The first thing to stress is that I’m no cheerleader of shared services. Anyone who reads us regularly should realise that we try hard to be independent and look at everything – whether it is technology, procurement initiatives, the performance of public sector organisations – on its merits. We’ve been pretty rude for instance about the lack of best practice shown by some Whitehall shared services operations, for instance! (I have to post hard copy invoices to them – crazy).
Clark is right to say our posts weren’t based on rigourous analysis, but mainly on a half-day visit to SBS in Leeds. He’s also right that I didn’t publish a lot of data about (for instance) improvement s in performance. That’s true – partly because SBS did give me more than I published, but I thought it was a bit dull! “They now handle twice as much incoming post with half as many people” is not particularly thrilling stuff.
He’s also right that meeting a few impressive people doesn’t mean it is a great organisation. As he says:
“Talking to staff, listening to managers claims about services will tell you nothing about the truth of service performance. Even poor services can look organised”.
I don’t disagree – but I have visited an awful lot of businesses over the years, and I do believe you can get some sense of motivation, of levels of organisation and effectiveness from observation. For instance, I mentioned I met two people in management roles who had worked their way up from the “bottom”. One who was running a Department had started as a post-opener! OK, not a statistically valid indicator of performance, but I tell you what – there are many organisations who couldn’t point to a single example of that, so yes, I do take it to be an indicator at least of a certain positive attitude to staff development.
Clark also criticises the use of surveys. Whilst I do acknowledge that they can be “fiddled” I think that criticism is a bit harsh. I’ve seen customer, supplier or staff surveys that genuinely produced useful information. I find it hard to believe SBS could fiddle the data I quoted that, “the number of clients who would recommended NHS SBS to others” has grown from 39% in 2007 to 95% in 2011.
Suggesting that is not genuine would be a pretty serious allegation of misrepresentation – but perhaps we should ask SBS for the raw data behind that?
Then Clark does fall into one or two of his own traps. He criticises me, perhaps fairly, for relying on hearsay and subjective evidence. Then he uses odd comments and even anonymous quotes that criticise SBS – of course they could even have come from their competitors! One comment I tracked to source, and it is a reported comment in the minutes of a meeting (where there are also positive remarks about SBS to be fair). It is not even clear in this case who said it to whom, there’s no supporting data… it is as “soft” a bit of evidence as you can imagine, frankly.
He also says that in 2009 David Nicholson, then Chief Executive of the NHS in England, “demanded that trusts justify why they hadn’t taken-up SBS”. Here is the actual text:
“Where corporate services are currently retained in-house, I would encourage NHS management boards to be clear that the decision to retain them represents better value for money than alternative options such as NHS Shared Business Services, or other shared service or outsourcing solutions”.
Well, that’s not the most aggressive “demand” I’ve ever heard, to be honest… Now I have very mixed feelings about the power Sir David Nicholson has wielded for some years, but ultimately, Trusts have a lot of independence, and now the SBS framework has expired, they really are “just another supplier”.
Having said all that, I do welcome the criticism and it is a reminder that we have to strive to be objective and analytical in everything we write. I’d also stress Spend Matters has never received a penny in fees from SBS or the Department of Health. (I had about three days consulting fees from DH quite a few years ago when that was my main business.)
So a good debate, and we’ll keep our eye on SBS, the NHS and shared services I’m sure through 2013. And I fully agree with Clark that we should continue to seek evidence of the “success” or otherwise of the whole shared services concept.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Peter Smith
Quelle/Source: Spend Matters UK/Europe, 22.01.2013
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