Business service excellence begins with people!

How might we become an even better strategic partner to the business? This is a question that has been haunting leaders of business service functions such as Finance, HR, Procurement and IT for decades.

Many organisations have implemented global or regional business service transformation programmes, very often with an ambition to create strong shared services and reduce costs. However, many such programmes have failed to deliver on promises due to overreliance on structures, processes, systems and service delivery agreements – and with too little emphasis on developing the people who are going to deliver in the new setup. As a result, they struggle to deliver the desired impact and to retain critical talent.

To achieve real impact, support function transformation programmes must focus not only on process efficiency but more on effectiveness – the actual outcome produced and the business impact delivered. This implies balancing short-term service delivery with strategic vision and development of a continuous improvement culture.

Furthermore, it requires embedding agile principles such as strong product ownership, increased transparency, reflection and continuous learning as well as developing ways of working and collaborating with the business.

Finally, it requires strong emphasis on skills development, functional leadership, employee self-leadership as well as team and individual collaboration and performance management.