1. FOUR PERSPECTIVES ON:
SHARED SERVICES
IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

2. 2
Dear Shared Services Executive,
With budget cuts looming and civilian expectations on the rise, more and more public sector
organizations are considering shared services models. Grant Farrell, Managing Director USA,
Chazey Partners, says, “Adopting a Shared Services model can streamline processes, drive
efficiency, reduce waste, push down costs and improve public service delivery to customers.”
Grant is just one of many prominent experts sharing their insights at Shared Services & Process
Improvement for Higher Education, Healthcare & Government. The three day conference in San
Diego, November 13-15, features University administrators, Government directors, and Healthcare
leaders.
In advanced of the Summit, we worked with Chazey Partners to create this roundtable report on
shared services in the public sector. Each topic discussed in this report will be discussed in greater
detail at the Summit. We hope to see you there!
Shawn Siegel
Digital Content Manager
IQPC
PERSPECTIVES:
Wade Crosson, HR Shared Service Center Manager, Berkeley Lab
Andrea Seymour, COO, Horizon Health Network
Grant Farrell, Managing Director USA, Chazey Partners
Jim Leedy, Executive Director UCPath Center, University of California
TOPICS:
What Role Should Shared Services Play?..……………………………………………………………….…..…. 3
Why Has the Public Sector Been Slow to Adopt Shared Services?…………………………….…..… 4
What Are The Keys to Successful Shared Services?……………………………….………………….….…. 6
What Makes the Public Sector Unique?..…………………………………………………………………..……. 8

3. 3
WHAT ROLE SHOULD SHARED SERVICES PLAY?
Grant Farrell
Managing Director USA, Chazey Partners
“The global recession has put significant pressure on public organizations to provide
better service with a reduced budget. Customers of Public Bodies, both citizens and
businesses, today have higher expectations of service levels and expect a positive
customer experience along with better returns on the taxes they pay. To address
this, the public sector must find ways of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of
its service delivery. Adopting a Shared Services model can streamline processes,
drive efficiency, reduce waste, push down costs and improve public service delivery
to customers, both citizens and businesses.”
Andrea Seymour
COO, Horizon Health Network
“Government typically has fragmented services with a large amount of duplication,
inconsistent practice, and inefficient use of resources. Shared Services allows you to
shift decentralized delivery services into a single organization, introducing
consistency of services, single policies, and improving the implementation of those
single policies. It creates a vast amount of opportunity to optimize resources, reduce
overall headcount cost, achieve better ROI and improve public services.”
Wade Crosson
HR Shared Service Center Manager, Berkeley Lab
“Shared Services could be considered a forward-thinking approach to how business
can be done differently (more effective and efficiently) in the public sector, which
results in a better consolidated back office operation and deployment of more up-to-
date technologies. Secondly, leveraging economies of scale, Shared Services helps
Public Sector organizations perform more with less in response to budget concerns.”
Jim Leedy
Executive Director UCPath Center, University of California
“Shared Services should be viewed as an enabler to allow the Public Sector to
perform many of their administrative functions in a more efficient model than is
currently in existence today. In addition to the improvements in efficiency, Shared
Service Centers over the longer term operate in a more cost effective manner, which
allows the Public Sector to spend their scarce resources more wisely.”

4. 4
WHY HAS THE RATE OF ADOPTION BEEN SLOW?
Grant Farrell
Managing Director USA, Chazey Partners
“Shared service adoption in Canada and the US has taken place at different paces.
Canada is in a different position than most other countries in that it has more mature
Shared Services in the public sector than in the private sector. I think this is much to
do with the innovation that there is in the public sector in Canada. This combined
with the relative lack of bureaucracy in Canada making it easier to make decisions
and follow them through.
However in the US, until the financial crisis of 2008 adoption of Shared Services in
the public sector was patchy at best. Once budgets were tightened following the
crisis of 2008 public sector bodies suffered budget cuts and had to look to ways to do
more for less. Standardization, elimination of waste, reduction in duplication of
effort was all necessary in order to drive efficiency savings. Shared Services which
was gathering momentum in the private sector was viewed as a solution. Public
sector bodies that are often viewed as resistant to change could benefit from the
experiences of the private sector.”
Andrea Seymour
COO, Horizon Health Network
“There are a number of reasons that prevent the Public Sector from operating like a
business. The first one is the political cycle. For example, in Canada, the Government
Election cycle is every four years. However, the time invested in setting up Shared
Services is typically longer than a political cycle. Therefore, it is even more critical for
the Public Sector than the Private Sector to establish Shared Services with a clear
roadmap and ROI in order to get traction and sustain its operation.
The second reason is the complex and sophisticated systems of accountability,
leadership and reporting structures in the Public Sector. Having multiple decision
makers slows down the levels of leadership agreement and engagement. Therefore,
it is often difficult to have a unified voice or agreement from the top as local
autonomy can be impacted by a shared service approach.”
continued >>

5. 5
Wade Crosson
HR Shared Service Center Manager, Berkeley Lab
“There are a number of reasons for this. The first is cost. It takes an investment in
technology and resources to reshape the work, which is extremely difficult to justify
with public funds in the Public Sector. This requires diligence to demonstrate the
return on investment. Secondly, lack of internal resources with required skill sets to
perform transformation. The third point is that there is an inherent skepticism about
corporate approaches to running business in the government sector. Last but not
least, it is challenging in the public sector to reallocate resources, restructure
organization, and redefine roles for longer term employees. These challenges need
to be addressed to respond to the fast evolving skill sets required in the new service
delivery model.”
Jim Leedy
Executive Director UCPath Center, University of California
“The Public Sector usually has a very high degree of governance which can be an
inhibitor to moving forward with new initiatives. Within the Public Sector, Higher
Education is typically a very collaborative environment that can lead to longer
decision making timeframes. Process convergence is also typically much more
difficult to achieve in higher education due to the autonomy that many locations
have historically had in running their business. And finally, Shared Services may also
be viewed as a threat to jobs within the various functional groups being impacted
and may lead to longer periods of evaluation.”

6. 6
WHAT ARE THE KEYS TO SUCCESS?
Grant Farrell
Managing Director USA, Chazey Partners
“The cornerstone of successful Shared Services is a robust Customer Relationship
Management Framework supported by a strong governance structure. With good
governance in place the right people will be doing the job which will ensure the
process run smoothly. By implementing the correct technology combined with the
right people and efficient processes the customer will have a positive experience.”
Wade Crosson
HR Shared Service Center Manager, Berkeley Lab
“Executive leadership support and buy-in are clearly critical for the implementation
of Shared Services, which involves a great amount of change management and
service delivery model transformation. Investment in technology also plays a key
role. Taking my organization as an example, we are a research institution,
investment in the research side has historically outweighed investment of
technology on the administrative and operational support side. It took a concerted
effort to develop a strong business case to invest in cutting-edge technology
solutions to meet changing business needs. We are now in the process of replacing
our core HR system, which is a significant investment for us. However, it is going to
strengthen our HR services delivery to meet the new demands. What’s more, it is
equally key to address the skills transformation needed from the staff who are going
to deliver services in the new model.”
Jim Leedy
Executive Director UCPath Center, University of California
“The change management effort involved in projects of this nature is huge. In order
for Shared Services to be successful, there needs to be a strong level of Executive
Sponsorship and a very well defined and agreed upon scope of services for the
Shared Service Center.
In order for Shared Services to be successful in the public sector it should be based
upon a Customer Relationship Model, which has embedded in it several key factors.
These include (but are not limited to) Service Partnership Agreements, Key
Performance Indicators/Metrics, a culture based on continuous process
improvement, and an engagement model with the customer that supports ease of
issue escalation and performance issue resolution.”

7. 7
Andrea Seymour
COO, Horizon Health Network
“In my view, there are 5 critical success factors for shared services in the Public
Sector. First: Top-down leadership. Without substantive commitment, intentionality
and support from the top, shared services initiatives will struggle.
Second: Solid vision with an achievable and realistic plan. That means integrating
internal resources and knowledge with external expertise and capability. When I
worked on shared services project for The Government of New Brunswick (GNB), I
had worked with two external consultancy firms, one of which was Chazey Partners
who brought us external specialized skill to do knowledge transfer.
Third: True collaborative transformation approach. That means engaging the
community involved in decisions that affect go forward approach. Without
collaboration, the shared services team will come to an agreement with service
recipients on the mechanics but will undoubtedly run into roadblocks on
implementation. Strong change management and relationship building mitigate the
impact of those roadblocks and contribute to a smoother and more harmonious
implementation. The key words, as they relate to shared services implementation in
the Public Service, are really transparency and collaboration.
Fourth: Collocating your people. It is difficult to do but to achieve consistency of
processes, you have to move people out of where they are in order to build and
sustain new processes and assure adherence to a single set of policies. Collocating
people gives you a chance to leverage resource utilization, and create Economies of
Scale through process standardization and consistent policy and procedure
application. We were fortunate to have Chazey Partners as our partner who were
instrumental in helping us to develop and implement a solid approach towards the
changing of reporting lines and structures.
Fifth: Strong project management philosophy and model. It is critical to create a
Shared Services project environment with common language, repeatable processes,
and structured methodology and approach across multiple functions and
organizational levels. Taking the GNB project as an example, we were a project team
of 5 who set up 5 shared services streams introducing 4 technologies and affecting
28 departments and agencies, over a three year period. The services introduced
include AP, Payroll, IT services, IT infrastructure, and Print Optimization. Solid
project management was critical to our success.”

8. 8
WHAT MAKES THE PUBLIC SECTOR UNIQUE?
Grant Farrell
Managing Director USA, Chazey Partners
“The overall goal of improving efficiency and offering a better customer experience
at a lower cost is the same for both the Private and Public Sectors. With the public
sector we have to be aware of constraints that are outside our control (e.g.
legislation). Public Sector transformation tends to take longer as the decision making
process is more drawn out than the Private Sector.”
Andrea Seymour
COO, Horizon Health Network
“In the public sector, the drivers and external factors are different. There are
different decision making cycles due to the bureaucratic structure and the political
cycle. In addition, recognition, influence and collaboration are requirements when
establishing a shared services centre in the public sector. Our perception of public
sector SS organizations is that they are mandated, driven from the top down to
contribute to the bottom line. For instance, in the Government of New Brunswick,
we were mandated to achieve our saving with no layoff of staff, and no mandatory
relocation of staff between communities. We were able to use attrition to achieve
30% cost reduction in Account Payable, and a 25% headcount reduction on payroll,
but had to do this through natural attrition of department staff.”
Wade Crosson
HR Shared Service Center Manager, Berkeley Lab
“We must be nimble, flexible, and responsive to the needs of the customer. There
needs to be a balance point between the old way of doing things and the ideal future
state. In our experience we have a difficult time making drastic changes, which
drives us to do a phased implementation and focus on incremental progress. It is also
important to apply CRM concepts to understand customer requirements and
reconcile the difference between what customers want vs. what they truly need.”
Jim Leedy
Executive Director UCPath Center, University of California
“When moving forward with Shared Services in the Public Sector, one must be aware
of the governance model (in higher education), customer segmentation, and the
multitude of diverse business processes which may be impacted by your project.
Ensure that a voice of the customer mechanism exists for your project and that there
is a clear understanding of who makes decisions. Never underestimate the amount
of change management effort required to achieve business transformation and
standardization of processes.”

9. 9
We’ve rebranded the Shared Services for Public Sector
Summit to highlight our three important themes. Its
now called: Shared Services & Process Improvement
for Higher Education, Healthcare & Government. Join
us in San Diego, November 13-15 to learn about the
latest ways to cut costs while improving service
excellence. Download the agenda for more
information and to learn about our new focus day
dedicated to higher education:
Website: SSPublicSector.com
Agenda: Latest Brochure
Email us: info@iqpc.com