4 Key Tips for Managing AP Shared Services

From: IOMA
By: Andy Dzamba

Often overlooked in the move to AP shared services are the "soft" elements involved, such as managing the people involved. Here are four tips to help you successfully deal with these elements.

1. Beef up your leadership skills. It takes a strong leader to manage the transition to shared services. Reason: You'll get plenty of resistance on all fronts. Make sure you incorporate change management techniques into your plan.

2. Train, train, train. To overcome your staff's fear of the change--and to help them deal with the new setup after it's up and running--give them extensive training. If you think you have given them enough--give them some more. Under-training is one of the most common problems.

3. Spread accountability. The success of AP shared services will depend on the efforts of three groups of players: the business units, the task force charged with implementation, and the new shared services department itself. To foster cooperation among these three groups, all of them should be held accountable for the success of the initiative. To do this, you need to make sure everybody has a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities.

4. Make quality the prime focus. Customers--both internal and external--will worry most about service quality and lack of control. Therefore, this should be your top priority. Many organizations use service level agreements (SLAs) to accomplish this.