SSOW 2018: Reflections

Earlier this week I attended SSOW, an international conference focused on the shared services sector with participants ranging from large corporates to mid-market companies and from BPOs to providers of robotics and related software. The event was held in Lisbon and brought together over 500 delegates to discuss evolving challenges and prevailing trends across the sector.

On Monday Bjorn Bergabo joined other panelists on stage to share their respective company experience in implementing robotic process automation (RPA), a term coined by Blue Prism and now widely used to describe the adoption of algorithms to automate process steps. As expected robotics and automation were common themes throughout the event with plenty of terrific content shared by leaders in the field including UI Path, Datamatics, Automation Anywhere, and Redwood Robotics among many others. On Wednesday I attended a Masterclass delivered by Redwood offering the audience an opportunity to see a few real world examples of robotics in action both in HR Operations and in Operational Finance.

While I learned many new things during the conference, the most startling observation I retained from the experience was that all companies on the journey towards excellence in shared services struggle with very similar if not identical challenges. Whether it’s picking the right location for a multi-functional shared services center, or refining the delivery model per sub-process, or detangling and transitioning activities from one location to another, or documenting taxonomies, or ensuring the shared services organization delivers measurable value back to the business, or hiring and retaining talent… every shared service organization seems to be locked in a cycle of continuous improvement, constantly evolving its structure and operations in an effort to remain relevant as businesses and the markets they serve continue to evolve in fast and unpredictable ways. In short, no company has cornered the market on wisdom in this space.

Personally I found this to be both intriguing and inspiring. As employees we occasionally fall into the trap of thinking that our way of doing things is sub-par and that other companies have got this or that ‘figured out.’ In truth this is not the case and if anything, despite the challenges we face, I walked away from Lisbon feeling quite proud of what we’ve achieved over the past few years and where we’re at today within GE Global Operations.

Sure, our ‘to do’ list often seems insurmountable however we have lots to work with to bring GE to the next level: our ability to adapt to new tools and methodologies to achieve desired results, our laser focus on key leading and lagging indicators of performance, our ability to distinguish between what’s important and what’s critical, our innate sense of curiosity, our relentless appetite to engage one another with both candor and respect and our openness to see one another as ‘work in progress’ grant us the opportunity to come to work every day with a clear sense of purpose… to help GE continue to grow, while growing and developing as individuals.