Towards a next generation Shared Service Center

Runbook is the solution of choice for the optimization of your Shared Service Center. By automating, standardizing and harmonizing financial processes, Runbook is unmatched in improving productivity while simultaneously enhancing the quality of your financial data. Companies using Runbook report significantly improved efficiency, increased transparency of processes and a far better quality of the document trail. Surprisingly, Runbook realizes a payback period of only six months or less.

The Challenge

The bundling of strategic support activities in a Shared Service Center is a popular theme in many organizations. A number of beneficial results is expected from this move, such as cost reduction, improved efficiency, higher transparency and higher quality financial data.  

But how realistic are these expectations? Research by Big Four accounting firms demonstrates that a significant number of companies judges their SSC's as inadequate. Indeed, almost a third evaluates their SSC's as not meeting expectations. High quality services for an agreeable price seem perennially out of reach. In general, these studies indicate that in many organizations the SSC is not delivering the goods, even after several years of operations.

According to this research, the causes are:

  • The intended cost reductions by reducing staff do not materialize quickly enough. Because underlying IT processes are not transparent and standardized, financial specialists are not "in control".
  • Internal customers are dissatisfied with services delivered. They experience the quality of SSC services as insufficient. They complain about nontransparent processes and judge the services rendered as too expensive.
  • SSC staff is too locked up in day-to-day operations to allocate time for the optimization of the services.


This is clearly a deadlock. As long as financial processes in Shared Service Centers are not transparent, staff cannot take control. As long as financial processes are not optimized, dissatisfaction will remain about the services rendered by an SSC. Thus the SSC will continue to be considered a liability instead of an asset. Is there a way to break this deadlock?

Runbook Software

Runbook Software offers several modules that optimize financial processes in Shared Services Centers. With its Financial Close, Internal Control and Compliance Documentation tools, Runbook is the solution of choice for an increasing number of companies improving the effectiveness of their Shared Service Centers. Runbook can be integrated seamlessly into existing SAP environments, even with multiple SAP versions and over multiple time zones.

Financial specialists will discover that through its powerful features and intuitive user interface, Runbook enables them to take control. IT specialists will welcome Runbook for its high Return on Investment and low Total Cost of Ownership.

Key Benefit Areas

Organizations that are optimizing their SSC with Runbook notice a number of distinct advantages that contribute to a positive Return on Investment. Key benefits are:

  • transparent financial processes.
  • improved productivity.
  • improved quality of financial data.
  • reduction of audit costs.


Transparent financial processes

Implementation of Runbook leads to clear delineation of activities between the Shared Service Center and the rest of the organization. This improves efficiency.

Runbook standardizes and harmonizes the IT infrastructure underlying the financial processes in the SSC.

Runbook's Dashboards and Compliance Documentation can present the complete status of the financial closing process from a bird's eye view. At any given time, a complete overview of all due activities is available, with deadlines and persons responsible; this includes activities outside the SSC.

With the aid of workflow diagrams and transparent review & approval processes, task divisions between the SSC and internal customers are mapped out clearly. This transparency clarifies the responsibilities of the SSC and its customers, while synchronizing activities.

Improved productivity

Best in class SSC's indicate that technology is an important enabler to further improve and maintain service levels. With the help of Runbook financial processes that are done manually can be automated substantially, thus further improving efficiency. Reduction of manual data entry and manual review lead to unmistakable savings of time and effort. Reduction of redundancy alone results in clear efficiency gains. This overall productivity improvement frees up time for more value adding activities.

Productivity related benefits:

  • Substantial cost savings by automating routine tasks.
  • Faster financial closing and control process.
  • More reliable service through automation, harmonization and standardization.
  • Improved (internal) customer satisfaction.
  • Faster and more effective legal compliance with e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley.
  • More time for finance to focus on strategic value adding services.


Improved data quality

Besides harmonizing and standardizing processes the fully automated execution of activities minimizes the risk of mistakes by manual execution. By integrating internal controls and report verification into the financial processes as such, higher data quality is achieved. As a bonus, management by exception is now within reach, freeing up time for value added analyses.

Reduction of audit costs

The integration of the audit process into Runbook leads to a transparent and effective (digital) audit trail. All relevant documentation is immediately available to the auditor checking the quality of the financial processes. In addition, the audit trail is centrally documented and accessible from every workspace throughout the organization. As a result, achieving compliancy with relevant legal regulations and guidelines is easier, while the auditor's effort is reduced sharply. For the SSC, for the internal customer and for the external auditor a sense of transparency is thus achieved so that compliancy status can be achieved sooner. These effects significantly reduce audit costs.

Conclusion

Runbook adds value over traditional solutions for execution and monitoring of  financial processes. By automation, standardization and harmonization of financial processes, operations within the Shared Service Center are optimized and the deadlock of the disappointing SSC is broken. Runbook enables high quality service levels for your SSC at an affordable price.

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