Keywords: shared services, finance shared services, SSO, marketing manager, KPI, P&G, US Department of Health and Human Services

7 steps to recruiting the best brand and marketing managers into your shared services

Susie West | Article | 22 November 2012

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How many companies do you know that have 18 to 18,000 staff and operate without a marketing department?

None.

So explain this to me: I have been in the shared services world for 13 years, and routinely the same sets of issues bubble up. One common issue is poor communications.

‘Poor communications’ manifest itself in many ways. Many of these may speak to you:

1. The client has a sense we’re really doing a bad job, but actually the data we gather tells a different story
2. The shared services center has a bad image
3. The business doesn’t want to talk to us because they perceive us as unexciting and we are the hated part of finance
4. The business thinks we only focus on transactional finance
5. There is a reluctance to give us more work because our shared services organization is seen as the grim reaper where jobs are involved
6. The only engagement the customer has with the SSO is when there is a problem

I was at a conference in November in Chicago run by The Conference Board. Interestingly the speaker that opened eyes on how a shared services organization should brand itself was Paul Bartley, Director, Program Support Center, US Department of Health and Human Services.

The learnings were curiously both novel and obvious to the delegates in the room.

Because many professionals in shared services are (according to Deborah Kops, conference Chair and Principal of Sourcing Change) ‘left brain’, the communications, or indeed marketing initiatives so vital to the image, treatment and perception of the SSO are dangerously often deemed as ‘namby pamby’.

According to me and according to Kops, this is, simply put, WRONG!

Think about it: SSOs often have between 18 and 18,000 staff. And yet their communications and marketing teams are either non-existent or represent a shameful fraction of the whole. I know of an SSO with 8,000 staff and 4 people in comms. Look for a company with 8,000 staff and ask yourself what the normal percentage is sitting in marketing. I doubt the answer is 0.0005%.

One problem is the following: what comms or marketing professional actually wants to work for the SSO, when ‘real’ marketing, where TV advertising budgets and Facebook banners, are calling from the ‘real’ Marketing Function of the business. How could P&G shared services attract the best comms and marketing managers, when all they want to do is sit in Brand and face the consumer?

But before we look at ways to attract the best, just ask yourself, can your SSO afford to carry on without a permanent marketing operation which has budget and the power to brand?

If your SSO is the anathema in the business, or even perceived with the slightest negativity, entertain the thought of what a marketing and comms function could do to shift this.

Here are a few possibilities:

1. Educate the ignorant on what the SSO does
2. Highlight the value the SSO delivers to the business in numbers, facts and how it frees the business up to focus on core activities
3. Illustrate how processing time has accelerated and the impact this has had on supply chain management and therefore order delivery
4. Talk about the green cause – by switching to electronic invoicing, the SSO has stopped your company from being responsible for the felling of trees
5. Share testimonials from happy customers who were previously skeptical
6. Understand the client more by meeting with them and asking the client what is important to them, what does ‘value’ mean, and how does the client know that the SSO is creating value
7. Manage and track customer satisfaction surveys and use the output data to drive SSO behaviour and decisions
8. Communicate KPIs that have relevance to the business
9. Create an SSO logo, mission statement, and brand so the SSO becomes the place to work, rather than the ‘over my dead body’ place to work for marketing managers

The net effect of this is that the SSO will win more business moving forward. More business means more scale, and therefore greater savings.

So how can you attract the right people into the comms role, instead of fall into the temptation of skipping the function or getting a finance guy to run the team?

1. Remind yourself why you are doing shared services – ask yourself how it’s going and how would the SSO fare if the business bought into it even more than they do now. What would the financial effect of this buy-in be?
2. Spend a day brainstorming what the perfect comms and marketing person/team would deliver and then categorize skills and capabilities – this will tell you how many people you may need in the team, and what level of seniority
3. Draw up a business case – what impact would this team have on the SSO’s reach and scope? Is your SSO ready for the surge of business? Do these roles need to be contracted or permanent?
4. Map out the job descriptions in detail, supporting what is required today in terms of comms, but also what person needs to be in the team to help you realize your 3 year plan.
5. Bring in a brand and marketing manager from the front office to brainstorm how you can involve their best. How can these advisors be rewarded to help you? What’s in it for them? Can the business afford to take them from the front to the back office for six months?
6. Build the budget and present the business case to the boss, and start the recruitment process.
7. Once the individual or team is onside, embed them into your SSO – they are the face, eyes and ears of the SSO, so one hundred per cent alignment is key.

There will be an upfront outlay. But the business that comes into you SSO from more countries buying in, and more functions and activities coming in, will quickly help you recoup your investment. Investing in a proper marketing function will make your SSO more commercial, more attractive, larger in operational scope, more successful in deliver/exceeding financial targets, and quite frankly a sexier part of the organization which people want to be associated with.