Shared service platform for growth

Want to mitigate business risk and improve efficiency? Want to create consistency of business practice across multiple geographies? Let Pathfinder help your organisation move to a shared services model.

Why move to
Shared Services?

Organisations are often faced with the following challenges:

Inconsistent business practices across departments and geographies leading to inefficiencies and duplication of effort
Difficulties enforcing consistent controls/risk management across disparate departments, sub-companies and geographies
Inability to scale the business without adding significant level of resources in multiple locations
Lack of flexibility in local organisations to deal with peaks and troughs in demand – can lead to over-resourcing for peaks and/or backlog during peak periods
Difficulties with staff retention due to heavy administration requirement
Repetitive administration tasks being done by multiple people in multiple ways, leading to inconsistency and poor compliance.
Difficulties in viewing and reporting on fragmented data across the business

Pathfinder help you turn these
pain points into real, measurable outcomes.

By moving to a Shared Service you can experience:

A more efficient cost-effective function – do more with less
The ability to scale effectively to support business growth across multiple geographies
Reduction in business risk through consistent application of policies and controls
Central visibility of actionable management information
Global process ownership to continuously drive best practice and process improvement
Significant benefits can typically be seen in Finance, HR and Customer Experience functions where consistency and controls are important

The Pathfinder difference

Pathfinder have successfully supported a number of clients in implementing effective shared service functions. We work in partnership with our clients to make the best use of internal resources and expertise, while bringing our own expertise and experience to the table.

Depending on client need we can provide different types of support

Greenfield design of the shared services function and selected of appropriate new technology to be introduced to the business
Working with clients to improve the efficiency of their existing shared services function through process analysis and design, systems enhancements and staff skills development

Our delivery and assurance practice ensures that the design, specification, build, implementation and successful adoption of change and delivery of benefits is flawlessly planned and executed.

What’s
our methodology?

We start the process with a diagnosis and design phase, typically comprising the following steps:

Identify and engage stakeholders
Articulate the vision for the organisation and the ambition for shared services
Review the existing “as is” landscape (People, processes, technology)
Identify waste and find value pockets
Identify options on how to structure the shared services function and its interaction with its customers in the rest of the business
Design the “ to be” model
Develop a business case and high level implementation plan

Once design is complete, our delivery and assurance practice will ensure that there is a plan in place to deliver the benefits of the change. A programme or project manager will ensure:

Technology vendors are effectively managed
Required delivery commitments from internal teams are managed
Change management requirements are assessed and planned for to ensure successful rollout and adoption of the shared service processes
Ensure appropriate governance structures are in place to support the project and ensure it remains on track to deliver the business benefits

Careful planning of a shared service implementation is critical to ensure that the benefits are delivered without introducing other business risk along the way. There may be staff sensitivities to the changes which need to be carefully managed, and the starting landscape is often fragmented, with geographically disparate teams. Pathfinder can offer deep change management expertise to assess the impact of the change and ensure there is an effective plan in place across all aspects of the delivery.

Alternatively , if the client already has strong capability in these areas, the Programme Lead may form a joint team with the client resource, Pathfinder resources and any other third parties required to ensure that the outcomes are delivered successfully.

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