Challenges to Excellence: In our article on designing a shared service center, it became clear that the shared service center exists to achieve excellence through capability maturity and continuous process improvement for a well-defined catalog of specialized, repeatable business services. Managing the daily workflows is intended to deliver the services as promised, with internal service level agreements (“SLA’s”) that usually are “agreed” after a period of observation of actual performance for service level objectives (“SLO’s”).
People and Process Issues: Managing for SLA’s and continuous process improvement requires a staff with personal orientations for living with increasing demands, increasing transparency and measurement of personal performance and increasing levels of change in workflows. In the “steady state” phase, managers of the shared service center are responsible for adoption and enforcement of both work-flow sequences and operational policies.
Growth and Flexibility: Managers of shared service centers face conflicting changes in customer needs. Volumes of work may fluctuate based on economic cycles, merger integration, and regulatory changes. New workflows may be required to adapt to such charging economic, legal and even political environments. Over the long term the shared service center must compete with outsourcing service providers, or otherwise justify their existence.