Case Study: Consolidating Back Office Services For the HM Prison Service
Steve Hodgson, Head of Shared Services, HM Prison Service

HMPS went live with a Shared Service for Finance and Procurement at the end of April this year and followed that with HR Services in October 2006, both of these major milestones were delivered on time and to budget. The Shared Service Centre in Newport, South Wales was formally opened on 1st Nov by Sir Peter Gershon who commented that he thought that the rigorous approach to service performance management, use of modern technologies and the effective deployment of six sigma he saw at Newport exceeded his expectations of what might have been achieved when he published his report. At the moment Finance and Procurement Shared Services are delivered into 102 of the 130 establishments with the rest due to be completed in Q1 07 and HR Services are delivered to c 2500 of the 48,000 employees with the implementation due to complete in April 08.

The setting up of the Shared Service and the first 6 months of live operations have generally gone well but as with most undertakings of this scale there are some areas that haven't gone quite to plan!! The biggest challenges we have faced (and therefore the greatest learning) have come in two areas; the procure to pay process and the implementation of the shared service centre technology.