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”
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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