Archive for September, 2010
How Big is the Gap Between Government Shared Services and Industry Shared Services?
How big is the gap between government shared services and industry shared services? Very Big.
Government lag far behind corporate America in adopting shared services as a business model for reducing administrative overhead and improving efficiency. This is true whether you use as a basis of comparison employee headcount or corporate revenue vs government appropriations.
No CommentsGovernment vs Industry Shared Services
What is the difference between shared services in government and shared services in industry? In truth there is no such thing as government shared services. I use the adjective “government” to denote shared services in federal, state or local government but the terminology, core tenets, IT infrastructure, and definition of success are the same (or should be) for government as for industry. This does not mean that there are not unique challenges associated with the implementation and operation of shared services in government. There are. And knowing what they are and how to deal with them spells the difference between success or failure for a government shared services organization. The differences are tactical, not strategic.
What are they?
No CommentsHow To Drive Innovation and Efficiency in Government Shared Services?
In the absence of a profit motive and a captive customer base how do you drive innovation and efficiency? This is the crux of the challenge with government shared services. In the private sector every entity in the company focuses unrelentingly on profit (revenue minus cost). Profit margins are increased by increasing revenue or reducing costs or both.
No Comments3 Best Practices For Shared Services Start Up
Recently I had an opportunity to reflect on best practices in starting up a shared services center. I can think of at least 10 best practices that distinguish “best in class” shared services centers from their mediocre counterparts. But I was asked to name only 3. Experts may disagree but here is my list.
1). Adopting usability principles and practices in the design of your customer interfaces. Interface is broadly defined as every point at which the SSO touches its customers and all the ways in which customers interact with the SSO. Forms, form letters, standard emails, your contact center, your customer portal and even your processes for requesting and delivering services are interfaces.
2). A robust business intelligence infrastructure that gives you end-to-end insights into your processes, service levels and costs.
3). Good tools and tight processes for tracking and managing costs down to the unit of consumption or service instance.
No CommentsDo you have a service recovery plan?
A recovery plan is a series of protocols or processes that are executed in the event of an unlooked for but anticipated failure. It is what BP did not have. Or perhaps they had one but it wasn’t viable. Moving into uncharted waters (figuratively not literally speaking) as they were, they should have given a lot of thought to the “what ifs” . With $millions at stake not to mention their reputation, developing (and testing) a good recovery plan – the “what we will do if something goes wrong” should have been right up there with “where should we drill?”. A service recovery plan is not a contingency plan or business recovery plan in the event of a natural or man made disaster. A service recovery plan is a script that is executed in the event of a (hopefully) infrequent but predictable service failure.
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