Introduction
Francis Handerhan is a Contracts Director with Oracle Corporation, 2nd largest IT software Corporation globally. Francis has been involved in managing Shared Service Centers for six years. Francis has acquired significant experience working with Corporate Governance, Revenue Recognition, Sarbanes Oxley and Audit policies & requirements, which govern the IT industry. From the experience gained in Centers in Australia (serving Asia Pacific), Romania (Europe) and most recently Costa Rica (North and Latin America), Francis has noticed certain similarities amongst the different Centers. The experience and employees may have different culture influence, but the Shared Service Center culture is unique to itself, not to the country the center is located in.
One of the unique aspects to the off-shored Center is discussed below.
This post was originally published in June, 2008.
Proactive v Reactive Time Management
When working in or with an offshore center, you may be party to discussions on understanding and respecting cultural diversity. Celebrate our differences, as it were! Appreciating and celebrating cultural differences is a healthy and positive step in a Center’s development but what everyone working with a Center should understand is the Center’s own culture and environment. Whilst supporting business across four continents in three different centers, I have noticed one constant within the Center environment. As many corporations, especially in the IT industry, are driven on a quarterly cycle the employees supporting this business are conditioned to become firefighters. By firefighters, we refer to those brave individuals who can jump into a deal mid-flight and assist navigating the deal safely towards closure. Or the classic quarter end push, where Companies execute the bulk of their business at month end (do not forget reporting is due as well), which reinforces the fire fighting mentality and encourages reactive behavior.
As part of a Senior Management team, I find it a waste that during weeks 2 through 5, I see lots of web surfing, YouTube, chatting and extended coffee breaks. I don’t mind a little down time as my team’s put forth extra-ordinary efforts, but like most things in life, down time is best in moderation. When I discuss the use of time with my teams they point out that the business has slowed after the close and there is little to do. My response to this is perfect! We have ample time for training and debriefing!
The question I ask is, ‘How do we go about a paradigm shift from the reactive mindset to proactive one?’ One answer to this question is in how we plan and execute our time in the Shared Service Centers. There is significant benefit from working within a quarterly cycle. Time management wins handsomely if the weeks of the quarter are managed properly. Instead of the 3-month accounting period, look at the quarter as a twelve-week accounting period. An example of well-planned and executed time over a twelve-week quarter would be the following:
Week 1 – Wrap Up from Previous Quarter, Reporting and Roll Over Business
Week 2-3 – Reporting & Debriefing
Week 4-7 – Training, Training, Training
Week 8 – Forecasting & Preparation
Week 9-12 – Execution
Approaching a project or set of trainings from a weekly view can allow for better visualization and in turn, realization of your plans. This is also quite helpful when planning employee leave as well as time in lieu.
If able to realize a paradigm shift, a few achievements a Center might celebrate are:
- Employees will have more transparency to assist in their understanding, which will encourage acceptance and buy-in to the quarterly plan.
- The use of the Debrief Strategy in weeks two & three will:
- Eliminate communication and data errors from the future
- Identify ‘low hanging fruit’ to immediately fix.
- Gives an active voice to all participants of teams and LOBs
- Employees will find better use of training in weeks four through seven, thus preparing them for execution when business requires.
Time, along with our employees, represent two of the greatest resources a company possesses. Considering that the time management issue presented above impacts both of these precious resources, Management teams leading a Center should review the day-to-day running of their operations and ask if time is being used the most effective way possible throughout their business cycles. And if the answer is that the Center can be more effective (and let’s be honest, all Centers have room for improvement) it is time to review the use of each hour, day and week.
- Francis Handerhan
