Chartered Accountants Carving a Niche in Shared Services

1. Introduction & The GBS Landscape

Over the last two decades, businesses across sectors have transitioned to a Global Business Services (GBS) model of shared services. At the beginning of this evolution, the intent was to cut down costs and optimise operations. Gradually, however, GBS organisations began to manage end-to-end services for customers and stakeholders across the value chain, cutting across silos and legacy functions. Over time, the role of shared services has witnessed a remarkable evolution. From leading projects across finance, HR, IT and other critical areas, it has moved to spearheading strategic transformative experiences with data-driven insights.

As more and more business leaders recognise the value of GBS, shared services share a seat at the table with other stakeholders. GBS leaders are actively assuming responsibilities in strategic business decisions about organisational objectives, capacity building and investments in talent and technology. Thus, business units have more time and resources at their disposal to drive innovative solutions, forge partnerships and dive deep into customer insights.

Aligning cross-functional initiatives with business objectives, chartered accountants in GBS not only navigate their way through balance sheets but also help augment organisational capabilities across functions.

2. Then and Now: The Evolution of Shared Services

In the late 1990s, when the concept of offshoring gained widespread momentum, the focus of finance professionals in the GBS space was more around bookkeeping, resource allocation, compliance, and control. Over the years, however, shared services have evolved from efficiency drivers to value creators, as shown in Figure 1.

Today, shared service organisations are no longer outsourcing partners. Rather, they are capability centres that deliver cross-functional excellence. They offer value to the customer and act as a competitive advantage for the enterprise. This evolution has triggered transformative changes around three core areas:

• Value delivery: The definition of critical finance functions has also changed significantly. Two decades ago, only accounts payable and reconciliation were handled by shared service professionals. Now, that spectrum is all-encompassing, including complex, business-critical operations like controllership and taxation.
• Business partnership: Digitisation of processes and the availability of new-age technologies are also paving the way for higher stakes. The modern-day financial controller is a true business partner and has a significant impact on management decisions. Therefore, the role entails inputs with high management relevance, such as commenting on reports and formulating strategies to reimagine the value proposition.
• Role of CA professionals: The responsibilities of chartered accountants have also witnessed a paradigm shift. For instance, instead of processing accounts payables, they now focus on managing end-to-end, source-to-pay processing, exploring new revenue channels and creating Intellectual Property (IP). From generating financial reports and providing active decision-making support to leveraging technologies for real-time analysis and forecasting, CA professionals have transformed into finance business partners of C-suite leaders.

The transformation has further intensified amid COVID-19, accentuating the role of GBS in today’s fast-changing business landscape.

3. Evolution of the Mindset of CFO & The 4 Ps Model

In the early days of GBS, CFOs across industries were involved in high-stakes decisions around CAPEX, long-term growth, and indictments. Over the years, the industry has also witnessed changes in their responsibilities and priorities, as shown in Figure 2. In terms of customer engagement, C-suite priorities have transformed from broad segmentation and one-time pricing to microtargeting and dynamic, real-time pricing. On the other hand, among operations and processes, the focus has shifted from incremental cost reductions to agile straight-through processing. Technological advancements have augmented this evolution further, reshaping CFO priorities from planning CAPEX investments to strategising variable costs for on-demand cloud solution.

The role of CFOs is continually being remoulded under the influence of four fundamental forces: digital, data, risk and regulations. As organisations continue to be disrupted by globalisation and innovative technologies, the finance function will increasingly tilt towards becoming a data-driven decision centre, rather than one that merely does bookkeeping (balances the books). For finance leaders to successfully navigate the challenges of an evolving ecosystem, they must not only rethink their competencies but also surround themselves with the right people and amplify collaborative teamwork.

4. COVID-19 and Shared Services: The Catalyst of Change

Across the globe, the outbreak of COVID-19 created widespread repercussions for the economy at large. For every organisation, business continuity became the foremost priority. In the face of unprecedented uncertainties, companies both large and small had to pivot and stand resilient. Business executives have had no choice but to let go of long-standing beliefs and reimagine the traditional ways of work. The upside: strategies that were conceived as quick fixes to stay afloat while navigating unchartered territories are now the exponents of success in the new normal.

For instance, the location-based operating model of shared services had been honed for decades. But the pandemic rendered it obsolete within a couple of weeks, upending the dependency on physical infrastructure and sparking off a quick transition to remote work. Thanks to technology, GBS organisations have been able to deliver productivity, even while embracing a wave of changes.

• Resilience: During the onset of COVID-19, shared service leaders had to empower the entire workforce to work from home rapidly. While several businesses had the majority of their employees working remotely during lockdowns, industry leaders were focused on not only gearing up for the short term but also sustaining the arrangements for the long run.
• Efficiency: Unsurprisingly, companies that had already built an agile infrastructure were quick to adapt. Collaboration tools, seamless business processes and lean delivery mechanisms ensured business continuity against odds.
• Employee wellbeing: An empathy-led leadership approach became the need of the hour for GBS executives. Keeping the knowledge workforce engaged, motivated and productive was a key requisite of efficiency, as employees adjusted to remote environments and the inherent challenges.

5. Reimagining the New Normal

As companies prepare to bounce back stronger on the road to economic recovery, many of these strategies will continue to be the backbone of service delivery. The need to move fast and offer disruptive products and services has opened up an array of opportunities across four key areas:

• Remote work: Traditionally, onsite presence was perceived as a fundamental prerequisite for most roles within shared services. However, the pandemic has proved that unnecessary in an overwhelming number of cases, thus forcing GBS leaders to reassess roles and responsibilities across the spectrum. Job functions, complexities, infrastructure requirements and feasibilities have witnessed a complete makeover.
• Borderless talent: A remote workforce offers several opportunities to rethink the talent landscape. When employees can work from anywhere, location independence opens up employment opportunities for a wider pool of professionals. For instance, companies can hire finance professionals from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, instead of restricting their search to metropolitan cities alone.
• Flexibility and coaching: Several organisations have already embraced flexible work hours to balance the demand and availability of professionals, thus driving higher utilisation and productivity during peak hours. GBS leaders are also actively rolling out reskilling and upskilling programs, to retain, attract and develop a future-ready workforce.
• Agile processes: With an emphasis on lean teams and business processes that support data-driven decision-making, businesses are weaving in agility in the organisational fabric. Building on the success of distributed agile practices that were beneficial during the crisis, shared service functions are now gearing up for long-term resilience.
• Technology investments: As businesses gear up for the year ahead, the focus is now on leveraging secure, next-gen tools and technologies to facilitate hybrid working environments. Finance leaders in the GBS space are already allocating budgets to stay abreast of technologies, including cloud-based collaborative tools, Line of Business (LOB) applications like SAP or other ERP tools, and secure information exchange platforms.

6. A Roadmap for Tech-Driven Progress & RPA Adoption

As the stewards of organisational resources in GBS, the onus of driving short-term and long-term infrastructural revamp lies on finance professionals. The rapid pace of digital disruption is pushing chartered accountants to the forefront of IT decisions, such as cloud computing, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), data analytics and visualisation platforms, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Internet of Things (IoT). Technology is playing an increasingly important role in reimagining traditional finance roles. Many CFOs are now actively advocating technology adoption, to transform the nature of services delivered by GBS.

A case in point is that of RPA, which has transformed GBS into a competitive business function, underpinned by cost efficiency and agility:

• By freeing up employees from cumbersome, repetitive tasks, RPA is enabling people to pursue more thought-intensive challenges.
• In addition to remarkable improvements in the productivity and quality of shared services, RPA comes with the added advantage of round-the-clock scalability in line with demand-supply fluctuations, thus optimising the costs further.

7. Driving Decision-Making with Technology

Although one might argue that automation can result in job losses, the relationship between technology and talent is symbiotic. Technology is used in conjunction with human ingenuity to create maximum impact. Over the years, shared services have moved beyond process standardisation to a new paradigm, fortified by technologies such as:

• Real-time process monitoring: to proactively identify demand fluctuations and trigger appropriate actions.
• Big data analytics: to derive insights, predict probable outcomes and chart out an action plan.
• Mobility: to facilitate anywhere, anytime service delivery for stakeholders.

As global hubs with follow-the-sun capabilities, shared services organisations are embracing rapid advancements in IoT, industrial analytics and AI to stay on the cutting edge of innovation. Against this backdrop, GBS leaders are increasingly involved in strengthening the technology backbone of the business.

In the years ahead, the focus will shift towards a combination of cognitive methods and automation, through predictive analytics and Machine Learning (ML) models that generate invaluable real-time insights. Be it back-office processing operations or first-line customer service, leveraging next-gen technologies is the need of the hour.

Therefore, chartered accountants must equip themselves with the skillsets and mindset they need to redesign shared services for the digital era.

8. Career Outlook for Chartered Accountants

In today’s environment, there is a very thin line between the role in a shared service centre and a financial controller:

• For professionals who aspire to make their career in GBS, it is essential to have a deeper understanding of the nature of business.
• One needs to be more technology savvy and proficient in technologies like cloud, RPA, and AI along with tools like SAP and Oracle ERPs. For financial controllers, it is all about walking the business through numbers. In contrast, for finance leaders in shared services, it’s about understanding the technologies that generate those numbers and interpreting those numbers.

These attributes are what really differentiate someone who is working in a capability centre from a professional in a front-office role.

Over the years, GBS has become an attractive career choice for chartered accountants. As the function matures, broadens its scope, and gets a seat at the top table, finance professionals are increasingly opting for roles in shared services, instead of traditionally preferred finance roles. The critical factors that are catalysing these changes are diverse:

• Being bullish on career growth: Not very long ago, financial shared services were often thought of as transaction factories of the organisation. This perception hindered the talent pool from opting for a career in GBS. The evolution of shared services, however, has uprooted those beliefs. Realising how they’re now creating value, chartered accountants are bullish on their career trajectory and long-term prospects in the field.
• A broad business view: Given that the scope of GBS extends beyond the conventional gamut of finance, finance professionals can gain a broader perspective of the business landscape. Working closely with business leaders across domains, roles in GBS offer a plethora of opportunities to hone cross-functional expertise.
• Working on challenging projects: As a hotbed of innovation, GBS has begun to deliver tangible business outcomes, thus offering more challenging work for chartered accountants. Besides, finance leaders in shared services now have a seat at the top table, thereby welding more corporate influence and shaping finance-driven organisational objectives.
• Opportunities to nurture wider skillsets: A key catalyst of growth in shared services is a broader skillset of corporate leadership. While finance mastery is one part of the equation, communicating with stakeholders, interacting with customers, leading large teams of hundreds of professionals and handling critical projects across functions are quintessential skills as well. Besides, finance professionals must also nurture a growth mindset, to continuously develop a wide range of skills and use them outside the function’s purview.
• Development of broader business skills: The opportunity that shared services roles afford for the development of broader business skills is profound. The perception that finance shared services is not much more than a “process factory” is not true. Shared services roles offer a superb opportunity to build a broader skills base. Shared services roles are a very good starting point for a finance career. In addition to finance skills, you get solid experience in process, so if you go back into the business, you can provide real value to the organisation.

9. Career Challenges in Shared Services

Despite the massive advantages, professionals navigating shared services must manage distinct structural challenges:

• Shared services are still not part of finance function career paths in many organisations: While all accepted that finance shared services is a superb function in which to pick up valuable finance and business skills, creating a multitude of career opportunities, the reality is that it is not yet embedded as part of a formal finance career path in a majority of organisations, especially at the critical senior level.
• The shared services brand is not always helpful: The perception of the shared services brand is not always helpful. There is a need to change the reputation, it is starting to improve. Culturally, it is not always seen by the finance community as a place they’d desire to work as part of their career plan.
• Location Challenges: Locating shared services operations in lower-cost locations – away from corporate or regional headquarters locations; means that shared services professionals have limited exposure and access to other parts of the business except at the very senior levels; advancement into the retained team can be problematic.
• Shared Services are still sometimes seen as a transaction factory for the finance function: Despite broad acceptance as a finance business model, and increasing evidence that shared services create value beyond cost and efficiency, it takes time to earn a “seat at the table”; achieving standardisation, compliance and cost reduction is not going to be sufficient.

10. Carving a Niche & Concluding Remarks

In terms of career progression, professionals can move up the ladder either on the people management side or the technical facet. Whether you are a number-savvy professional who can connect the dots and analyse financial figures or a tech-savvy leader who can constantly redefine the system and train people on financial technologies, opportunities are abound in shared services.

Finance leaders will always be the right hand of the CEO, much like how the Finance Minister is an indispensable aide of the Prime Minister. And chartered accountancy is a stamp of approval that opens those doors for professionals to get there. Working in shared services actually could help the controller role better understand the business partner role, to start to understand commercial principles, start to move from being inwardly focused to externally focused.

For chartered accountants, a career in shared services will be both rewarding and fulfilling. Taking up a role in finance shared services is no longer viewed as career limiting, but rather a unique opportunity to broaden the capabilities and soft skills increasingly sought by the business. Shared services models are here to stay as a vital component of the finance function. Their leaders embrace and harness change, demonstrate strong business acumen, and are passionate about transforming the way finance operates.

As finance leaders don more hats and oversee operations beyond the boundaries of traditional finance functions, the horizon of responsibilities is expanding too. Essentially, it boils down to leveraging finance expertise to be a change maker across the board and thereby drive the C-suite agenda. ███