In this interview with Albert Olley, CEO of NSW Businesslink, he shares his perspectives on shared services in organisations and opens up about his tips and lessons for others to achieve the success of NSW Businesslink. In particular, he talks about the importance of an governance framework so that SSOs are optimised and bring the best value of organisations. Albert Olley is presenting at the 14th Australasian Shared Services and Outsourcing Week 2011, to be held in Melbourne in April. For more information about the event, please visit www.sharedservicesweek.com.au, email enquire@iqpc.com.au or call +61 2 9229 1000. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter (www.Twitter.com/SSONetwork)

1. CEO: Importance of an effective governance
framework in Shared Services
Q&A with Albert Olley, CEO of New South Wales Businesslink
SSON
Before we delve into some of the main issues we are going to discuss at the
conference, can you give us a little rundown about where Businesslink is at in
terms of its shared services and can you give us an idea of the scales,
functions, maturity and so forth?
Albert Olley
Businesslink is a shared services provider within the New South Wales public
sector. We are an organisation with about 850 staff spread across 6 locations
in New South Wales. Our clients have about 22,000 staff that we support
spread over about 950 locations worldwide.
From a service perspective, our agent clients provide service to approximately
250,000 of the most vulnerable people in New South Wales.
As a shared service business, the range of products we provide cover all
aspects of finance, HR and IT. We also cover property and facility
management, records management, and projects both for developing IT
systems, building and renovating properties and office facilities.
In relation to the type and nature of services we provide, we do a mixture of
both transactional and advisory services, as well as just straight processing in
relation to each of the products we service.
At the moment, we’re in the process of growing up the value chain from being
a manager of services for the client to a provider of managed services. And
whilst this is a small sudden change, it’s a major move up the value chain to
actually provide the services rather than just manage them.
From our maturity perspective, Businesslink has gone through the process of
amalgamating functions and staff together as we created, into stabilising and
consolidating our functions. But we’re about to go back into another round of
consolidation as our clients transfer similar functions that still exist in their
organisation over to us; and as part of doing this, we’re also stepping into
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2. another round of standardisation and automation, and moving into the
optimisation phase of the maturity.
We also have moved up the maturity curve on the client-relationship side, in
such a way that the clients are now seeing us as a provider of valued services,
and working with us to achieve standardisation across all clients. This is
rather than looking at their own individual needs, which provides great
opportunities for us to move to the next round of cost and processing
efficiencies.
SSON
In your 2010 annual report, you noted that the changes to DHS have provided
“impetus for new reforms” and that you’re “refocusing on the way we work
with the client agencies”. Now, can you explain how this structure has
unleashed new life into Businesslink? What kind of overall strategies are you
guys now gearing towards?
Albert Olley
As I mentioned previously, our client relationships have moved significantly.
At a maturative point, we are working together to actively standardise
processes and solutions across the board. What the changes within human
services have enabled us to do is accelerate that level of change and push it
even further, in that we’re able to achieve common focus and have
standardisation and common governance across human services as well as
ourselves. This lets the program achieve wider benefits and get benefits at a
faster pace than what we would have been negotiating with individual clients.
When you couple the changes within human services with the reform agenda
that New South Wales government has adopted through the blueprint for
corporate/shared services and released in 2010 – the two initiatives together
have actually provided a real and solid mandate to reform and accelerate
what the shared service, provision of services, and shared service model is.
In that context, strategies that are being adopted in the changes that we’re
gearing around in a number of areas largely in common and standardised
solutions for all clients so where we had variances before we’re looking to
standardise and get common outcomes. Providing clarity in responsibilities
and roles between what the purchaser responsibility and the provider
responsibilities are; and that within the department of human services in
Businesslink we are working very strongly with our purchaser-provider
relationship and the strategy around simplifying and consolidating functions.
So if there’s only one provider of the service that’s a great road across all
clients in themselves. A strategy to achieve separation and clarity in who sets
strategy and direction versus who actually delivers the service to make the
strategy and provides the advisory in transactional services; and the final
aspect that we’re focusing on in the change and reform agenda that human
services change has allowed us to drive is to really focus on client
engagement, whilst we have a degree of client engagement this is now
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3. putting in place a very strong client engagement model looking at what are the
client’s strategic directions, their needs, their purchasing trains to be out with
our modified out process, as in products and modify their consumption, to
actually get the best value out of the services we provide.
Arthur Chan
Now that it’s 2011, what are your more specific goals for the next 12 months?
SSON
Specific goals for the next 12 months are probably in 5 key areas. First one is
in stock and cultural development within the organisation. We had a focus on
building our people, building our capabilities of our people to endow them to
lead the organisation and drive change and be innovative. So continuing to
build that leadership skills role, subject matter skills, personal capabilities, as
well as focusing on competencies in customer services innovation. So, from
the start perspective, to get the best results and effectiveness, we really
needed the staff powered and equipped and that’s the number one area of
focus.
We’re also looking at organisation structure and our operating model and
looking to move ourselves from a functionally aligned organisation to a service
operating model and that comes with significant change to the way we worked,
to the way our people relate, and that will drive a large level of change and
clarity for roles and responsibility but will also help with your customer
engagement on providing clear direction for them on who is doing what and
how we work with them to drive improvement and change.
That from a structure perspective, coupling that to an operating model change
on getting a single point of contact in getting our delivery channel strategy
rights, so we are maximising self-service and telephone-based services,
resolving as much of the service and fulfillment request for those
appointments and contact between the structure and the operating model we
will get a large range of efficiencies and operating improvements in there.
Third area of strategic focus in goals is around service management, and
getting service management culture and capability built through all product
lines and also this is in the organisation. We’ve been delivering good service,
but in a bespoke manner and we’re looking as part of their staff development
to really build the service management culture and capabilities through the
organisation.
Fourth goal is in conjunction with department of human services in driving the
first phase of standardisation and automation in doing services and processes
through, and using that as a vehicle to smooth to the next level of efficiency in
cost of service.
The final goal which is in core and the pinning one is in achievement of our
efficiency improvement targets and cost savings. Cost effectively every dollar
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4. that we save in providing services is a dollar that can be released back to
providing services to the broader New South Wales community.
SSON
Now, in your session at the conference, you’re talking about how important it
is to have an effective governance framework in place when embarking on
your shared services journey. What kind of tips can you give to the audience
and other organisations in managing competing priorities, and what kind of
lessons have you learned?
Albert Olley
In starting this answer, a highlight that there’s probably no silver thoughts in
this situation, it is horses for courses situation and it’s from my perspective it’s
about delivering and managing relationships and how this business is running
the client’s engagement, versus a model of fulfilling and taking orders.
I think for me, governance is a key aspect in a lot areas of their life, whether
it’s personal or work and having clarity around who the decision makers are,
who are influencers, and what stakeholders you’re going to manage, helps
you navigate the way you can get your outcomes and achieve what you’re
trying to achieve, most effectively and efficiently.
That has a couple of bad elements to it, one is around understanding the
various personalities that you try working with, their preferences, the agendas
they’re working for, navigating through the journey to actually ensure that it’s
helping everyone in need. Governance framework is operating on a win-win
environment rather than a win-loss particularly in the public sector
environment for shared services, it’s a partnership mutual arrangement to get
benefit role outcome, and being able to achieve a win-win outcome really
helps the business on both sides remain positive and drive forward.
For me, I think there are a couple of key elements in the actual governance
arrangement which are tips and which help achieve good governance
outcomes and good outcomes for the shared services, they for me are –
clarity on the mandate of the shared service. So that from a client perspective,
a purchaser perspective they understand what it is they are buying off the
shared service; and from the shared service organisation they have real
clarity on what it is that they are supposed to be providing and what is
expected.
Service levels are very easy to talk about but often very hard to put in place.
They get generally understood, but it helps you if you understand what are
negotiable, what are non-negotiable elements and that the executive in senior
management in both the client in the shared services organisation are fully
on-board and understanding what that mandate is. That flows on learning to
provide real clarity in the roles and responsibilities and decision making rights
of both organisations – the client as well as the provider, and open people up
to the challenge when things are brought up and demands even down the line
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5. with the outcomes of shared services or align with their broader objectives, so
people aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo and who put their hand up and
say, ‘no, I don’t think this is where we should be going,’ or ‘here’s the
challenge that presents’.
I’ve mentioned before the clarity of service expectations in the services
provided in good definition documentation of what the services are, what the
service standards are. Often, and we see this in our own customer
satisfaction survey, that lower cost of service can often relate to lower
standard of service which generates into a lower customer satisfaction rating.
But if that’s what the client and the provider have agreed, then that’s
something you’ve got to work through and work in how you manage that in the
relationship. I think that then flows into strong and ongoing change
management and communication. Shared services probably like a lot of
projects have to put a lot of effort into communicating and doing change
management when they get set up. But then once you’re up and running that
probably winds away and needs to stay on the radar, stay on the agenda to
make sure there is good ongoing communication between the client, between
the shared service provider on what the services are, what the service
deliverables are, what’s changing, what’s new, what’s different to help the
staff and the client understand what the shared service provider is providing,
and also to help the shared service provider staff understand how their clients
are changing, so that we’re not providing square boxes trying to fit in the
round holes in aligning expectations.
Albert Olley will be speaking at the 14th Australasian Shared Services &
Outsourcing Week to be held in Melbourne in April 2011. In particular, he
will give a session on the foundations of a successful government
shared service. He will also take part in the a group session on Centres
of Excellence in SSOs.
For more information about the event, please visit
www.SharedServicesWeek.com.au or call +61 2 9229 1000. Alternatively
you can email enquire@iqpc.com.au. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter
@SSONetwork.
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6. Albert Olley, Chief Executive at NSW Businesslink
BBus (Accounting and Computing), GradDip Applied
Corporate Governance
Albert was formally appointed as Chief Executive in
September 2010 after acting in the position since
March 2010.
Before his appointment as Chief Executive, Albert was
the Company Secretary and Chief Financial Officer
with responsibility for corporate governance, financial services, taxation
services, payroll, business service centre (call centre), internal audit and risk
management, product management, corporate services and the management
of relationships with key clients and stakeholders.
Some of Albert's achievements since he joined Businesslink include the
successful implementation of SAP Human Resources and Finance functions
for Businesslink’s largest client; the lead and management of the key
organisational transformation program to implement a whole of business
product framework and unitised fee-for-service business model and the
oversight of implementation of organisational risk management, fraud and
corruption and Business Continuity Management strategies and plans
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