Vivek Misra – CEO Mynd Integrated Solutions
Before we start to look into how the use of shared services in Finance and HR assist small businesses to scale rapidly and securely, it is imperative to understand the concept of shared services. Here I would like to draw an analogy from the very ubiquitous mobile towers that keep springing up like mushrooms under a tree in the rainy season. These towers until recently were owned and manned by each of the telecom companies. The upkeep of equipment, the power supply, the Diesel gensets at the base of each tower were the responsibility of the telecom company until the brilliant idea of having a common service provider manning each of the towers dawned upon some really smart businessman. This immediately led to consolidation of towers, the basic power, upkeep, maintenance, and the genets became much cheaper as the cost was now being shared by multiple telecom companies. Unlike outsourcing the essential part of Shared services is a common objective. A shared service helps you achieve, economies of scale, ease of upkeep, the availability of talent pool.
A shared service provider could easily bring in talented HR professionals, tested and affordable technology tools, trained accounting professionals, and many other such services like IT upkeep, at a fraction of the cost delivering best in class services.
Can a small business get that pool of HR professionals or accounting professionals or legal eagles? Can it generate enough to do for them to be occupied gainfully? The answer to that is probably a big NO! Not only this denies a small business of great talent but it also diverts the time and energy of the small business entrepreneur from the main deliverable to other activities. Another aspect is using Digital technologies for business processes. A small business does not usually have expertise and time to evaluate and implement technology and best practices, shared services are not just services the organization but also provides the necessary IT-based solutions to efficiently run the Finance & HR Processes.
There are umpteen examples to suggest organizations that have used the shared services model in their scale up journey, have benefitted largely. One such industry is Quick Service restaurants (QSR). A newly established QSR chain (brand) with less than 30 outlets subscribed to Shared services model and strengthened its Financial and HR processes. It could establish a control over leakages and the promoter was convinced that organization was robust enough to scale up. In 2years timeframe they have now scaled to 125+ outlets.
These services are not just for Small enterprises but established organizations could also benefit from subscribing for these services with organizations like Mynd Integrated. Established organisations can have a leaner organization performing and running after its core deliverables rather than have large monolithic unwieldy organizations. Shared services also are setup in a very short time and because of its very nature of being a service “PlugIn”, the “Plug Out” can be easily painless and easy to manage. Using shared services is a cost effective and easy solution to growth with an absolute secure environment.