ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This report presents a structured approach to design and implement a shared services model for Capricorn Investment Holdings (CIH), Namibia. Shared services are tactical by nature and aim to support the organisation's strategy. Shared services are the consolidation of supportactivities into a business unit which operates on business principles and focuses on value creation, and the leverage of the skills and knowledge in an organisation. The successful transformation to a shared services business unit requires the transformation of the employees (people), business processes, and technology. Without the required transformation shared services will remain "faddish-, and the organisation will not gain the full benefits associated with shared services.The banking operations under the CIH group, similar to the other banks in Namibia are under ever increasing pressure to reduce costs, improve service, develop and deliver high quality banking products. These issues are important to increase market share and profits in order to position themselves as leaders against both traditional and non-traditional competition. CIHgroup now has a perfect opportunity, with business in Botswana, Zambia and Namibia to build a shared services model suitable to its needs and also to support the group strategy to expand throughout Africa.Although geographically dispersed operations or transaction centres will not go the way of the dinosaur, companies must design and manage each support function according to the integrated and, when possible, standardised model. This framework should allow for necessary geographic, regulatory or cultural variations, while ensuring maximum control and management. It must also achieve economies of scale and leverage employee expertise. That is why CIH firstly started off, with the process blueprint project, which caters for standard processes, and will be rolled out to the rest of the banking business. Secondly, after completion of the process blueprint project, CIH is going to follow a component business approach in order to make the transition to a shared services model much easier. Component business models offer a proven approach to driving a specialised focus, both internally andexternally. With this exercise, CIH will be in a position to identify both the core and non-core components of its banking business. This will enable the group to take an informed decision on which components to share and which should remain in the different business units.Thirdly, the group is going to redesign the supply chain. Especially with the shared services model, a much closer, deeper relationship with intermediaries and service companies should be built to ensure that the group move in a customer centricity way. The optimum relationship would be long-term cooperation, joint planning of sales strategy and operations, and sharedknowledge in order to optimise business, develop innovative initiatives and continuously improve to consolidate market position.Further to this study, CIH is going to re-evaluate its value chain where the support activities in a single organisation are extended across organisations, multiple companies, divisions or business units to cater for its expansion strategy. Lastly CIH, with its approach to firstly sharing the IT structure, then business processes, still have a few critical decisions to make. The shared services centre involves finding and assessing service providers, determining geographies from which to source the services, like will it be Botswana, Zambia, Windhoek or South Africa? Other critical issues are developing contracts, defining service levels and a myriad of other tasks.Whichever road CIH chooses, successful implementation demands considerable front-end investment and cultural transformation. To clear these initial hurdles, the group, especially senior management, must be fully committed to significant change. Key to successful implementation is distinguishing between the types of services to share, developing service contracts, choosing shared services staff carefully, benchmarking the service against outside vendors, establishing a governance board and designing an implementation approach unique to the specific needs of the group.It is very important to ensure successful transformation of the shared services model, existing of all the projects currently running within the group. In order to do that the executive team should know that implementing shared services is not a simple process. The rollout and implementation will take time, at least one to two years. Finally, building a shared servicesmodel requires focusing on the internal clients. The solution is not a simple, quick fix, but calls for careful consideration and implementation of all the points made throughout the course of this research report, from strategy and design to governance and transparent metrics.
