Debbie Ellis, head of shared services at theDepartment for Transport, set out new
ways of using shared service systems at the Government IT
conference in Westminster last week.
The department has just seen a change of leadership and, Ellis
said, "It has offered an opportunity to really look at how we can
use support services and address business outcomes."
Prior to April 2007, Ellis said the focus was on the development
of a SAP platform and opening a shared services centre in Swansea
last year.
She said, the department had to ask what it was going to do with
the system in Swansea.
"Nobody had really thought before about how, for example, we
could use
shared services to track sickness absence. We can generate a
figures and use them to get more staff in the office and get
productivity up. This kind of thing is a real busines outcome.
Reducing costs just happens to be a benefit."
Ellis stressed the importance of putting customer focus at the
heart of corporate strategy, and said "softer skills" such as
speaking in "plain English" would help the project succeed.