The Shared Services Center begins handling accounts payable, accounts receivable and certain human resource-related functions, like benefits transactions, on Aug. 4. Additional services will undergo review this fall before transition to the SSC during the Winter 2015 semester.

SSC Executive Director Pam Gabel said staff have participated in numerous job-specific training programs and will work in teams to apply their collective expertise to an array of finance- and HR-related transactions. The university currently processes more than 4 million finance and HR transactions each year to support its 44,000 faculty and staff.

“When the center starts operating, it’ll begin to consolidate some of those transactions and the existing expertise from academic and administrative units. As those teams collaborate, we’ll be able to collect data to more easily and continually improve services in ways that help the whole campus,” Gabel said.

Gabel has implemented and managed shared service centers in multiple industries and across numerous locations. She’s been preparing for the opening of the U-M SSC since joining the university in late April.

The SSC will include a Contact Center that combines the existing HR Service Center with a new finance contact center focused on answering accounts payable, accounts receivable and other finance-related questions. Faculty and staff will be able to reach representatives for both finance and human resources by calling the same phone number (734-615-2000) they have used in the past to reach HR representatives.

The processes moving to the center in August were reviewed and adjusted based on campus feedback. Senior Project Director Thom Madden said the campus wanted multiple channels and opportunities for feedback so the project team held staff meetings as well as faculty sessions in the schools and colleges. They reviewed each process and gathered feedback to help ensure that creating more efficient processes in one area didn’t create additional burdens in another.

“That’s a high priority for the winter implementation too,” Madden said. “In the fall, we’ll repeat the engagement process to review the next set of processes planned for the SSC sometime during the winter semester. We will finalize details and dates after we have input from the campus community.”

Project leaders emphasized that a successful center will provide valuable, high-quality services in an environment that offers new opportunities for its staff.  SSC leaders have already collaborated with the Stephen M. Ross School of Business to host Shawn Quinn, executive education instructor, for SSC Leadership Day, when Quinn will offer training on positive leadership for the center’s supervisors and managers.

“The SSC can provide a systematic way for us to monitor how efficiently we are managing certain processes universitywide so that we can improve ourselves with that knowledge. But eventually it also could offer an established infrastructure for providing new services if campus needs and wants change over time,” Gabel said. “It’s an exciting step not only for the university, but also for our professional teams in the center.”

A new website for the SSC describes the center and the services starting up in August. Get an early peek at the site by visiting www.ssc.umich.edu.