INTERVIEW OF THE MONTH
INTERVIEW WITH MR. CHRIS GUNNING,
Global Enablement and Strategy Lead – Finance Operations,
NIQ
What are the top 5 factors that enterprises should keep in mind to build as they build and mature their shared services?
Whether you are starting out on your journey, or are a mature organization, if you do not get the basics and fundamentals correct, then it will be difficult to succeed. 5 simple pointers:
Talent – it’s all about your people! It starts with ensuring you have the proper experienced leadership in place, and then build a talent strategy to attract, retain and develop the best at every level of your organization.
Performance Management and Metrics – Facts not Feelings. High Performing Teams focus on SLAs, OLAs, KPIs etc. Put in place the appropriate measures and hold yourself, and your teams, accountable for your service delivery in terms of quality accuracy and timeliness.
Customer Centricity – You need to put your internal and external customers at the heart of everything that you do. Delight your clients, with high quality solutions and business outcomes. Be proactive and anticipate their needs.
Digital, Automation and Technology – Be it enterprise wide technology; niche functional solutions; or more simple led RPA type task automation, it is critical to have a clear roadmap and embrace automation as part of your journey
Culture – should never be forgotten. Focusing on the right culture is the ‘glue’ that makes all the other elements stick and ensures your GBS stands out from the others. Create that UX; CX; EX.
What is the role of a GBS leader in building a digitally mature organization?
These days any Operations leader, be they in GBS or other, needs to be extremely tech savvy, and have a solid understanding of what is happening in marketplace when it comes to the latest innovation and technologies. Particularly in say the Finance space, where over the last 20 years we have seen many developments in the likes of Cloud Based ERPs, EPMs, Functional enabling technologies in R2R,P2P, OTC; FP&A etc ; and Process Mining Capabilities – it is important to know what is out there, and to partner closely with their IT counterparts to exploit such to their full potential.
Leaders should be embracing more recent technologies such as RPA and AI and be huge advocates for their use in the GBS environment. I am a particular fan of “citizen led automation”, where employees are given the space and freedom to play around with some of the latest RPA technologies in a controlled environment.
Leaders need to stay on top of latest trends – think Generative AI for example – I am super excited about the huge potential and benefits Gen AI has for GBS – and not to be afraid to be bold and be a pioneer by leading the way and the call to bring such new technologies into their own teams and operations.
Do you believe there will be significant skill gap in the future as a result of such transformations? Will people within shared services need to be reskilled to get ready for the future? What should enterprises be doing about it?
Absolutely – we will see a significant skills gap in the future because of digital transformation, if we are not careful about it.
The war for digital talent in GBS is only to get hotter. That it is why it is so critical to connect your Talent Strategy in GBS and Finance Operations, to that of your Digital Strategy.
It is critical to ensure you provide the right training for you associates to make them “Digi-Fit”. Created tailor made programs.
Encourage your teams to watch industry webinars or take RPA trainings.
Allow them to play with cool tech through the democratization of analytics and other citizen led automation. Encourage “volunteer” programs to get people involved.
Explore and be curious with GEN AI!
Transactional work at scale will continue to get automated, so lets be sure we also provide the proper focus on soft/power skills – and ensure ethe ability to communicate; to build networks; solve problems; be customer centric; be leaders; etc remain at the forefront of our competency and capability development programs.
Don’t be afraid to use tech to support with the balancing of workload for your teams, which will help with mental health and wellbeing.
We all have an obligation to make the work and work place more meaningful and exciting for teams , to engage them and get them excited to get up out of bed for work each and every morning – so ignore focus on such as your peril!
A lot has been said about why digital projects fail or succeed. In your view, what are the top 3 factors that never fail to contribute to the success of such initiatives?
Probably the same reasons as to why many projects fail, be they digital or otherwise.
- Change Management – quite often Change Management is seen as an afterthought with many digital projects. Not paying attention to proper Change Management (and I just don’t mean “Communications” here) is a sure way to tee yourself up for failure. Never, ever, underestimate the importance of focus on Change, and being prepared to double down on your follow up efforts in ensuring the adoption of any new technology is embraced end to end throughout the entire organization, including multiple trainings and follow ups until everyone is on board. For example – a vendor managament solution may be perfectly implemented from a tech perspective, but if we haven’t onboarded our vendors to get with the program, or we haven’t trained our internal users to raise Purchase Orders for example, then you can have the shiniest new machine in the world and still have lousy processes.
- Investing in the Right Talent and Resource Model – don’t rely purely on your technology vendor or your Systems Integration partner. One day they will be gone. Ensure right from the world go you have the right skilled people in your team who know how to deploy and ultimately work with the technology. Don’t underestimate the number of resources who need to be involved in user testing; writing process materials; delivery training etc. Identify Champions who will be Evangelists for the technologies the BAU environment once it is implemented, and understand how to best get all functionality out of the tool.
- Proper Attention to Planning – plan well up front. Put your Project Charter and your Business Case together. Put together the right teams of experienced experts who have done similar before. Ensure you have the right number of resources on board. Project Manage it closely. Don’t scrimp and save on pennies or cut corners. Be realistic with timelines. Do expect some element of surprise or scope creep. Do ensure you key business partners and stakeholders are part of the journey to ensure you win their hearts and minds, and that they feel that they have a voice at the table.
What are shared service organizations doing to deliver game changing performance from their shared services? Is there any change in terms of preparedness that you’re seeing now versus say five years back?
Great questions – and yes, we are seeing huge change in the industry over the last 5 years. I think even in the usage of the words “Shared Services” themselves! Companies have moved beyond transactional services and are really applying business solutions and business outcomes for their organizations, and now sit at the professional core of many businesses. Here for example, we have new rebranded we call ourselves NIQ Finance Operations.
Many functions in business, are now embracing where perhaps traditional single function shared service such as Finance or HR previously led the way. Sales; marketing, Commercial; Engineering; Technology – many companies have these function, now sitting in onshore hubs; leveraging centralized and standardized processes; measuring against KPIs and metrics; driving synergies etc.
We are now seeing GBS orgs lead the way for the business when it comes to enablement and support functions such as Continuous Improvement; Automation and RPA COEs; Customer Support & Inquiry functions; Capability Competency and L&D expertise; and generally becoming Incubators of Talent of he future.
I am really excited for the future our industry as we embrace the learnings of the past, coupled with new tech such as Gen AI, to make the next 5 years even more exciting, with real value add and delivering on business outcomes – whilst at the same time making the work place a meaningful one for the brightest and best talent.
