When you run a group made up of many subsidiaries, you often decide to create and run central departments with more or fewer resources, sometimes called “shared service centres”.
Beyond the choice of term (which matters), the question is always how much room for manoeuvre to leave to the “subsidiaries” (in the legal sense or simply the organisational one: regional divisions or others). Because at the “centre”, expertise is pooled, common tools and shared procedures are put in place to make activity more visible and to encourage, or even impose, common practices… On the “periphery”, this is seen as a service provided, for tasks with little added value or requiring technical skills lacking locally, but also sometimes as a loss of flexibility, or a lack of understanding of local “specificities”…
Changes as an opportunity to question ourselves again
In short, a “classic” question with no ideal solution – otherwise we would know about it! And indeed, oscillating between the two poles of “centralisation” and “decentralisation” is part of the normal life of companies, depending on the context but also on the games played by the actors. And also, quite simply, because the shifts in balance that this creates make it possible to question ourselves again, against a multitude of criteria, many of which come from the outside world – which is always changing.
So each “central department” can ask itself about the “services” it provides, or the “common policies” it initiates and drives. But we often forget that one success factor also lies in the synergies between all these shared services.
Because the “subsidiaries” will always perceive the “central departments” as a single whole, and the reliability of a chain is often judged by its weakest link. Because many questions, projects and services rely on several complementary areas of expertise (HR, finance, legal…), “silo” working at the centre would mean inefficiency or even deadlock for the whole, and the impression that departments are “passing the buck” is disastrous for everyone. And because, to improve one’s relationship with “clients”, it always pays to share good practices beyond one’s own “technical” expertise.
Strengthening synergies first
That is why this “central department” team – in view of the shared stakes and the feedback on “perceived quality of service” – rather than deciding, for example, on common rules to be imposed on everyone regardless of diversity, at the centre or on the periphery, decided to work first and foremost on strengthening its own synergies.
Common rules: will more be needed, or fewer? Will they help improve overall coordination? That question will be asked later, once the “shared services” are recognised by all, in proportion to the efforts made by each. But first of all, “let’s work better together”.
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