Govern Shared Services
Find the optimal path to shared services governance.
Contributors
- Barry-Wehmiller
- CP Partners
- Convergent Technology Solutions
- County of Orange
- Effectus
- Government of Alberta
- Kingspan
- Vale
- An additional 9 companies contributed to this research. Due to the sensitivity of the information, their identities will be kept confidential.
Your Challenge
- IT managers have come under increasing pressure to cut costs, and implementing shared services has become a popular demand from the business.
- Business unit resistance to a shared services implementation can derail the project.
- Shared services rearranges responsibilities within existing IT departments, potentially leaving no one accountable for project success and causing cost overruns and service performance failures.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Over one-third of shared services implementations increase IT costs, due to implementation failures. Ineffective governance plays a major role in the breakdown of shared services, particularly when it does not overcome stakeholder resistance or define clear areas of responsibility.
- Effective governance of a shared services implementation requires the IT leader to find the optimal combination of independence and centralization for the shared service provider.
- Three primary models exist for governing shared services: entrepreneurial, mandated, and market-based. Each one occupies a different location in the trade-off of independence and centralization. The optimal model for a specific situation depends on the size of the organization, the number of participants, the existing trend towards centralization, and other factors.
Impact and Result
- Find the optimal governance model for your organization by weighing the different likely benefits and costs of each path.
- Assign appropriate individual responsibilities to participants, so you can effectively scope your service offering and fund your implementation.
- Support the governance effort effectively using published Info-Tech tools and templates.
1. Understand each of the governance models and what each entails
Build a plan for governing an implementation.
2. Choose the optimal approach to shared services governance
Maximize the net benefit conferred by governance.
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