THE B

Scaling Vs. Growth in Shared Service Centers

Episode Summary

Growth and scaling aren't the same things. Growth is about adding new resources to increase revenue, while scaling is about doing more with less. The latter, as an example, is what businesses in the shared service sector are required to deliver. Still, they can't do it on their own or in isolation of their customers, "the business." Scaling up requires taking a holistic view of the service delivery model, performance metrics and transforming how support functions operate. It focuses on doing more business partnering, insights, and operations using the same set of resources.

Episode Notes

How to do that, 

1. It is all starts with your business strategy. It is about making their vision, mission, and aspiration statements alive in their work culture. Leadership, executives, and management have to figure out who they are to their market or customer relative to competitors. Now, some might ask who that would be for a shared service center in a captive. Insourcing model - competitor, in my mind, will be a service benchmark of KPI.; it got to make sense as to why the business should or shouldn't outsource. You got to be competitive and relevant to your customers create a shortlist of prioritized work to advance that position. These things are functions of discipline, not size.
2. Build capacity to scale — don't just replicate: Being able to quickly multiply successes is not the same as building for sustainable growth. Taking the time to design an organization that can sustain growth distinguishes great executives from those that eventually get swept away by the wave. Scaling up to manage growth involves constantly questioning how your organization should look — in advance of the intensified growth. It is about exploring what could go wrong and how to overcome those challenges if they ever happen.

Welcome standardization — you won't lose the "entrepreneurial vibe." Fear of killing the entrepreneurial spirit, especially in dynamic or technology businesses where work culture is agile

 And standardization is faced with strong resistance to killing creativity. But this is rarely the case. 

Standardized processes liberate creativity because they free up distracted energy consumed by reinventing approaches every time something is done.

Over time, organizations without standardized processes become a