12 January, 2009 – Kellogg's
In May 2008, global food retailer, Kellogg's won the 'Shared Services Employer of the Year' and the 'Best Overall Shared Service Organisation', at the 8th Annual Shared Services Week & Excellence Awards in Barcelona. The awards hosted by the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network recognise and promote both captive and outsourced shared services that demonstrate winning practices across Europe.
The Kellogg’s Shared Service Centre (SSC) has been based in Manchester since 1997, located opposite the Old Trafford cricket ground and just around the corner from the Manchester United football stadium. The centre serves the UK, Spain, France, Benelux, Nordics, Germanics, Italy, the Republic of Ireland, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Greece and Turkey and employs 140 people including 40 different nationalities speaking Spanish, French, Danish, Swedish, Italian, German and Polish.
As the accolades suggest, Kellogg’s offers best practice in SSC management and Manchester offers an excellent location to achieve this. John Gregory, European Financial Services Director, points to a good supply of graduates with diverse culture and language skills in the region, particularly from the target business and language degree courses at Manchester University and Manchester Business School. Main ways of recruiting graduates include attending career fairs and giving guest lectures at the University.
The calibre of graduates highlights the Kellogg’s SSC move away from a traditional transaction processing factory to a centre where better support and value are delivered to customers. Kellogg’s is a CIMA Training Quality Partner and CIMA Development Partner, supporting CIMA training for its graduate intake. John says that the CIMA qualification and its emphasis on broader business skills as well as the career progression and brand that Kellogg’s offers is a key factor in differentiating the SSC for potential employees: "Manchester offers a great pool of talent. Although we compete with many other SSCs, the CIMA qualification helps us to ensure that we get the best that the Manchester city region has to offer. Manchester is well placed to weather the economic downturn and this has been proven by a good number of high quality candidates coming on to the market in the area."
He considers this the best incentive to offer graduates in a competitive space.
The advantage of taking graduates straight from universities on the CIMA course is that they learn while doing the job and settle into and feel comfortable with the company culture straight away. There is also the desire to be part of a commercial organisation rather than advising it. There is immediate interaction with the rest of the business, for example with market finance directors and learning to understand business results while learning about the dynamics of the business.
The CIMA scheme and calibre of graduates recruited in Kellogg’s Manchester based SSC is viewed as a training ground for the main part of the Kellogg’s business and very often employees are recruited into the finance department. John views this as a positive thing and would rather keep multi-skilled individuals within the company than losing them to competitors.
As a major employer in the Manchester region, John ensures that the service centre and its employees take advantage of the resources offered by MIDAS, especially the North West Shared Services Forum which helps to develop staff and infrastructure. John views the services offered as improving the ability to network and empathise with people facing the same challenges learn about peers’ successes and failures and very importantly benchmark performance against competitors in the region.