SSCL, a leader in business-critical support services for the UK public sector, successfully led the movement of some of the largest Government departments onto the Oracle Cloud infrastructure (OCI).

Cintra, the enterprise cloud architecture specialists, were key partners working alongside SSCL and Oracle to ensure the success of this complex transformation, unprecedented in size and scale and successfully delivered despite the challenges presented by the global pandemic.

It was a large-scale, mission-critical change programme and a significant undertaking for Government clients. However it successfully unlocks even greater savings for Government, improved performance, greater flexibility and the ability to innovate more effectively across large parts of the UK public sector.

One of the largest migrations of its kind

David Morris, SSCL CEO, said: “This significant cloud migration programme is one of the largest of its kind ever undertaken in the UK public sector. Given its nature and complexity, we needed a partner with a proven track record, and this is one of the reasons we were delighted to work with Cintra.

“There are many benefits for our public sector customers – greater scope to transform and innovate and, with the launch of the SSCL Intelligent Ecosystem, we can now offer more individualised services while delivering exceptional performance across the board.”

Brendan McNamee, CEO at Cintra, added: “This cloud transformation is incredibly important  for the UK public sector, given that it will benefit so many parts of government. We now look forward to working with SSCL to support the new cloud foundations and helping to unlock the significant value this new platform will offer.”

“While the last year has been challenging, every business, across the public and private sectors, has been looking hard at how they adapt and innovate,” said Richard Petley, senior vice president, Oracle UK. “Digital technologies are key in allowing companies to do just this. SSCL’s move to using OCI will not only allow it to benefit from improved performance, but also enable it to help the wider public sector unlock new ways of working to ultimately deliver better value to the UK taxpayer.”

2021 kicked off to a great start for SSCL as the company welcomed the Independent Monitoring Authority (IMA) as a new client.  The IMA was set up to monitor the UK’s implementation and application of the agreements it has made with the European Union as part of the Withdrawal Bill, to guarantee the rights of their citizens living in the UK and Gibraltar.

IMA became fully operational on 1 January 2021 although SSCL had already been providing business processing support since August last year.  SSCL’s support has been on designing, building and migrating on to technology platforms, whilst adopting business process support in Human Resource, Resourcing, Payroll, Learning and Development, Finance and Accounting. SSCL will continue to work in partnership with IMA to support future business change and evolution.

David Morris, SSCL CEO, said: “I am delighted to welcome IMA as a new client – this is a great start to 2021 and testament to all the hard work in the background and during last year.”

SSCL’s latest innovative technology will help customers unlock the door to a new level of customer experience when using SSCL services.  SSCL currently provides business support services to around 550,000 public sector employees from Government, Police and Defence.

SSCL’s Intelligent Ecosystem creates a much faster user journey for our customers -more accessible services and a first class user experience. Described as a ‘gateway’, users will access SSCL’s Intelligent Ecosystem through its award winning myHub portal.  From there customers can access any application in relation to their pay, HR, finance, procurement – managing their work tasks in one place, at any time and from any location.

Matt Hurley, SSCL Director of Service Strategy and Innovation, said: “Shared services is constantly evolving, and clients’ expectations, business challenges and the technology we use is changing faster than ever. We need solutions that have longevity and our platform solution, cloud-based Intelligent Ecosystem offers just that.”

As a values-led organisation, SSCL has a strong sense of community.  At each office we have an active Employee Engagement Network who galvanise their teams to come together to support team fundraising and volunteering for a wide range of local and national charities. Here are some of the community activities SSCL took part in in 2020.

We’re proud to support the Care of Police Survivors (COPS) charity which supports the families of police officers and staff who have lost their lives whilst on duty.  It offers a range of services – from hosting local, national and on-line events to helping families build friendships and support, providing specialist counselling support through Winston’s Wish and RedArc.

In SSCL we provide a range of critical business support services for the Metropolitan Police and our teams are passionate about raising funds for COPS.  In 2020 David Parsons, Managing Director for SSCL Police & Resourcing Services, and a number of his colleagues set themselves a challenge to take part in the virtual Police Unity Tour, which had over 200 cyclists. David and team raised an amazing £6,070 for the COPS charity.

But that’s not all SSCL has raised in 2020.  Despite the global pandemic, our 2,500 employees ran, cycled, dressed-down, dressed up, held raffles, quizzes and other innovative schemes to continue to raise money for charities during the lockdown restrictions. We have also supported the local community through volunteering initiatives helping at foodbanks and supporting our neighbours who have been isolated through lockdown.

In total, we raised around £20,000 for local and national charities including Save the Children UK, Move the Masses, Macmillan, The British Legion, MIND, Samaritans, Down Syndrome, Children in Need, Refuge, the Trussell Trust and many more.

Shared Services Connected Limited (SSCL) has won the prestigious Gold award at this year’s UK National Contact Centre Awards, recognising its outstanding support to its internal operational teams, contact centre and clients

SSCL’s Knowledge and Insight Management team was announced as winner in the Contact Centre Support Team of the Year – Colleague category, demonstrating the huge impact the team has had on SSCL’s organisation wide operational performance.

Going up against some giants in the category including Tesco Bank and Direct Line, the team was acknowledged for its innovative solution, its single customer experience interface that has reduced calls into the contact centre by as much as 90% in some areas and increased self-service by 500%!

SSCL’s myHub portal offers instant information, live webchat and chatbots providing real time help, advice and guidance serving 17 central Government bodies and up to 300,000 potential users, answering queries across HR, IT, Recruitment, Finance and Accounting services.

The implementation of myHub has seen an improved customer efforts score to 83%, improved NPS by 15 points in 2019 and first contact resolution improved by 7.6% to 92%.

Additionally, it has improved customer experience by providing accurate, timely knowledge to end-users and reduced reliance on voice and email channels for query resolution.

SSCL’s focus on enhanced Customer Experience plays a big role in its newly launched innovation strategy – to develop innovative digital solutions tailored to CX.  The strategy Shared Services your way is a move away from standardised Shared Services, says Clive Shepherd, head of SSCL Customer Experience.

Speaking about the team’s win and the positive impact myHub has had on SSCL’s customers, Matt Hurley, Director of Strategy and Innovation said: “I’m immensely proud of our Knowledge and Insight Management team for winning this award. It’s great that all of their hard work, that has had such a positive impact on the SSCL contact centre performance, has been recognised in this way.

“They have worked in a truly collaboratively manner, both with the SSCL contact centre operational teams and with our end users. Their drive, commitment and passion for their work has ensures the benefits of all of their great work, is felt by all of our customers.

“The recent upgrade to our award winning self-service platform – myHub, has been really well received. It’s a key solution that we’ll continue to develop and is fundamental to our goal of providing personalised user experiences.”

SSCL’s myHubv2 offers clients even more solutions to customer experience.

Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL) has been engaged by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to recruit 9,000 new Jobcentre Work Coaches as part of its ambitious plan to get the UK back to work.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic Mims Davies, Minister for Employment at DWP, announced on 10 September a range of measures to boost employment. As a result SSCL has been tasked with sourcing 9,000 new Jobcentre Work Coaches by March 2021.

The first recruitment wave will see more than 3,000 staff in place by Christmas with starters taking up posts in Jobcentres next month. These roles will directly support employment programmes such as the £2 billion Kickstart Scheme.

SSCL, a leader in critical business support services for the largest Government departments, the Ministry of Defence and Police, is expert in high-volume, rapid pace recruitment. It will run the end-to-end process from advertising for candidates to onboarding new recruits.

As unemployment is expected to rise over the coming months, the new Jobcentre Work Coaches will play a vital role helping people find new jobs and developing new skills in the current labour market.

In just one week SSCL has received over 15,000 applications and is now testing, shortlisting and vetting candidates. Within 2 weeks of go live, we have already progressed candidates through the recruitment process and into pre-employment checking.

David Parsons, Managing Director at SSCL Police and Resourcing Services said: “This is clearly a significant undertaking for the UK Government, and we are delighted to put our expertise in recruitment on this scale to good use.

“We have already hit the ground running and in spite of the challenging conditions caused by the ongoing pandemic, we are confident of finding the best Work Coaches all over the country.

“This is a project of vital national importance, and we look forward to playing our part supporting the UK back into work.”