The University System of Georgia had decided to move payroll and some HR functions to a shared service center prior to my arrival in Georgia. This decision was based on a lack of funding for these central services, lack of service delivery without funding by central IT, and a lack of trust in central IT by the chief financial officers. Regrettably, a number of catastrophic mistakes were made in the process:
- The chief financial officers excluded central IT from the process and ignored their advice. Shared services can work but are doomed to failure if you exclude key constituent groups and their feedback.
- In a short-sighted rush to save time and money, there was no business process reengineering. The shared services center would have to maintain separate processes for each of the 33 universities and colleges. What is the purpose of shared services if you are going to deliver those services 33 different ways? The new service was thus more inefficient than the previous service.
- To address the new inefficiencies in payroll and HR, the 33 universities participating hired new shadow finance and HR professionals adding cost and complexity to the system. Hiring new shadow staff and implementing new local processes to compensate for the failures of the shared service center made the service more expensive and more fragile.
- In the name of economic development, the shared services center was built in Sandersville. GA. Miraculously, this just happened to be the hometown of the then chair of the Board of Regents. Unfortunately, finance, HR, and IT staff did not want to work in rural Sandersville, GA. The closest “big” city was Macon, GA and it was slightly more than an hour away. With some homegrown talent who had never done this before and a revolving door of temporal staff, it was hard to address the complex challenges listed above.
- It did not help that the selected business partner, ADP, went through a period of serious data disclosure issues where they repeatedly, month after month, gave our payroll data to the wrong institution. This poisoned any trust remaining in the new shared services center.
I suspect, my astute reader, you picked up that I mentioned 33 universities above and not 36. Three of the four research universities (Augusta University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Georgia) waged a successful campaign to delay moving to the new system.
The university presidents, never timid in articulating their displeasure at bad service, ensured the board became aware of the challenges. An audit was conducted that quickly became politicized and sanitized. Even so, the new system was losing tens of millions of dollars a year compared to the previous system. The university system chief financial officer and one of the main proponents of the shared services center “transitioned” to a different role at one of the research universities to spend more time with her family. More funding was allocated and things settled down but were never really fixed.
As of 2020 (last time I used their services), there were still different processes for each university defeating the entire premise of shared services. I suspect the other challenges still remain.
I really could not find any images of the shared services center online and their LinkedIn account has four(4) followers. The image above was the best I could find. My apologies.
If you are progressing through this website sequentially, the next page is the second most feared nemesis of network professionals: attack of the squirrels. If you are wondering what the most feared nemesis is, you should see the movie Jaws. Apparently sharks and squirrels like fiber in their diet.