Chairman's Takeaway of SSO Week North America Trends

Brad DeMent, Partner at ScottMadden and Chair for SSOWeek North America, shares the highlights of this past week's flagship Shared Services event in a few succint points... Download them here, or read below:

Digitizing the Customer Experience

Julio, P&G

￭   Digital counts at “the moment of truth,” when the customer uses a product

￭   90% of the manual touches in AR were eliminated, but the value was in the 10% opportunity to get money back

Nick, Futurist

￭   Demographics are useless – it’s about “do you hate it, or love it”?

￭   7000 brick and mortar stores closed last year, and most blame Amazon

• Borders and Circuit City provided a bad customer experience
• Trader Joe’s tells a meaningful story and provides a great customer experience

￭   Digital experiences can be excellent (Doc on demand, Opternative)

￭   Voice will come full circle and be the new OS

￭   By 2020, the customer experience will overtake brand and price

Planning and Implementing Robots

Jay, Dell EMC

￭   Plan on huge hype, followed by disappointment, followed by big value

￭   Within one year we automated 100 FTE’s of work

￭   Front office can offer even bigger value – we gave back sales capacity

￭   Partnership with IT is critical – you will need hardware, test beds, and access

￭   Process SME’s were our best developers

￭   Building the COE took a few months, but then went from 3 robots to 400

￭   Having multi-function worked to our advantage – could automate end-to-end

￭   Our COE = a) training, b) infrastructure, c) development, d) level 2 and 3 ongoing support

￭   We trained 263 people with about a 50% stick rate for developers

Our invoice analyst was an average performer but an RPA superstar

Mark, AA

￭   Good RPA implementations get 4X value and improve processes 50%

￭   Plan a four month learning curve for several robots, then enterprise wide robots in another six months

￭   Measure “Bot Velocity” – some companies are churning out 1-2 robots/day

￭   “Bot stores” – if one company has a working robot, why not sell it to another

Samir, Delphi

￭   Three robots eliminated 21 FTE’s of work in AP, and we are planning on 50-60 FTE’s by year end – headcount was eliminated too

￭   Start with an RPA “skunk works” – focus on the “A” first then governing the “R”

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Transforming the Workforce

Daniela, Teva Pharmaceutical and Dan, Breakthru Beverage

￭   Signs that your talent is ready for a modern GBS

• Agility and flexibility – willingness to rotate jobs
• Putting customers before process – willingness to get involved with customer
• VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity
• Effective in global cultures – understanding how diverse cultures solve problems

Zach, Evoqua

￭   Shift from local thinking to enterprise thinking – we reported regional/site HR to SS

Daniel, Coca-Cola

￭   Leadership track used to be accounting/finance role, now more of an analyst role

Pushing Forward (Continuous Improvement)

Daniel, Coca Cola

￭   Documenting processes as a first step lends tremendous advantageous

Julio, P&G

￭   If cyber-security is an afterthought, we have trouble

￭   For every ten ideas, seven die, three stick, and one is the 10X

￭   We track ideas in a dashboard – 45 days to adopt an idea, 27 days to kill an idea

Zach, Evoqua

￭   Don’t hesitate to create “buckets of leftovers” – we postponed Payroll and Finance (too much too fast, but can come back to it)

Working with the Millennials

Christian, Bacardi

￭   “Millennial” is an attitude, not a generation

￭   We allowed use of “Yammer” as a social media business tool – were willing to send questions ahead of time vs. voice questions publically

￭   Our training was informal and pulled together on an as-needed basis

￭   We gave them freedom to create a newsletter and define their own content

￭   They loved engagement with work-related sporting activities

￭   Women in Leadership Committee was not just composed of women

￭   We crowd sourced recognition programs

￭   We replaced chairs with couches and had open and unbound conversations with leaders

Artificial Intelligence

Karla, Coca-Cola and Pavan, Levis Strauss

￭   We are doing an AI pilot with Watson to improve candidate sourcing

￭   We use AI to review history and determine how problems were solved in the past

￭   We use AI to gain real time visibility of inventory

Future of BPO

Parker Hannifin

￭   Standardize processes now… or you will wind up doing it mid project

￭   Design supplier proof of concepts to encourage fail-fast culture

Workforce Transformation

Andrea, MasterCard and Karla, Coca-Cola

￭   Countries in Africa use cell phones for ID cards and financial transactions – Andrea

￭   Re-skilling is a bigger question than shared services – it is a national problem, aglobal problem – Andrea

￭   We will transform our skill sets on average three times – Stanford study

￭   This is not a “death knell” for BPOs – it simply gives us the freedom to determine what should be automated, internal, and outsourced

￭   We will be able to plug in the right talent anywhere in the world to solve problems

￭   We created a Chief Data Officer (CDO) role to focus on data governance

Mehdi, Microsoft

￭   Our hiring had been done for yesterday, and needs to be done to fulfill future needs

￭   We went from an functional construct to a service construct

Future of GBS

Juliano, Kraft-Heinz; Patricia, Loews; and Richard, Koch

￭   Must be global, multi-function, organized by process, and governance with business

￭   Needs to report to one leader? – Yes, Yes, No (but must be coordinated)

• Who does GBS report to? – CFO, CIO, and CIO

￭   We do not define anything we do as GBS, just adding value – we are not mandated

￭   Started with lift and shift covered with a service blanket – work from there

￭   Best time to challenge us in the first three months, when you have a fresh perspective

￭   Use an ongoing challenge board anyone can question a process

￭   It is really difficult, seriously difficult – local alignment, getting people to think across the enterprise vs. their business/country, and no one calls and says “good job”

￭   Strong functional leaders can take advantage of exhaustion or complacency

Future of Global Process Owners (GPO’s)

John, World Vision

￭   Each region created own P2P, but we tasked them with integrating to one

￭   OK for global environments to have a few standards (vs. one), and allow exceptions

￭   Process documentation can be painful, but it is critical

￭   Shared service is a good independent place to house master data

￭   Have region process owners that liaise between GPO and countries

￭   You do not have to have common systems to have a global process

￭   Help country restructure their organization after you shift work to shared services

￭   Monitor adoption of the process

￭   Process master black belts are for sale outside of the shared service

￭   The GPO is responsible for training, but not the training resources

Humanizing Leadership

Kris Wadis

￭   Our current motivation tactics to retain important staff are to grudgingly offer more money, and a new job title or a promotion without a raise

￭   It is a myth that high tech cannot be high touch (Doc software)

￭   People will forget what you said/did, but will not forget how you made them feel - Maya Angelou

￭   Add targets for behaviors in your KPI’s, not just $

• President of J&J has a metric of having the healthiest workforce

￭   Poor staff motivation can cut productivity by 50%

￭   Avoid “presentee-ism” (turning up for work when you could not care less)

￭   31% of British workers would be happy to report to a robot vs. their current boss

Managing Change

David, CCCI

￭   I spent two days listening and having meals with an influential resistor

￭   You do not have to move negatives to positives, but you have to get them to neutral

￭   We established a different but connected model for very small countries

￭   Distinguish between the philosophically pure and the pragmatically possible

Service Focus

Mehdi, Microsoft

￭   Do not get blindsided by tech – these are not technology projects, they are people projects

Innovation

Terry, Travelocity/Kayak

￭   Disruption spreads – automated cars

• What about truckers
• Do not need hotels anymore, sleep in the car
• Who are police going to arrest?

￭   Robots and drones will guide us through stores, ship our packages, and make our cocktails

￭   Block chain and 3D printers will almost eliminate the supply chain process

• Amazon will print your product in the truck on the way to your house

￭   80% of our data is unstructured

￭   If you do not like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less

￭   “How did your company go bankrupt?”  “First gradually, then suddenly”

• The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

Terry Jones, Travelocity/Kayak

￭   Uber owns no cars, AirBnB owns no hotels, and Facebook owns no content

• They own the “edge”
• Where your customer touches the product
• OPA = Other People’s Assets – Less assets, more speed

￭   Get ready to be sold - Waze will sell you a donut, your car will give you a coupon for the 3 passengers in your car, and your washing machine will buy you a new tie

￭   Amazon will print your package in the truck on the way to your house – the edge

￭   Alexa only mentions one product when you order – what will that cost to be the one?

￭   You will be able to talk to an ad with embedded chat bots

￭   AI is not coming… it is here

￭   Step one, install software… there is no step two (are you that easy)?

￭   The day Kodak went bankrupt, Instagram raised $1B – Photography did not go away… Kodak did

￭   AI is hard – the most important and difficult part is training people

￭   The “Bozone” layer is middle management, you have to reach through it and give people another chance – make it safe for people

￭   If it is your idea, it is innovation… if it is done to you, it is disruption

￭   If you get Culture and Team right, innovation will flow

￭   Innovation is like baseball – if you fail 70% of the time, you are awesome

￭   20% of what you see at Kayak everyday is an experiment… constant testing

￭   When you fail… kill projects, not people

￭   One persona at Expedia beat Travelocity – combined air, hotel, and car.  Take care in who you hire….

￭   Big teams do not innovate – little teams do (2 pizza rule)

￭   Who are the idea approvers? – people in the department?… should be outside of department (the jet plank)

￭   Internet was a C-suite position, then it grew up, and we did not need it anymore

￭   Get out of the building

￭   Get funding from CEO

￭   I used legal, and advertising… but bypassed purchasing and IT (too slow)

￭   Hire people that do not fit in

Process Automation (not RPA)!

Richard, Koch

￭   Can benchmark processing activities against each other with time stamps – Ben and Celonis

￭   Took a couple months to get up and running start to finish

￭   The transparency of the data opened our eyes (140 day tickets)… then we found other places to apply

￭   Created a COE on RPA and process mining

￭   Process mining allows you to see bottlenecks and target things you can do differently

￭   We manage the technology, vendor relationship, and licensing in a COE, but evangelize the product to the business lines to identify the processes 

Customer Experience

Matt Willden, Amazon

￭   A remarkable customer experience starts with heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, and taste – you will find that in a customer satisfaction survey

￭   Staple yourself to an order and follow it around

￭   Be the customer – take the actual journey

￭   Do not take c-sat questions out of the box – create questions that resonate in your culture test anchor questions, and get reactions to statements, experiment

￭   Even when customers do not know it, they want something better – sometimes you have to invent on the customer’s behalf

The GBS Journey

Simona and Laura, Walmart

￭   With trust comes new partnerships and new services

￭   Digital will get you there, but you need the tools to get better

￭   RPA targeted areas of processes with more people

￭   RPA, if not done right, can multiply mistakes fast

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