GBS leaders must align their shared services for the digital age or face extinction

by Jamie Snowdon

Enterprise leaders are under increased pressure to pivot their businesses to meet the needs of consumers and ensure operations are agile enough to support these needs. Yet, the engine room of most organizations’ services — global business services (GBS) — often struggles to do little more than apply cosmetic changes that fail to address the complex changes really needed, placing the future of many GBS leaders in jeopardy.

GBS must increasingly provide innovation and agility

Over the past couple of decades, GBS has been a key operational lever enterprises could use to balance efficiency, cost savings, and quality of internal services. However, organizations are increasingly expanding this remit to include a new dimension — a source of innovation and agility across the organization. We used this to change the old IT adage, “We offer three kinds of IT services: good, cheap, and fast. You can only have two.”  We replaced “fast” with “innovative.” You can have innovative and good, but it won’t be cheap.

  • You can have good and cheap, but it won’t be innovative.
  • You can have cheap and innovative, but it won’t be good.

Crucially, the common GBS criticisms we hear are linked to innovation and agility—the very areas enterprises are looking to expand. Typically, these complaints stem from GBS’ inability to: Continue reading

Sr. Manager: Global Business Services- Outsourcing & Shared Services

 

Achieve the next level of Performance!  Leading businesses are now using Global Business Services (GBS) to create alignment among their business units. Instead of operating numerous shared service centers and managing outsourcing vendors separately, organizations can integrate governance, locations, and business practices across the enterprise to achieve transformative performance improvements. In this way, GBS serves as a single enterprise organization or network that can drive collaboration and sharing to improve delivery efficiency, effectiveness, and business outcomes.

Work you’ll do

You along with dynamic colleagues will help organizations create a single enterprise organization or network of Shared Services and Outsourcing relationships.  As a Senior Manager, you are expected to contribute to the firm’s growth and development in a variety of ways.  You will be responsible for engagement management: Lead engagement planning  and budgeting; mobilize and manage engagement teams; define deliverable structure and content; facilitate buy-in of proposed solutions from top management levels at the client; direct on-time,  quality delivery of work products; manage engagement economics; manage engagement risk.  Senior Managers manage day to day interaction with executive clients and sponsors.  You will be expected to participate in Business Development, develop and maintain contact with top decision makers at key clients; organize and lead pursuit teams; participate and lead aspects of the proposal development process; contribute to the development of proposal pricing strategies.  Senior Managers must contribute to Practice Development & Eminence:  Develop practical solutions and methodologies; develop “thoughtware” and “point- of-view” documents; participate in public speaking events; get published in industry periodicals.  We invest in our people, as a Senior Manager you will be responsible for people development, performing the role of counselor and coach; provide input and guidance into the staffing process; actively participate in staff recruitment and retention activities; provide leadership and support for delivery teams and staff in local offices.

 

Qualifications

Required:

  • A minimum of 10+ years consulting and/or industry experience is required
  • Must have subject matter expertise and project experiences in Shared Services, Outsourcing and/or Offshoring industry, or multiple back-office functional optimization
  • Shared Services Feasibility Assessments, Implementations, and Optimization
  • Ability to analyze and apply outsourcing trends
  • Practical experience with the full lifecycle of functional optimization, BPO and/or shared services programs
  • Core vs. Non-Core Assessments
  • Understanding of vendor landscape
  • Ability to interact at all levels of the client organization
  • Business Development and Delivery experience
  • Bachelor’s Degree

Preferred:

  • RPA experience
  • Ability to work independently, manage small engagements or parts of large engagements
  • Strong oral and written communication skills, including presentation skills (MS Visio, MS PowerPoint)
  • Strong problem solving and troubleshooting skills with the ability to exercise mature judgment
  • Willingness to mentor junior staff
  • An advanced degree is preferred

If this opportunity sound like a great fit, please reach out to:

Larry Janis, Managing Partner, janis@issg.net

or

Jeff Bruckner, Partner, bruckner@issg.net

 

Global Service Delivery Director

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Our client is a leader in global financial BPO services with a strong international network comprising hubs in the USA, Brazil, India, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore and Germany.

Summary

The successful candidate will have responsibility for managing the delivery of services to maximize contribution to the success of a major global client. Services include Electronic Payment Services and other Order to Cash operations which include Credit, AR and Collections management, Cash Applications, Billing, and back office finance processing and customer services. Continue reading

A View From The Buy Side

 

 

 

 

 

This first of a series of blogs designed to share with you the thoughts and insights of corporate leaders and their perspectives on the decision making process around outsourcing. Our first is with Ed Susman, who is with Citibank.

What are the most important attributes you seek in a potential provider/ partner?

While each sourcing opportunity is distinct with specific attributes that drive the selection of a provider there is one attribute that is transcendent, integrity. If a provider does not behave with integrity it does not matter how capable they are or what savings they might be offering. Sooner or later  the anticipated benefits will be outweighed by the cost of a contentious relationship. Continue reading

General Manager, North America Shared Service Center

Position Overview:

The General Manager, North America Shared Service Center (NASSC) is responsible for managing the overall Shared Services organization and oversees performance across all operations, including internal operations and customer-facing functional areas (Finance & Accounting, Information Technology, Human Resources, and Strategic Sourcing). This role reports to the North American Chairman and CEO and is an integral part of the Company senior management team. The individual in this role must understand and be part of the development of corporate strategies, objectives, and key business processes directly affecting the Shared Services activities, with the ability to drive process integration, service improvement, technology enhancement, and engage and lead people. Leadership skills and a profound understanding of what it takes to manage a service-oriented organization is the key to success. This position also requires the individual in this role to establish close working relationships with Business stakeholders to understand their needs and interests, and to put effective resources in place to meet them. Experience operating in a large, complex global-oriented corporate environment is important. Continue reading