Learning from the best: SSON's Top 20 Most Admired SSO/GBS Listing

Last month I joined European practitioners at SSO Week Europe, Autumn in London. I summarized my takeaways in an article you can read here, but in short it boiled down to figuring out some #core issues. Not surprisingly all of these issues are being embraced and addressed by SSON R&A’s Top 20 Most Admired group – and we commend them for it.

1. Figuring out the People:

Where do you find them? How do they want to work? How do you monitor their wellbeing?

Leading Shared Services are making a people strategy the central plank of their operations. Our newly released Top 20 Most Admired SSOs and GBS list offers a number of examples of how to get this right. For example:

Woolworths Group caught our attention with their commitment to “empowering our people to give voice to their passions within the workplace through our hugely successful Culture Tribe. This group of eight culture squads delivers for the people, by the people with a great amount of support from the Leadership team. Of note in the past year, our Community Engagement, Going Green, and Relationships & Interactions squads have been hyperactive in ensuring our teams are present and visible in the communities in which we conduct our work, and also providing strong pathways for our teams to connect in a flexible physical working environment.”

2. Figuring out the Experience:

First, figure out what counts as “experience” and make it a priority. Customers expect you to meet SLAs. That is not an experience. Everything that comes afterwards is. 

From the Top 20 list, we found Smith+Nephew’s approach impressive: 

“Our GBS offers seamless customer experience by providing a multifunctional GBS portal which is a one-stop shop for 7 GBS functions. Last year, more than 250 new GBS portal enhancements digitizing and automating workflows, driving numerous business benefits and improving GBS customer experience were implemented. The introduction of Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a customer satisfaction metric allowed us to benchmark against other GBS centers worldwide. We’ve built a robust NPS framework and keep enhancing the service improvement process by providing real-time detractor alerts or AI-engined sentiment analysis. With a very high volume of tickets (approx. 25,000 per month), we are able to maintain high quality services, as evidenced by our excellent NPS result this year (78 in comparison to 74 in 2021) and GBS service recommendation by Smith+Nephew employees.”

3. Figuring out the Purpose:

Leading with purpose. Recruiting for a purpose. Delivering to serve a purpose… all worthy sentiments. But what do they mean? 

Again from the Top 20 GBS, Lilly has made its purpose the backbone of a strong talent strategy:

“Our purpose at Lilly is to create medicines that make life better for people around the world. When we fulfil our purpose, we help others fulfil theirs. Lilly as an organization want our employees to feel they are part of one team with one purpose which is to be driven by the desire to make a meaningful difference for people to make life better. Our people are behind the value we bring to patients and society, and that is why we actively cultivate a culture of teamwork and inclusion – so everyone can bring their authentic self, diverse ideas, perspective, and experiences. This has been Lilly’s key strong point in retaining Talents and keeping attrition way below market rate.”

4. Figuring out the Women:

Women in business. Women in GBS and Shared Services. Women leaders. We’ve heard this for years but never have we been held more accountable.

PepsiCo, another Top 20 GBS, has made its commitment to raising the proportion of women in managerial positions clear:

“The GBS organization is injecting newenergy bringing in more top talent (90% with advanced degrees) to PepsiCo and we aim to achieve and sustain 50% women in managerial roles by 2030 (currently is 47%), contributing to PepsiCo’s committed to building a better workplace and world by advancing human rights and diversity, equity and inclusion.”

You can read more about what makes our Top 20 list stand out here, and benchmark yourself against their aggregated results here. Benchmarks fall into 9 core areas including Attrition, Automation and P2P.

NEWSFLASH: If you think your GBS is something to shout about … Send in Your Application for the World’s Best Global Business Services Award!

SSON R&A is launching a World’s Best GBS Study & Award to identify a truly outstanding GBS – one that reflects the innovative and forward-looking policies enshrined in the model, and delivers clear value-add beyond process efficiencies. Applications have just opened and will run until Jan 2023. To find out more about the award and evaluation process, please click here.

New Location Survey is ongoing

The final of our 2022 Research Insight Report series comes out soon, focusing on how SSO and GBS are adapting their global footprints to take on more scope, minimize risk exposure, and reflect the realities of a remote workforce (and hybrid office!). Please share your insights here.  

And look out for “The SSO/GBS Location Report: How to Leverage a Global Footprint in a Hybrid World,” published in December here.

Till next time,

Barbara Hodge