Data-Enabled Shared Services: A New Approach to Strategic Decisions In this modern day business world, companies are constantly seeking methods of streamlining business and make sound decisions. Centralizing functions like finance, human resources, computer and procurement has become a trendy model among shared services. Although shared services simplify operations and decrease expenses, their true value is achieved with the help of data analytics. The incorporation of data analytics in the shared services allows businesses to transcend transactional efficiency and use the insights to inform strategic decisions.
The Role of Shared Services in Modern Organizations Shared services are those services that bring together repetitive and administrative functions into a centralized body; which serves a number of business units in an organization. The model has a number of advantages such as: ✓ Cost efficiency through minimization of duplication of efforts. ✓ Consistency in processes through standardization. ✓ Better operations compliance and control. The traditional shared services are, however, mainly oriented towards operational efficiency. Organizations require actionable insights based on the data that are produced by these centralized units in order to spur growth and strategic results. Here is where the issue of integrating data analytics comes into play.
Why Data Analytics is a Game Changer Data analytics converts raw operation data to significant insights. As implemented in shared services, analytics offers: ✓ Performance Measures: Monitor the process efficiency, turnaround times and utilization of resources. ✓ Predictive Insights: Anticipate future events, e.g., staffing requirements, purchases or financial risks. ✓ Decision Support: Determine points of bottlenecks, cost-saving possibilities, and areas that need process enhancement. With analytics on board, shared services cease to be mere performers but they provide strategic intelligence to the organization.
Enhancing Finance and Accounting Functions Shared services are concentrated on finance and accounting. The use of analytics enables companies to go beyond simple reporting. For example: ✓ Real-time cash flows, expenses, budget variances can be made available on automated dashboards. ✓ Predictive models can define the possible financial risk or illegal transactions in advance. ✓ The benchmarking tools are able to compare the performance of the departments to the industry performance which will help in the allocation of resources better. Such understandings enable CFOs and finance teams to make strategic decisions informed as opposed to responding to historical information.
Optimizing Human Resources Through Analytics Payroll, recruitment and administration of employees are often done through shared services. Analytics is able to change HR into a strategic partner instead of a transactional one: ✓ Predictive analytics will be able to forecast the tendencies of attrition and labor shortages. ✓ The data on the performance of the employees can specify the gaps in skills and training requirements. ✓ Workforce planning tools make sure that the appropriate talent is used at the appropriate time and this enhances productivity. HR teams can play a direct role in strategic workforce management and organizational development by using the information to make informed decisions related to workforce management.
Improving Operational Efficiency Across Departments Analytics integration is also present in other shared services functions, such as procurement, IT and customer service: ✓ Spend analytics can help procurement teams to find cost-saving opportunities, and also manage supplier relationships more effectively. ✓ IT teams will be able to use the data of system performance to ensure the absence of outages and the improvement of user experience.
✓ The customer service units will be able to monitor the response times, issue resolution rates as well as customer feedback to enhance the quality of service. Analytics would help such teams to make proactive decisions and not use reactive methods.
Driving Strategic Decision-Making at the Organizational Level Data analytics enables the integration of shared services, thus providing the executives with a complete picture of the business operations. Decision-makers can: ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Determine areas of inefficiency and give them priority on interventions. Spread resources more efficiently on the basis of data-driven insights. The ability to foresee the changes in the market and act promptly. Establish long-term plans based on the correct operation intelligence.
This is a strategic fit that will assist the organizations to change shared services into cost centers into value-generation units.
Conclusion The inclusion of data analytics in shared services is no longer a choice rather than a necessity in organizations, which want to take strategic wise decisions. Shared services have the potential to deliver useful intelligence to finance, human resource, procurement, and information technology because of their operational efficiency and information-based insights. This integration will be used to plan in advance, optimize processes, and solve problems proactively and eventually make shared services a major company development and competitive edge. In the contemporary ever-busy business environment, the use of analytics in the shared services enables the leaders to make decisions decisively, dynamically and foresight. Source From: https://www.cac.net.in/blog/data-enabled-shared-services-a-new-approach-tostrategic-decisions/
