International Awards for Vital, a shared services department of Ministry of Finance at 14th Annual Asia Pacific Shared Services & Outsourcing 2011

Singapore, 12 September 2011 – Vital, a Singapore Government’s largest shared services department edged out some 450 Asia Pacific entries from both the public and private sectors to snag the annual Shared Services Excellence Awards which honour, recognize and promote those which either outsourced or provided outsourcing services and demonstrated winning practices. The awards were organised by the SSON (Shared Services and Outsourcing Network), the world’s largest industry organisation for shared services comprising 60,000 members. The SSON Excellence Awards set the international benchmark by which the outsourcing world is judged. Its 14th Annual Asia Pacific Shared Services Week is the largest annual gathering of Shared Services professionals in Asia.

2 At a four-day conference held at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre last week, Vital, a shared services department of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) of Singapore was mentioned with high honours at the 14th Annual Asia Pacific Shared Services & Outsourcing 2011. Vital was conferred the winner in the Excellence in People and Communications category, beating three other contenders from PT. Bank Mandiri, Indonesia, Proctor Gamble (Runner-Up / Honourable Mention) and Genpact. Vital came in a close second to Microsoft in the Excellence in Customer Service category, and was awarded with an Honourable Mention (ie 2nd) in the Excellence in Customer Service category. It edged out Citibank, Accenture, Maersk Global Shared Services and National Healthcare Group in this category. These Awards form the industry’s benchmark in terms of best practice and business excellence. Open to all captive and outsourced shared services organizations from all countries, the awards are judged by a panel of leading global industry experts and senior and top management from different organisations such as BASF, Merck, AXA.. The awards are now in their eight year. Each awards programme culminates in a presentation to the winners at Shared Services Week in Asia, USA, Europe and Australia.

3 Vital currently serves more than 100 Ministries, Departments, Organs of State and Statutory Boards in Singapore and more than 80,000 public officers. The suite of services includes finance services, human resource services, payroll and claims services, learning and development services and travel management services.

4 The full awards list are as follows:
a) People’s Choice Contribution to Industry, Thought Leadership Winner: V Ravichandran, Vice President, Global Business Services, HP
b) Excellence in Value Creation - Winner: HP GBS China and Runner-up/Honourable mention: HP Global Analytics, India
c) Excellence in People and Communications - Winner: Vital and Runer/Up/Honourable Mention: Proctor and Gamble
d) Excellence in Improvement & Innovation Winner: HP GBS China and Runner-up/Honourable mention: National Healthcare Group, Singaporee) Excellence in Customer Service Winner: Microsoft and Runner-up/Honourable mention: Vital

5 On Vital winning two people and customer-centric categories, Vital’s Chief Executive, Mr Clarence Ti, 39, said, “The shortlist is full of distinguished companies and we are humbled to have been selected. Like many shared services centers, we started out with a heavy emphasis on cost reduction on the back of achieving economy of scale. As economic growth slows, there is a heavier emphasis on savings and cost cutting. There is also an overwhelming need to build social capital, be it in employee engagement or customer relations. We have to continue to tap on creative solutions and innovation. For long term sustainability, for resilience, there must be a social compact between employees and the organisation. It is our belief that we must never treat our people as economic digits in a transaction processing centre but as a family community at work.”

6 To-date, with transaction volumes exceeding 1,000,000 per annum, the five-year-old shared services centre has garnered 15% in whole-of-Government net savings, or some $4m across the agencies from the second year of its operation. This savings is generally achieved through policy or process standardization, systems automation, demand aggregation and moving to an employee self service framework.

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