This month, we’re working with the leadership team of the global Shared Services organization at a Fortune Top 100 company. How can the team best come together to make Shared Services a competitive advantage?

The team quickly identified a need for closer alignment. Team members need to know what their peers are doing, so they can manage the overlaps and dependencies. HR services needs to know when IT services will have the new passwords go live, because it will have impact within HR services. But more importantly,  these leaders realized that together, they are uniquely positioned to make trade-offs across different services. Should we first invest in Windows 7, or in PeopleSoft? Is our budget better spent integrating our travel services globally, or should we delay that in favor of ensuringbetter mobile agility? No team other than the top team is positioned to make these choices between “apples and oranges”, and allocate scarce resources where they’ll have the highest impact.

What’s your team uniquely positioned to accomplish – what can you do together, that no other team or individual can do?