EquaTerra's New ``Shared Services Value Assessment'' Helps Organizations Reduce Costs...

EquaTerra's New ``Shared Services Value Assessment'' Helps Organizations Reduce Costs and Optimize Back-Office Process Performance

HOUSTON & LONDON--(Business Wire)--
Despite the fact that nearly 80 percent of Global 2000 companies
have adopted a shared services model to deliver their back-office
processes, many shared services organizations struggle with sustaining
improvements and continuing to add value beyond initial consolidation,
simplification, and standardization savings. EquaTerra's new Shared
Services Value Assessment helps shared services leaders identify
strengths and weaknesses in their service delivery model, and provides
an actionable roadmap for transformation.

The Shared Services Value Assessment evaluates process and
organizational health, and delivers financial benchmarks and a
customized, step-by-step roadmap for optimizing shared services
performance. Specific areas in which the Assessment helps shared
services organizations include:

-- Quantifies performance of shared services operations at both
the process and organizational levels

-- Identifies opportunities for improvement, including
appropriate alternatives

-- Demonstrates indicative savings and cost to achieve for
transforming operations or migrating to alternative delivery
models

-- Provides a platform for discussions among shared services
leaders, sponsors and clients regarding the strategy and
direction of the shared services organization

-- Delivers a step-by-step action plan for shared services
optimization

Qualitative and Quantitative Assessments and Recommendations

Said Bob Cecil, EquaTerra's Executive Director of Business and
Financial Advisory Services, "Improvements to shared services
performance must start with a comprehensive understanding of current
state performance relative to the rapidly changing market options. Our
new Assessment leverages our proprietary tools and methodologies to
drill down on both qualitative and quantitative factors." Cecil
continued, "Following exhaustive assessments of myriad process- and
organizationally-focused issues, we go beyond traditional benchmarking
to provide the client with detailed, actionable guidance on how to
achieve world-class shared services status."

Qualitative Activities

For the qualitative component of the Shared Services Value
Assessment, EquaTerra leverages online surveys, questionnaires and
leadership interview guides to collect data on, validate and assess
current costs, practices and service levels. The Assessment analyzes
nine dimensions of shared services operations including: leadership;
governance; organization; customer relationship model; best practice
deployment; enabling tools and technologies; process control
framework; customer satisfaction; and linkage to business outcomes.
Those dimensions are then evaluated against foundational elements
EquaTerra deems requisite for shared services excellence.

Quantitative Activities

As a companion to the qualitative assessment, EquaTerra utilizes
its data collection templates to gather cost, headcount and
transaction volume information, and conducts quantitative benchmarks
against the performance of organizations in APQC's Open Standards
Benchmarking Collaborative(SM) (OSBC) database, the world's largest
repository of business metrics with more than 5,000 participants and
covering over 1,200 performance metrics across multiple business
functions.

EquaTerra then delivers a comprehensive evaluation that provides
shared services leaders with hard data-driven insights into their
operations. Finally, EquaTerra works in collaboration with the client
to determine methods for exploiting strengths and to establish a
strategy to optimize operations.

About EquaTerra

EquaTerra sourcing advisors help clients achieve sustainable value
in their IT and business processes. Our advisors average more than 20
years of industry experience and have supported
over 2000 transformation and outsourcing projects across more than 60
countries. Supporting clients throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle
East, Africa and Asia Pacific, we have deep functional knowledge in
Finance and Accounting, HR, IT, Procurement and other critical
business processes. EquaTerra helps clients achieve significant cost
savings and process improvement with internal transformation, shared
services and outsourcing solutions. For more information, please
contact Lee Ann Moore at +1 713.669.9292; leeann.moore@equaterra.com;
www.equaterra.com.

About APQC

A global resource for process and performance improvement, APQC
discovers improvement methods, identifies benchmarks and best
practices, disseminates findings and connects individuals. Spearheaded
by APQC, the global Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative(SM)
(OSBC) research helps executives benchmark comparable business
processes. Founded in 1977, the member-based nonprofit serves more
than 500 organizations worldwide. For information, call 800-776-9676
or visit www.apqc.org.

For EquaTerra
Jolie Newman, 407-677-8404
jolie.newman@equaterra.com
or
Sarah Beyrath, +44 (0) 845 838 7500
sarah.beyrath@equaterra.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008