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HOUSTON AND LONDON (March 31, 2008) — Despite the fact that nearly 80 percent of Global 2000 companies have adopted a shared services model to deliver their back-office processes, many shared services organizations struggle with sustaining improvements and continuing to add value beyond  initial consolidation, simplification, and standardization savings.  EquaTerra’s new Shared Services Value Assessment helps shared services leaders identify strengths and weaknesses in their service delivery model, and provides an actionable roadmap for transformation.

The Shared Services Value Assessment evaluates process and organizational health, and delivers financial benchmarks and a customized, step-by-step roadmap for optimizing shared services performance.  Specific areas in which the Assessment helps shared services organizations include:

• Quantifies performance of shared services operations at both the process and organizational levels
• Identifies opportunities for improvement, including appropriate alternatives
• Demonstrates indicative savings and cost to achieve for transforming operations or migrating to alternative delivery models
• Provides a platform for discussions among shared services leaders, sponsors and clients regarding the strategy and direction of the shared services organization
• Delivers a step-by-step action plan for shared services optimization

QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Said Bob Cecil, EquaTerra’s Executive Director of Business and Financial Advisory Services, “Improvements to shared services performance must start with a comprehensive understanding of current state performance relative to the rapidly changing market options.  Our new Assessment leverages our proprietary tools and methodologies to drill down on both qualitative and quantitative factors.”   Cecil continued, “Following exhaustive assessments of myriad process- and organizationally-focused issues, we go beyond traditional benchmarking to provide the client with detailed, actionable guidance on how to achieve world-class shared services status.”

Qualitative Activities
For the qualitative component of the Shared Services Value Assessment, EquaTerra leverages online surveys, questionnaires and leadership interview guides to collect data on, validate and assess current costs, practices and service levels.  The Assessment analyzes nine dimensions of shared services operations including:  leadership; governance; organization; customer relationship model; best practice deployment; enabling tools and technologies; process control framework; customer satisfaction; and linkage to business outcomes.  Those dimensions are then evaluated against foundational elements EquaTerra deems requisite for shared services excellence. 

Quantitative Activities
As a companion to the qualitative assessment, EquaTerra utilizes its data collection templates to gather cost, headcount and transaction volume information, and conducts quantitative benchmarks against the performance of organizations in APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking CollaborativeSM (OSBC) database, the world’s largest repository of business metrics with more than 5,000 participants and covering over 1,200 performance metrics across multiple business functions.
EquaTerra then delivers a comprehensive evaluation that provides shared services leaders with hard data-driven insights into their operations.  Finally, EquaTerra works in collaboration with the client to determine methods for exploiting strengths and to establish a strategy to optimize operations.

EquaTerra sourcing advisors help clients achieve sustainable value in their IT and business processes. Our advisors average more than 20 years of industry experience and have supported over 2000 transformation and outsourcing projects across more than 60 countries. Supporting clients throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, we have deep functional knowledge in Finance and Accounting, HR, IT, Procurement and other critical business processes. EquaTerra helps clients achieve significant cost savings and process improvement with internal transformation, shared services and outsourcing solutions.  For more information, please contact Lee Ann Moore at +1 713.669.9292; leeann.moore@equaterra.com; www.equaterra.com.

A global resource for process and performance improvement, APQC discovers improvement methods, identifies benchmarks and best practices, disseminates findings and connects individuals. Spearheaded by APQC, the global Open Standards Benchmarking CollaborativeSM (OSBC) research helps executives benchmark comparable business processes.  Founded in 1977, the member-based nonprofit serves more than 500 organizations worldwide.  For information, call 800-776-9676 or visit www.apqc.org