Blue Sky Room

If you’re in uncharted waters, facing phase 3 challenges no-one has yet solved – it’s likely you’ll need to read on…

The brainstorming roundtables in the blue-sky innovation room are designed for the most advanced SSOs practitioners at the very front of the innovation curve.

So why is it different?

Firstly, it’s exclusive. As a mature delegate, you’ll be immersed in discussions with delegates at your level to ensure that the content is not diluted.

Secondly, it’s focused. Each session kicks off with a specific practitioner challenge and then it’s your chance to brainstorm possible solutions amongst this high-level group.

N.B. There are a limited number of places available in the blue-sky room, issued on a “first-come first-served basis”. Please make sure you indicate when registering that you want to be considered.

Last year's Blue Sky Agenda

Tuesday, 20th May

Wednesday, 21st May

One United Front: Aligning Your SSO With Business Strategy

Nestlé operates a governance Shared Services model that has been carefully created to align with business goals. Ensuring alignment of your SSO with business goals when you have progressed to Phase 3 sounds like it should be straight forward, but with more and more pressure on SSOs to deliver stronger and stronger results, full alignment can seem beyond reach. Lukas will lead this discussion on what has worked best at Nestlé referencing careful governance structures, transformational change, and front end strategy alignment. Join the debate on what could work best now and in the future.

Lukas Paravicini
Head of Shared Services
Nestlé

How Do You Really Become A Value-Added Partner To Your Business?

After completing set up of financial Shared Services in traditional area of Accounting and Transaction Processing, how do you decide where to go next? Where can the Shared Services approach and learnings be applied to meet your company’s business needs? Coca-Cola Services is taking a fresh look at the current Shared Services set up separating Transaction Processing from Centre of Excellence activities and looking at new services to offer the business.

Jerome Amand
EU Finance Project Manager
Coca-Cola Services

Irina Chernousenko
EU Director, Shared Services Transformation
Coca-Cola Services

Improving Shared Services Operational Delivery: How Can You Transform Your Internal Customer Perception Into Reality?

Having carried out 6 major Shared Services projects over the last 9 years, Gerry has gained extensive experience in methodologies and frameworks to improve service delivery. He will lead this discussion around key considerations such as:

Ensuring a clear understanding of the overall ‘Finance Model’ and the respective roles of Shared Services vs. decision support, Financial Planning and Controllership: Are the right competencies/behaviours in place to allow success?
Tracking delivery of Shared Services objectives and initiatives through a rigorous Balanced Scorecard and dashboards methodology
Creating a workable balance between core competencies of your SSO vs. those of your business partners

Improving Alignment Of Service To Customer Requirements For Greater Delivery Effectiveness

With more and more emphasis being placed on service and delivering to the customer, the Financial & Reporting Service Centre (FRSC) have launched their Service Proposition Review to implement a clearly defined model for managing service delivery and interaction with the business. Martin and Debbie will lead this Blue Sky discussion, including focus on:

Improving alignment of service to customer requirements
Increasing standardisation of service delivery
Designing an organisational structure to support a more service oriented proposition

Martin York
Head of Relationship Management Global Retail and Commercial Banking, Finance and Reporting Service Centre
Barclays Bank

Debbie Lennon
Cluster Relationship Manager UK Retail Banking and Barclaycard, Finance and Reporting Service Centre
Barclays Bank

Developing Leaders Of The Future Through Dedicated Employee Development Programmes

FACT: It’s all about your people. With more focus on your people development than ever before, the ability to recruit, retain and motivate talent is more important than ever. And this is of course in addition to fulfilling your company strategy and equally, as SSOs mature, to add both value and upstream processes to their service offering. A dedicated employee development programme not only helps you to retain talent through cost reduction initiatives but also grows that talent into innovators, great people managers and future leaders. Join John in this discussion session to explore how to balance your time between people development and driving cost reduction and looking to increase value.

John Lucas
Head of Financial Shared Services
British American Tobacco Plc.

Making The Right Choice For Your New “Home Away From Home”

The changes in the world economies are changing the availability and suitability of locations for both SSCs and outsourcing destinations. This session will investigate locations that are currently hot and those that are not, and identify the key characteristics for tomorrow’s locations.

Current hot location profiles, e.g. Vietnam, China, Detroit and their key characteristics
Changes foreseen to the markets in the current locations
Does location matter if you are outsourcing?
New locations to be considered

Graham Russell
Head of Global Transaction Processing
AstraZeneca

Closing The Generation Gap: What Will Future SSO Models Look Like In 5 Years Time?

The 21st century has brought significant movement in the Shared Services arena, and no more so than the people, technology and process changes in the last 5 years. This session will provide significant food for thought on the medium term planning in many organisations. It is now time to look forward and determine what the next 5 years will mean for the Shared Service agenda, for example:

Are we far away from the first “virtual” SSC?
What more can technology deliver? Is cost still going to be a REAL driver of change?
Can customer service be standardised by artificial intelligence?
What will happen to middle management in the next 5 years? Is this management layer really needed?
Is the innovation “well” beginning to dry up?

Dan Foley
Director of Business Services
ITV plc

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