“We moved many corporate services, including fairly complex ones, into the center and are still expanding,” he says. “Alongside IT support, Accounting and HR services, the center has also taken on more additional work in supporting contract, subcontract, and procurement, which define the lion’s share of the business.” Much of this work is fairly complex, he explains, reflecting the particular industry and the shifts it is undergoing. “Although we are not a GBS, we operate like one,” Jester adds. “Our job is to ensure we enable the business.” Automation drives resiliency as offshore falters An SSON survey conducted earlier this year confirms that nearly four out of 10 global SSO practitioners plan to accelerate automation initiatives to reduce dependency on manual skilled workers and out-of-country locations as a result of COVID-19 – and to ensure resilient operations no matter what . Robotic process automation (RPA) has been steadily gaining ground within Shared Services over the past six years, releasing humans from mundane, transactional work while at the same time – and perhaps more significantly – freeing up resources for more insight-based, knowledge-driven services.
COVID-19’s impact on global service delivery operations 37% of global SSOs surveyed say “We will accelerate our automation initiatives”
37%
Source: SSON survey Q1 2020
As part of this shift, outsourcing and offshoring strategies have also come under the microscope. While the real impact on outsourcing is not yet clear, some of the BPO providers in India, for example, have recently seen significant setbacks in productivity, faced with remote employees who don’t have ready access to the Internet. Separately, SSON surveys also indicate growing interest in exploring on- or nearshore solutions for Shared Services. As a result, traditionally popular, low-cost offshore locations may lose their luster as enterprises decide that control trumps cost and determine to shift the balance of their centers back to the U.S..
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