In the first of a series of three exclusive articles, shared services communication strategist Jonathan Steffen asks leading industry experts what they have learned from setting up Shared Services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Part 1: Building a Shared Services Centre

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

Does this sound familiar at all? Lovers of the 19th-century novel might recognise these lines as the opening of Charles Dickens’ 1859 classic A Tale of Two Cities: A Story of the French Revolution. Perhaps anyone reading them today, however, might concur that they perfectly sum up the period we have just gone through with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

This experience has unleashed a positive infodemic around the world, with pessimists (perhaps some of them superspreaders) doomscrolling their lives away while trouble-makers have Zoombombed their path to happiness. We have been disgusted (or not) by hygiene theatre and have spoken out (or not spoken out) about mask-shaming. And, proving that Britain and America still remain two countries separated by a common language, we have glumly sought safety from the conoravirus in bubbles (UK) or pods (USA).

Amidst all this, businesses have been doing their best to keep the mill-wheels turning and the store-fronts open, by whatever means practicable and permissible. In the shared services industry, this has meant addressing a range of issues that might appear to constitute a fatal threat to an operating model that is predicated on bringing people together under one roof.

A resilient model

The past 18 months have shown the shared services model to be rather more resilient, however, as attested by the experience of four industry experts working across three very different industrial sectors:

John Hall, Implementation Manager, Finance Shared Services Bunzl UK & Ireland (distribution group providing customised solutions for B2B customers); Vassilis Kapoukinis, Finance Transformation Manager, Imerys Services Greece SA and Christophe Boden, Shared Services and Continuous Improvement Vice President, Imerys (mineral-based specialty solutions for industry); and Peter Villanyi, Vice President, Global Business Services, Convatec (global medical products and technologies).

When the shared services model was first developed, the motivation was certainly not to create an operational model that could survive the rigours of a global pandemic. Yet the model is significantly more robust than might have been predicted during the first quarter of 2020.

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“Setting up shared services means bringing people together in one place,” says John Hall. “The fact that this can’t be done in the context of a pandemic poses a range of challenges, the most significant of which is the difficulty of building the new shared services team. The necessity of working from home rather than working together in a Shared Service Centre places difficult demands on the members of the new team and also, of course, on the leadership.”

Remote working

Most Shared Service Centres (SSCs) existing today were not designed for full-time remote working. Peter Villanyi of ConvaTec points out, however, that “Companies that were already well set up in terms of their digital infrastructure have been much better placed to make the enforced switch to working from home. Digitalisation, automation and the embracing of new ways of working are the key enablers of a smooth transition to shared services during these challenging times.”

Peter and his colleagues were overseeing a project that involved the closure of an SSC in the UK and the establishment of an in-sourcing operation in Portugal when the pandemic hit. “At first we thought we would have to completely redesign the transition,” he recalls, “but we soon realised that only a minor adjustment was necessary. We fully embraced the possibilities presented by Microsoft Teams right from the start and committed wholeheartedly to doing everything remotely. Our success was also greatly facilitated by the excellent digital infrastructure of Lisbon, which offers excellent Internet provision and high levels of security.”

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Vassilis Kapoukinis and his colleagues at Imerys were in a similar position in February 2020, planning a major transition to shared services. They responded to the ‘new normal’ by creating detailed scenarios for the remote activities involved, carefully coordinating dedicated work streams, and significantly increasing the frequency of monitoring meetings. “Despite the challenges of the situation,” remembers Vassilis, “there were definite benefits, too. With real-time meetings and site visits, time is inevitably limited. That’s not the case during lockdown. Working remotely, and with heightened attention given to both monitoring and mentoring, we found the necessary time to address the problems we were facing and to find the best way forward together.”

These arrangements were facilitated by the fact that the team working remotely comprised many colleagues who already knew one another well. “We knew each other,” says Christophe Boden of Imerys, “and we had a mix of people who knew the company well and people who knew shared services very well. Our project managers came from Internal Audit and understood not only accounting but also the company’s core business processes, even if they lacked shared services experience. We also had an HR manager in our core team who interacted closely with the HR managers in all the entities that were transitioning.”

The importance of face-to-face contact

When this already established mode of interaction is lacking, however, implementing shared services remotely can be much more challenging. Speaking of his work with Bunzl, John Hall remarks: “Time discipline regarding the management of meetings definitely improved as a result of the need to work remotely, but virtual meetings can only give you so much. It’s much harder to sense what people are feeling when you interact with them only online, and this can be problematic when difficult issues need to be worked through by people who do not already have a strong working relationship.”

This applies not only to meetings of steering committees and project teams, but also to induction, training and knowledge transfer. “At Bunzl, we were obliged to commence work-shadowing remotely due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic,” says John. “When these were eased, we were able to revert to the traditional face-to face model. Our experience showed that 90% of the essential process knowledge was successfully transferred when colleagues were working side by side in the same office, whereas only 75% was transferred via remote working.”

John, who is based in Belgium but was overseeing an implementation across sites in the United Kingdom and Ireland at the time, was obliged to work remotely for long periods of the transition at Bunzl, but used every opportunity he could when regulations permitted to visit the company’s widely distributed locations and get to know the leadership team of the Finance function face-to-face. “When I met people in the flesh for the first time,” he recollects, “I was often surprised at their true height!”

Effective governance

One essential for any successful transition to shared services is effective governance. “Governance is always the biggest challenge in any shared services implementation,” states Peter Villanyi, “because the units, functions and regions involved all have to give something up in order for the new way of working to succeed. This is much more easily done, he observes in highly centralised companies, due to the need for top-down change management. “You need a strong Project Management Office,” Peter says, “and a good choice of Steering Committee members – whose identity should change as the project evolves through its various phases. Broadly speaking, the higher governance is situated, the better this will be for any shared services implementation. This changes over time, however, with the bottom-up perspective replacing the top-down viewpoint as implementation morphs into Continuous Improvement.”

John Hall also lists sponsorship as a key factor in the success of any shared services implementation. “An effective program sponsor combines standing in the company with independence of thought and the ability to make decisions,” he observes. “The sponsor also needs diplomatic skill and the understanding of how not to step on people’s toes during what can be very challenging times for everyone involved. And if those tough conversations are really necessary, that’s what the implementation manager is there for.”

[Part 2 will be published next month]

More information:

John Hall
Implementation Manager
Finance Shared Services Bunzl UK & Ireland (distribution group providing customised solutions for B2B customers)

Bunzl Group plc is a growing and successful international distribution group with operations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Focused on providing customised solutions to B2B customers, Bunzl has operations in more than 30 countries and on 5 continents. The group’s revenue and adjusted operating profit for the year ended 31 December 2020 were £10.1bn and £778.4m respectively. Bunzl Group plc is headquartered in London, UK, and listed on the London Stock Exchange FTSE100 Index.

Peter Villanyi
Vice President
Global Business Services
Convatec (global medical products and technologies).

ConvaTec is a global medical products and technologies company focused on therapies for the management of chronic conditions, with leading market positions in advanced wound care, ostomy care, continence and critical care, and infusion devices. ConvaTec’s products provide a range of clinical and economic benefits including infection prevention, protection of at-risk skin, improved patient outcomes and reduced total cost of care. ConvaTec has 8,500 employees and does business in more than 100 countries.

Vassilis Kapoukinis
Finance Transformation Manager
Imerys Services Greece SA

Christophe Boden
Shared Services and Continuous Improvement
Vice President
Imerys (mineral-based specialty solutions for industry)

Imerys is the world leader in mineral-based specialty solutions for industry, with €3.8 billion revenue and 16,400 employees in 2020. Imerys delivers high value-added, functional solutions to diversified set of industrial sectors, from processing industries to consumer goods. The Group draws on its knowledge of applications, technological expertise and its material science know-how to deliver solutions based on beneficiation of its mineral resources, synthetic minerals and formulations.