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More Than Cost-Cutting
Shared services is one of those IT buzz phrases that promises a lot but often fails to deliver. A Forrester Research Inc. survey in 2005 found that 59% of 87 IT decision makers rated shared services projects as only "somewhat successful," because they often trimmed costs but did not deliver better service.
Moreover, Gartner Inc. analyst Colleen M. Young notes that two-thirds of centralized IT organizations consider themselves to be running a shared services model when actually less than a third really fit the paradigm, which involves not only reducing costs but also transforming IT into a strategic business partner that helps the organization maximize its technology investment.
"You have a lot of siloed IT organizations attempting to become more service-oriented," she says. "They're defining good service as cost reduction. That doesn't actually do anything in the way services are delivered. It has no impact. With the best intentions in the world they're mispositioning and not really creating the culture shared services needs to survive."
Connery, though, seems to be following precisely Gartner's ideal of a shared services model. A veteran of seven mergers, Connery drew upon his experience to create inUnison. He says the shared services at the credit unions have cut the cost of desktop suite licensing by 21%, reduced mobile telephony and messaging costs by 30% and sliced the price of a new banking system by almost a quarter.
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