While shared services has been on the agenda for a number of years, and indeed our client Connect Law (Kettering & Wellingborough) has operated shared services for over three years, the pace of shared service implementation appears to be increasing.  Over the past few months, a number of other clients have begun their shared services journey. 

Regardless of where one stands on the pros and cons of shared services, and their impact on efficiency gains, it is clearly a direction that many local authorities will follow.

Technology plays a significant part on the shared-services journey, but it needs to be considered in connection with the new business structures and processes to ensure that the new shared service organisation gains the most from it.  As you prepare for change, it’s important to consider whether the technology you choose to support your new organisation will:

• Support and encourage consistency – of approach, process and documentation as you standardise around best practices
• Make it easy for you to create new organisational structures – allowing you to share cases, contacts, diaries regardless of where you sit, and also support remote access/flexible working practices
• Manage processes in an holistic and end-to-end way - providing consistent management information and reporting
• Reduce management over heads and improve productivity – by eliminating the repetitive and time wasting activities to concentrate on professional service delivery
• Bring people along with the change – provide the ability to work flexibly and naturally, rather than force-fit into a specific way of working
  
  

In my experience, allowing IT and technology suppliers to participate early-on in the change management process is the best recipe for success.