News & Research: Client Successes

Case Study: HR Shared Services Design, Business Case, and Project Plan Development

ScottMadden helped a government agency with the design of an HR shared services organization, the development of a business case for shared services, and the development of a detailed project plan.

• A recent consolidation of services led to opportunities for superior service providers to attract new customers.  Immediately prior to retaining a relatively large customer, the multifunction service provider elected to develop and utilize service level agreements (SLAs) to identify services and performance metrics and to improve communication efforts
• The public sector had been slow to embrace the shared services concept, and key stakeholder support was lacking
• Senior management had a solid vision for shared services but needed a clear implementation plan
• Few processes had been documented.  Most needed to be reengineered to improve efficiencies in the short term.  Management needed to plan for the transition to a tiered service delivery model in the long term
• Internal anxiety and resistance to organizational change were high and needed to be managed

• Identified and prioritized processes to reengineer.  Documented current-state processes and designed future-state processes based on a tiered service delivery model
• Assessed the current-state of the HR organization using activity surveys, logs of daily customer contacts, and interviews
• Designed the future-state HR organization with senior management based on current-state assessment and industry benchmarks
• Developed a business case for shared services based on the current-state HR assessment and future-state design
• Developed a detailed implementation project plan with senior management to establish teams, tasks, and timelines
• Conducted focus groups to manage change after announcing the transition to a new organization design
• Conducted or provided access to site visits, educational presentations, conferences, a business case, etc., to strengthen stakeholder support

• Gained approval and funding to implement a shared services model
• Developed a detailed implementation plan to build the shared services model
• Reengineered select processes for the tiered service delivery model
• Defined the initial knowledge base structure
• Created an initial draft of technology architecture required for the implementation of the tiered service delivery model