INTERVIEW OF THE MONTH
INTERVIEW WITH MR. PRABHAT MISHRA,
Director-Shared Service Center at Pontoon Solutions (Adecco Group)
How do you believe shared services of the future will look like? What will they deliver beyond providing a fixed portfolio of scale services?
Origin of shared service culture has evolved from doing the bulk of services where man intensive, repetitive jobs were involved. However, with progress of time and tech evolution, SSC organizations continue to benefit in terms of providing better service portfolio and also improve the scale of services. Today most of the SSC organizations are providing significant value added services as well which not only bring more savings but also helps win client trust.
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?
SSC organizations are constantly evolving and are now faster than ever with the help of technology changes. Just bringing cost benefit via SSC delivery is yesterday’s model , today efficiency and winning through NPS score are driving the business. It is also seen that technology adaption is much easier in SSC set up and the teams are ready and more willing to applying best practices as compared to satellite operations in different countries or cities. Earlier this focus was more to bring low cost delivery, today it is shifting towards faster adaption of technology and competitiveness.
How do you believe digital has enabled shared service organizations to deliver improved business impact? Could you please detail with some examples?
Like I mentioned already that technology has played a key role in the last one decade to make these delivery engines think beyond cost. Total evolution started with view of creating a standard practice ground for faster results , now it has moved towards artificial intelligence and machine learning doing some of the critical and innovative work and pushing humans to think more creatively in the service portfolio. In my own experience of creating AI driven platform to do certain jobs of sourcing and screening, the team is now evolved in understanding complex algorithm and doing predictive talent mapping before any scouting process kicks off. This experience has been very enriching and has given us the right perspective of technology, tools and the overall digital impact.
How do people within shared services need to be reskilled to get ready for the future? What should enterprises be doing about it?
Re-skilling and up-skilling is definitely the key, not limited to SSC organization but in general as well. I believe the COVID scenario has fast tracked this demand already, today loss of work orders or significant reduction in work flow has resulted in many job cuts or reduced hours. However at the same time other sectors have seen exponential growth such as pharma, retail etc. Now it is proven that the agility around learning and upskilling is the short term and long term key to success . In the SSC environment such adaption are proved to be easier done and practiced.
Can you please detail some key innovation initiatives within the Pontoon India Shared service organization? What kind of business impact has this delivered?
Some of our initiatives under the shared service organization with help of leveraging our internal eco-system of the Adecco Group for example has been the partnership with General Assembly which is one of the key players in upskilling and re-skilling. This partnership has driven such initiatives internally to make our people combat with current situation. Our focus has been towards providing excellence in our service where Pontoon’s own USP are in operational excellence and technological innovation. We believe in making disruption in the workforce industry with our innovative solutions and human intelligence. All this has helped us in winning confidence from our existing clients and potential clients as well. We have been recognized on various channels as most innovative player in this industry and we continue to work in this direction.