SECTION 5: Conclusion & Next Steps
Conclusion
The Minister in the Foreword highlighted the importance of Shared Services in the efficiency agenda. Shared Services will be a key component in delivery of efficiencies in order to improve the public service infrastructure for the benefit of the customers (across all corporate / common functions); to improve service delivery through understanding the best business processes; ensuring that the roles and responsibilities that support the delivery of the business processes end to end add value. Public organisations that do not collaborate will need to be able to justify this on objective business grounds.
I hope the guidance and the references has been helpful in supporting decisions on how to promote, develop and crucially implement a shared services approach which can improve the customer experience.
There is a lot of good work happening already in this area and we must build on that to maximise the opportunities for efficiency gains to deliver the results for the people of Scotland.
Next Steps
The examples contained in the document are an indication of the activity in Shared Services at the time of writing. There are a number of projects at various stages of the Shared Services journey. In order to keep this document current we would like to invite you to submit examples of Shared Services than we can develop into further case studies and amendments to the framework as Shared Services develop.
Similarly the Shared Services Team will be happy to engage in discussion around projects that have a business case to deliver significant continuous improvement and fit with the overall agenda.