News / No control lost in outsourcing (HFMA 2016)

Speaking at the HFMA 2016 workshop on sustainability and transformation plans (STPs), Mr Sutcliffe – a former NHS finance director – said he understood why finance directors feared a loss of control. They were used to walking down the corridor to ask a colleague to pull off a report and having a team directly accountable to them, he said.

But he added: ‘When I was a director of finance, I thought that I could hold someone to account contractually far more than I could even with employees. I think there is a misconception on loss of control – we have KPIs and all the things you would expect to see in a commercial relationship, like outcomes measures. ’

He continued: ‘My overall vision is that [outsourced services] should feel like one finance department. Like me, accountants tend to be control freaks and I accept that feeling of loss of control can feel like a big thing for us control freaks.’

SBS had invested £6m over the last year in improving its services, including in areas such as real-time reporting, he added.

Mr Sutcliffe outlined the SBS approach to STPs. It is currently working with around two-thirds of the STP areas on the future of back office services in their footprints.

It did not propose to offer all services to STPs. ‘We are not really in management accounting, contract or SLA management,’ he said.