exult, peter, ackerson, service, people

The view from Scotland: in conversation with Exult's Peter Ackerson

01 Sep 2003 | (Interview)

Peter Ackerson is Vice President-Client Service Center Development of Exult, Inc., a provider of comprehensive web-enabled HR and other back-office functions. Peter's role is to ensure superior service for managers and employees of client companies. Service is delivered through Exult's world-class client service centers and innovative eHR self-sufficiency applications

He oversees the planning, “build-out”, development and growth of centers located in Glasgow, Scotland; Houston, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina and Pasadena, California. Services offered include Payroll, Benefits, Training and Compensation Administration, Solution Centers, Accounts Payable and Human Resources. With over 30 years of experience, Peter has developed extensive knowledge of the strategic and transactional sides of Human Resources. This expertise, coupled with his knowledge of leading-edge technologies, supports Exult's vision of Process Excellence in the delivery of HR services. Peter’s background includes several senior strategy and services positions. Most recently, he was Director-HR Services at Sears, Roebuck and Co., servicing 325,000 employees. Peter has been a member of professional associations including UWC-Strategic Services in Washington, the Urban League in Orlando, Society for Human Resource Management, and IHRIM. He is recognized as a Senior Professional in Human Resources by the Human Resource Certification Institute and is a frequent speaker on Human Resource shared services.

sharedxpertise.org: Exult is one of the most technology-driven players in shared services today and your systems have been hailed as second to none. How is technology changing the importance of location in shared services?

Peter Ackerson: Exult’s business model, with the use of portal technology, is still evolving and it’s not something that will be complete or fully formed for one or two years. There are several reasons why you need to have a shared services centre and why the location is relevant. For a start, you need to acknowledge that a lot of things have processing behind them, so therefore it’s significant that you have internal processing operations.

For example, payroll is one of those processes that we operate in the US and in other locations. You have to have somewhere where your PeopleSoft, Service Access Point (SAP), or other Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications run and are administered. This includes all the ancillary systems that go with it. You may have recruiting applications, training administration, benefits administration and a multitude of other administration processes. All these
need some sort of central location, and it can be somewhat invisible, but it’s still necessary to operate the systems properly.

A web portal may be used to access these applications, but it does not actually run them itself. While all these things are evolving not all of your customers necessarily have web access. Therefore you still need to have alternative forms of delivery because the web portal is only one method of delivery.

In addition to all this, what we call client service centres still need to enable employees to deal with business either through email or through phone. Therefore, it’s realistic to say that especially in business process outsourcing (BPO), you need to have contact centres where people can call in or otherwise make contact to have problems solved, to get information or to fix something. Because of the need for processing and the need for actual contact, the location of the centre is still a relevant issue.

sharedxpertise.org: In the “greenfield”/”brownfield” debate, has Exult seen advantages in picking up assets like an existing workforce (as in your major centre in Charlotte, North Carolina)? How powerful an enticement is this and is it true for all locations?

Peter Ackerson: From a standpoint of speed to service, it’s good to have people come together as a team so that you can leverage their expertise and their sense of commitment. The operation that we have in Houston, where we actually took over a business service, allowed us to keep the people running payroll and accounts payable. Even though we more than doubled the size of the workforce, having the initial personnel in place enabled us to bring in more clients and leverage their expertise.

When we built up Glasgow from scratch, with no takeover of an existing operation, we had to do all of our hiring from ground zero. This was more difficult but we’re quite pleased with the end result. It’s essential when you take over an operation, whether it’s Houston or Charlotte, that you already have a vision of what the culture is going to be and that you work very hard to implement that culture. Otherwise you’ll end up with something that you don’t necessarily like. We’ve spent a great deal of time and energy to define the Exult culture. We know that a culture will happen regardless of what we do and we’d therefore like to direct it and define it so it comes up with something that we’re actually happy with at the end of the day. A short answer to your question is - we’d rather do “brownfield” than “greenfield”.

“It’s essential, when you take over an operation, that you already have a vision of what the culture is going to be and that you work very hard to implement that culture. Otherwise you’ll end up with something that you don’t necessarily like”.

sharedxpertise.org: Many companies find site selection in Europe very challenging. What motivated Exult to select Glasgow as the location for its European centre and how would you say Glasgow compares with other European locations?

Peter Ackerson: We had eight factors that we were looking at, in no particular order, which reflected upon the availability of people with the skills that we needed, particularly the technical skills. An HR service centre has both a call centre and a production centre. A production centre is about two-thirds of the operation. The call centre people are fewer in number. We wanted a major metropolitan area because these typically have more availability of people with technical skills, which was the number one criterion.

The second criterion was labour cost and labour law - for example, how easy would it be to work in the environment? Third in line was property costs and availability. Other criteria were the time zone, whether or not it’s a disaster-proof location, the availability of government grants and subsidies and the availability of language skills. Our top three locations were Manchester, Glasgow and Rotterdam. Those are three that we visited and concentrated on. I must say that at the end Manchester and Glasgow were a toss-up and we eventually made a move to Glasgow because with our initial client, BP, we were more likely to get people in Glasgow than in Manchester.

In addition, the education systems and a customer service attitude are very important. By customer service I mean people who are comfortable dealing with people, good at talking on the phone and friendly. It’s not easy to define that as you only get the feel of it when you’re in the community.
All those kinds of things eventually tipped to Glasgow.

sharedxpertise.org: As the European sister of your Houston-based centre, the Glasgow centre really broke new ground in eHR services located in Europe. What has Exult learned from the Glasgow experience and what are the lessons that might be useful to other organizations looking to establish shared services operations in Europe?

Peter Ackerson: Ultimately people will make the difference. All these things operate through people. We talk about technology but people operate the technology and improve it. Making sure that you really understand the marketplace for
people in your primary technologies is very significant, not only the technologies, but also the availability of people to teach and train others. In many cases you’re teaching your clients to use these systems and you have to have people that can communicate well by phone, in person and in writing.

You really need to understand what the marketplace is, who you’re competing with and where you’re going to get the staff. Additional questions to consider are whether or not the people are intellectually challenged and who can do the things that nobody else has done before. That’s part of the Exult model - we tell a lot of our people that we have a vision of where we’re going but we don’t have all the details. They need to help us fill in the details and to challenge the vision.

“Ultimately people will make the difference. All these things operate through people. We talk about technology but people operate the technology and improve it. Making sure that you really understand the marketplace for people in your primary technologies is very significant”.

We make the point that even though we’re a US-based company, we made a decision upfront that our intention was to staff the operation with people from the UK or Europe, and we’ve actually been able to do that. Our point of view was that the talent is everywhere but it’s a question of being able to find it and access it. Even though it’s a US company, there’s no need to staff the organization with US expatriates and so far we’ve been able to avoid doing that. Our Centre Manager, who is actually a Belgian citizen, came over from the Netherlands quite recently. Most of the people come from the UK and we really haven’t had to import a lot of people.

I think the more that the centres reflect the cultures of those that it will serve, the more they’re able to get off the ground faster and be more accepted. We didn’t know that there aren’t any other HR service centres - especially commercial ones - in Europe or the UK. We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to do it, and it was challenging, but we did it.

“Our point of view was that the talent is everywhere but it’s a question of being able to find it and access it. I think the more that the centres reflect the cultures of those that it will serve, the more they’re able to get off the ground faster and be more accepted”.

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