organisation are to engage with its customers effectively and deliver value consistently. In our model, however, most of the organisation’s energy is committed to service delivery; few GBS organisations establish an ongoing stakeholder management process with clear goals, objectives, strategies, processes and outcomes. This creates inconsistency, a “make-it-up-as-you-go-along” approach, lack of communication within the GBS team and, ultimately, confusion and a lack of engagement and support on the part of stakeholders. To be effective, every member of the GBS organisation, not just senior executives and the change management team, must know about the implications of effective stakeholder management in order to adopt new ways of working and enable the success of the model – and so that they can engage with stakeholders effectively. By attending this workshop, participants will be able to:
· Understand the imperative for effective stakeholder management. Understand the difference between stakeholder, customer and user
· Identify the right stakeholders and map them to personas
· Develop effective engagement approaches, including an innovative “use case” approach. Embed stakeholder management into GBS management routines
· Apply the right measurements and governance; each participant will receive the framework of a playbook, helping them to craft a stakeholder management strategy within their own organisational context.
Deborah Kops, Managing Principal, Sourcing Change
As GBS and Shared Services repositioning for business change, another big agenda is repositioning their employee value propositions to be able to respond to the fast-changing marketplace, to create collaborative and
innovative culture especially when the new generation workforce is coming to play. Join this masterclass to hear from the experienced panel sharing insights, experiences and practical tips on these topics:
· Driving a new value proposition for the current and future workforce
· What are the practical tips on recruitment and talent retention
· Redefining leadership to support workforce transformation
· Looking at unconventional recruitment channels and enhanced training and development to create the leaders of tomorrow