What does good really look like? Benchmark your SSO against 2 different benchmarking datasets

Sitting in SSON's global analytics centre based in Singapore, we constantly receive enquiries from SSON's multiple channels and our 125,000 members about KPIs and benchmarks. Ultimately, everyone is asking the same question, “What does good really look like in today's Shared Services Organisations (SSOs)?”

Noticing the growing demand for benchmarking data over the past few years, our analysts and data scientists have been hard at work gathering data and developing new tools to provide that important reference point for SSOs to benchmark against.

SSON's Top 20 Most Admired SSOs Benchmarking Initiative

Early last year, we launched our very first Top 20 Most Admired SSOs 2017 benchmarking initiative. We conducted an in-depth benchmarking study (across Finance, HR and Payroll metrics) with the 20 SSOs that were identified by the SSON community. The results were aggregated and presented in an analytics workbook, as well as available in an interactive tool where you can slice and dice the data of 83 SSCs by different regions using the Top 20 Most Admired SSOs Metric Checker.

Cost per invoice metric in the Top 20 Metric Checker. Almost 50% of the 83 SSCs in the Top 20 SSOs 2017 have spent USD 3 or less when processing an invoice. 24 other metrics are available.

With this first benchmarking initiative being extremely well-received and inundated with requests for more metrics to be added, we decided to run the Top 20 Most Admired SSOs benchmarking study for the 2nd time. As the lead analyst on this project, I am currently in the process of data collection with the most admired companies identified after crunching the 2018 data (do look forward to new additions in the list!). Aggregated results are expected to be released in late September/early October. 

Industry and Country Specific Benchmarking Data in the Metric Intelligence HubTM

While being able to benchmark your SSOs against aggregated data from well-known brands that span different industries and geographies is valuable... more requests started coming in for specific geographies and sectors, e.g. what is the Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) for SSCs/GBS from the ‘Chemicals’ industry in Malaysia? 

SSON Analytics has developed a proprietary algorithm (developed by the data science team led by our chief data scientist, Murphy Choy) that considers efficiency frontiers of specific industries and countries (including human labour efficiency, labour market efficiency, technological advancement efficiency, etc.) to come with a unique and revolutionary benchmarking data for SSOs to benchmark themselves against. 

Screenshot of the Metric Intelligence Hub (MIH) showcasing the Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) for Chemicals Industry in Malaysia. Percentages are hidden in the chart above, sign up for a basic account to view this free metric in the MIH.

100 key metrics are available for 22 industries and 122 countries in the MIH. They include metrics in categories such as Attrition, General Finance, HR, IT, Order-to-Cash, Payroll, People & Talent, Procure-to-Pay, Procurement, Record-to-Report and Treasury. All metrics have been quadruple-validated across multiple sources and are updated on a regular basis. 

To read more on the next generation benchmarking methodology used in the MIH, click here. 

Overview of SSON Analytics’ benchmarking tools in the Metric Benchmarker

Note: Syazana Lim, is the lead analyst who manages the Metric Benchmarker (which includes both the Top 20 Most Admired SSOs & the Metric Intelligence HubTM). For any enquiries about benchmarking, please don’t hesitate to contact her at syazana.lim@sson-analytics.com