The 18th Annual Shared Services & Outsourcing Week London 2024 is back this October 14 - 16 with a revamped programme packed with brand new learning formats and hands-on experiences! Early confirmed speakers include leaders from:

Embark on an enriching journey through this year's dynamic themes, exploring Co-Pilots, LLM, Speech to Text, Knowledge Management, Gen AI and workforce management. 

Why Attend?

• Innovate and Win: Join forces at the SSOW INNOVATE-A-THON 2024 and solve real-world problems to claim victory.
• Tech at Your Fingertips: Experience the Shared Services & GBS Innovation Showcase, featuring the latest from AI to analytics.
• Leadership Insights: Engage with top GBS leaders at GBS Masterminds Live!, co-hosted by industry titan Robert Weltevreden.
• Transformation Tales: Get inspired by success stories in Finance, HR, and Supply Chain Transformation.
  
• GPO Excellence: Explore the evolving GPO model and best practices in dedicated workshops.

Don’t miss your chance to turbocharge your shared services journey!

Europe – and specifically the UK – was one of the early pioneers of the Shared Services model, and we therefore see strong maturity as well as sophistication in terms of leveraging emerging opportunities across the region.

One out of four SSCs is more than 10 years old, reflecting the long history of Shared Services as a strategic model for improved efficiency. The rest is pretty evenly split into either planning/early launch or the 4-10 years segment. The United Kingdom and Poland are the two most popular locations for Shared Services, with nearly 700 centres between them – roughly a third of the region's SSCs.

Speaking with Lasse Rouhainen, the best-selling author of ‘Artificial Intelligence: 101 Things You Must Know Today About Our Future’ and renowned Artificial Intelligence expert, we discussed if AI is the next step for the industry.

In this exclusive interview, discover:

• How Artificial Intelligence is altering business dynamics
• How the Shared Services industry, specifically, will be impacted by AI
• How to fit the tool alongside your centre

In this exclusive case study interview with Stephen Sutcliffe, discover how the NHS Shared Business Services are taking their digital business opportunities to the next level and how they are scaling already existing capabilities in order to further the value they are providing both internally and to their clients.

With their automation capabilities very much established, the NHS Shared Business Service are looking at:

• Scaling automation,
• Implementing Artificial Intelligence 
• ...and find out what else in the interview

The Shared Services industry has been a path of consistent growth over recent years. Technologies, such as automation, have put the industry on a completely new path. This new direction sees the industry focus more intently on productivity, innovation and working closely with third-parties. In this article, discover the top five trends currently shaping European Shared Services with insights from SSON’s annual State of Shared Services Market Report. 

Discover what 700 Shared Services professionals are currently focusing on and help to plan for the future of your organisation through these top five trends.

The SSON State of Shared Services Market Report 2019 has shown that almost 60 per cent of SSCs provide work for the finance function. So, what makes the transformation of Hilton Hotel’s finance function any different? Pete Judd, the current Financial Transformation Director at Hilton Hotels, and his team have been creating a value-adding hybrid function which is allowing teams across the organisation to complete a significant amount of business improvement work outside of their expertise. In this exclusive case study, discover:

• The ins and outs of Hilton’s hybrid approach
• How to build relationships with outsourcing partners
• The next steps for financial transformation at Hilton

Simple automation tools are already well-established function within European Shared Services but unfortunately, these technologies have their limitations. Due to this, European shared services are looking towards Intelligent Automation, a more cognitive and responsive technology, to provide new value and solutions.  In this article, we will be looking comparatively at how Intelligent Automation will influence the future of the industry. Discover:

• How shared services will take responsibility and ownership of the automation function
• Why Centres of Excellence are a necessity
• And how Intelligent Automation will aid significant SSC expansion

SSON’s editorial team asked a leading SSO professional, Ivan Yakunin, Head of People & Culture, Operations for Global Functions at Philip Morris International, how he is planning to leverage his 'human' resources most effectively.

Here we divulge a few of the five leading strategies he came up with:

• Embracing new ways of working and the positive results
• Transparency across internal processes to keep millennials engaged
• Recruiting future skills, not past experiences

SSOW Europe, in conjunction with SSON, conducted a comprehensive survey of the global SSO market.  The subsequent findings highlights the key opportunities and challenges represented by technology evolutions as well as skills shortages and new service demands.  This report focuses specifically on the trends identified by respondents across Europe and will highlight Ten Trends emerging from this year’s survey, which emphasize the new direction, strategies and value-add SSOs are carving out for themselves..