Maximise Shared Service Centre Benefits: Global Best Practices

The global shared service centre (SSC) outsourcing trend isn’t slowing down. Data from Europe suggests that the vast majority of SSCs successfully deliver efficiency benefits, with savings of 20% or more for most companies that embark on an outsourcing project.

That potential has seen SSC strategies spread across the business landscape. In 2023, the SSC market was valued at around $51.1 billion and projected to grow by around 16% annually up to 2030, at which point there will be an estimated 336,000 SSC units worldwide.

But while SSCs help companies find new efficiencies and drive strategic value, they’re not magic bullets. Running an SSC in an overseas location, while adhering to different business customs and navigating new regulatory concerns, is inherently more complex than domestic outsourcing.

With that in mind, the success of an SSC typically relies on the parent company developing a strong understanding not only of how to manage the transition of services to the new location, but also how to consolidate and manage them there over the long term.

In this post, we’ll discuss that challenge, setting out a series of key global SSC best practices.

Strategic Alignment

The central value proposition of every SSC is to generate cost-saving benefits for its parent company via the consolidation of services. However, the SSC isn’t a peripheral corporate add-on but a relationship that requires careful integration with existing infrastructure.

To that end, the SSC must be aligned with its parent company’s strategic objectives, including scaling and growth, tech integration, process automation, regulatory compliance, and more. To achieve that alignment, SSC leadership should prioritise the following:

HQ input

Company leadership must have clear visibility of SSC workflows and be able to efficiently input on business matters. That means enhancing visibility and accountability between the SSC and HQ and implementing a centralised communication network with instant messaging and video-call capabilities to ensure real-time (or at least highly efficient) implementation of feedback.

Establish KPIs

Most SSCs establish key performance indicators (KPIs) in the early stages of the outsourcing process. Those KPIs should primarily focus on cost savings to meet key outsourcing objectives, but may also include peripheral strategic targets such as scaling milestones, month-end close times and accuracy standards, regulatory compliance performance, and more.

Phased migration

It usually makes sense to conduct the SSC transition in phases. In a phased transition, a company initially moves only low-impact services to the SSC to gauge the impact on company infrastructure. With the low-impact services functioning and strategically aligned, it becomes easier to migrate remaining services while maintaining alignment.

Standardisation and Optimisation

Achieving SSC efficiency can be challenging given the need to deliver services across borders and time zones.

With that in mind, it’s important to standardise services as much as possible to ensure consistency and to reduce administrative friction. Standardisation provides a foundation for efficiency, and so SSCs should also seek to continuously optimise by building on KPIs, identifying and eliminating pain points, and adapting to regulatory and market changes.

Best practices for standardising and optimising outsourced services include:

Documentation and mapping

Thoroughly document services and map workflows onto SSC infrastructure prior to the migration. The more effective your documentation and mapping process, the easier it will be to ensure standardisation between locations.

Leverage technology

Eliminate tedious manual work by integrating software to automate SSC processes and workflows. The FloQast platform, for example, gives SSC teams the power to standardise and streamline the finance function from end to end, including automation tools for the month-end close, account reconciliations, and external auditor requests.

Templates and checklists

Introduce templates and checklists to ensure uniform procedures for complex workflows. In the finance function, this should (again) entail the month-end close, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, journal entries, and so on.

Talent and Culture

The transition to an SSC can be a turbulent and even confusing time for employees, who may see their roles change significantly. At the same time, it’s critical that companies fill SSC roles with capable, skilled employees in a manner that aligns with their outsourcing efficiency goals.

Handled correctly, an SSC can become an asset for employee recruitment and retention and promote a company-wide culture of improvement. 

Consider the following best practices:

Career development

SSC recruitment can be a career development opportunity for many employees, especially if the roles involve global mobility, specialised training programmes, and competitive compensation packages.

Onboarding

To smooth and streamline the transition to the SSC for new and existing employees, companies should offer structured, role-specific onboarding. The onboarding process should be supported by relevant training materials, with an added focus on guidance for roles that involve cross-border collaboration.

Collaboration

SSC teams need to work remotely with overseas counterparts, so it’s essential to foster a strong cross-departmental culture of collaboration. That culture should be supported by a robust communication infrastructure, including messaging and conferencing tools (Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.), and cloud-based software to ensure synchronisation across time zones. Company leadership should establish a regular check-in schedule to promote alignment.

Tech efficiency

SSC employees should be supported by tech automation wherever possible. Not only does software such as FloQast remove tedious manual requirements from critical workflows and reduce the potential for human error, but it also frees up employees to work on more strategic, value-adding, skill-intensive tasks that contribute to efficiency objectives. The option to share licensing and access to tech tools consolidated at the SSC location represents a further efficiency benefit.

Compliance and Control

Global SSCs need to navigate a complex compliance landscape that may span multiple jurisdictions. In this environment, SSC teams must not only fulfil their compliance requirements with accuracy and efficiency but also be capable of adapting to new risks and regulatory change without disrupting services.

Technology automation is key to SSC compliance and control best practices:

Regulatory alignment

Integrating automated control frameworks with SSC infrastructure can streamline compliance by ensuring effortless alignment with local regulatory regimes — in addition to boosting accuracy and reducing the potential for human error.

Real-time monitoring

Boost visibility of and accountability for SSC control tasks with real-time dashboards and checklist tools with clearly assigned responsibilities. Ideally, these dashboard tools should be capable of alerting controllers when tasks are delayed or missed, enabling them to deal with risks as early as possible.

Continuous improvement

The evolving nature of the global regulatory landscape means that SSC teams should seek to continuously improve their tech infrastructure — integrating innovations as they emerge, adapting to new risks, and finding new workflow efficiencies. Automation is central to that culture of continuous improvement: not only does ongoing tech automation help align SSCs with efficiency goals, but it also offers C-suite leaders back at HQ valuable peace of mind that their SSC teams are delivering for the company.

Planning for the Future

Your SSC outsourcing project should prioritise alignment, standardisation, culture, and compliance — but its long-term success will depend on more than that.

More specifically, the technology you choose to power your SSC migration will be critical to connecting those pillars. You’ll need a platform that centralises your tech infrastructure and enables remote teams to synchronise, while, at the same time, offering the flexibility you need to adjust to the local pressures and challenges affecting your SSC location.

FloQast delivers that kind of versatility, with software designed to help finance teams apply SSC best practices seamlessly — from centralising their tech infrastructure and automating workflows to ensuring controls and compliance, and streamlining the reporting process.

We’ve helped companies around the world execute their transitions to SSC models successfully — and then move beyond initial cost-saving benefits by deriving added strategic value from their outsourced infrastructure. Find out more about the value of the FloQast platform to SSC migrations by booking a demo of our SSC tools today.

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