Shared services, also known as Global Business Services, is an important internal function within large organizations. It allows high-volume business processes and back-end operations, which are carried out by more than one department or multiple regions, to be centralized and executed. The main function of Shared Services is a consolidation of effort to deliver enterprise-wide benefits.
Shared services automation builds on this theme by using an automation platform to automate the consolidated processes and drive value in the form of productivity, cost savings, and employee and customer satisfaction to name a few. If the purpose of shared services is to enable efficiencies across the business, then process automation is key to properly operating your shared services center and delivering success.
60% of organizations say IT function constraints are acting as a barrier to scaling intelligent automation, according to the SSON Intelligent Automation Global Market Report 2021. By focusing limited resources within a Shared Services Center you can increase the reach, not to mention the benefits, of process automation across the organization.
If a lack of IT resources is a particular hindrance to delivering process automation in your organization, then a low-code automation platform can provide the answer. Their ease of use allows business users with limited technical IT knowledge to build applications and automate processes
Additionally, a shared services center will house a tech stack comprising of various applications to deliver various functions, from an ERP to manage back-end activities, to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to extract data from documents. A low-code automation platform not only automates processes, but acts as an orchestrator, passing tasks between disparate systems.
Increased productivity – Tasks that would previously have been completed manually and taken up significant periods of time during the working day, such as emailing updates between departments, filling out forms, and sourcing information, are automated. Not only are these tasks completed faster, but also more cost efficiently, with automation platforms completing high-volume, repeatable tasks which would usually be completed by an FTE.
Enabling employees – As administrative, labour-intensive tasks are automated within the shared services center, employees can spend more time on activities that will bring additional value to the organization. What type of value depends on their department, but it could be increased responsibilities in an area such as vendor management, data analysis, or simply gaining more contact time with customers to build relationships.
Enabling customers – Whether its internal or external customers, automation platforms can be used to build self-service portals within shared services, so users can enter their own details, rather than relying on employees to capture the information and enter it themselves, saving time and ensuring accuracy.
Standardization – Processes are mapped out and approved before being deployed in the shared services center, so you can guarantee that when the process is automated, it will be done to a T. This helps to ensure compliance by guaranteeing that business rules are followed and provides consistency in quality so management can rest assured that all tasks are completed in line with their organization’s, or industry’s, standards.
Improved visibility – Having a centralized function with automated updates offers greater transparency. Implementing dashboards alongside your process automation provides real time updates so employees and management can see the exact status of processes and operations.
Process orchestration – You can connect departments and processes from within your shared services center to deliver end-to-end automation. This helps to assure that your entire process lifecycle, from development to management, is handled in a single location.
Scalability – Once you have established an automation platform within your shared services center, you can scale operations as you see success. The organization can take on more business or increase capacity without worrying about overhead costs within individual departments.
Operational agility – With a centralized automation function, you can deliver a faster speed to market and respond faster to market dynamics to keep evolving and delivering value for your customers, while saving costs.
One of the leading benefits of introducing automation your shared services center is the increase in productivity. It helps to eliminate administrative tasks and avoid duplication of efforts so employees can focus on other activities. Bizagi customer Russell Reynolds saw significant results when outsourcing work to its new shared services function, including saving 50-person days a month on data entry.
Russell Reynolds is a leading executive search and leadership advisory firm that matches thousands of executives to the world’s top performing companies every year. The organization relies on both the quality and speed of delivering data to ensure the right people are placed in the right roles.
To meet their objectives, Russell Reynolds modified roles and responsibilities of people to enable them to focus on activities that bring real focus and client value. This was achieved by expanding the Russell Reynolds Shared Services team, along with three regional Centers of Excellence (CoE), to act as research hubs to focus on more administrative work and alleviate pressures from the local offices.
This expansion required new technology and processes to create, manage and track the work requests that local offices sent to Shared Services centers. They selected Bizagi as a platform to provide business process management and automation and create workflows to enable the processes.
Data entry that was redirected to their Shared Services function helped them to move the equivalent of 71,000 hours from their in-office team, which equated to 50-person days a month, with individuals spending 30% less time on data entry. This helps to ensure a high quality of data can be delivered to clients and improve efficiency of work, whilst also saving on operational costs.
“Our research folks now have a fully automated, hands-off process. It all happens during the natural workflow, drawing from our other systems within Russell Reynolds and Bizagi is orchestrating all that effort without any other effort required by the researcher,” said Ryan Shaw, Director of Application Development, Russell Reynolds
Business process management is the first, and arguably the most vital, step in the process automation journey. By managing processes to create end-to-end solutions before automating them, you can guarantee that you can optimize business operations. Bizagi customer Deutsche Post DHL Group was able to define process flows before creating a vendor portal with automated features to deliver an effective portal for over 280,000 employees.
Deutsche Post DHL Group needed to orchestrate processes across their enterprise from its Global Business Services. One example of how they achieved this was with their Vendor Master Data Management (MDM) portal, a vital component in the procurement process. This process previously relied on time-intensive manual collection and validation of data to fill the gaps between system breaks. DP DHL Group required an end-to-end solution to improve efficiency and ensure compliance.
Bizagi’s process modeling capability proved its excellence when creating the Vendor MDM Portal, as the team were able to define the process flow and the data validation in an easy and convenient way. Every individual using the portal was given a unique Vendor Identity through Bizagi. This helped to standardize the workflow and give everyone authorized access to the portal.
Using Bizagi Sites, they were able to build the vendor portal, allowing both DP DHL employees and external vendors to directly submit data. The portal uses business rules to automatically validate data upon entry to minimize repetitive review steps. Supplier details were also automatically replicated in the ePurchasing system to save further manual effort.
The Vendor MDM portal is being used by 280,000 employees, with Bizagi Sites providing the direct login point. Bizagi has automated tasks in the process such as initiating cases, submitting forms, requesting approvals and duplicating data in the ePurchasing solution.
“Bizagi allowed us to build digital services and to achieve savings while increasing the quality of our processes. We have created harmonized and resilient processes in our Global Business Services organization, which we would not be able to do without Bizagi. It is an absolute success factor of this program,” said Timo Neff, Team Lead, Automation Designers & Architects
If you’d like to hear more about how Deutsche Post DHL Group built a resilient and reliable digital shared services center, watch Timo Neff’s presentation, ‘Process Transparency through Integration of People & Automation at Deutsche Post DHL Group.’
