At the December quarterly meeting of the PCAC, Len DeSimone, President of the MTA’s Business Service Center (BSC), brought the members up to date on the activities of this new entity. Well, new is not quite right, as the BSC has been in formation for two years. But, it will only be formalized in its operations on January 3, 2011.
For those not familiar with this topic, the MTA created the BSC to implement a common way of doing business across the agencies. The BSC will consolidate and standardize selected business processes. This shared services approach will provide the opportunity for greater efficiency, transparency, and cost effectiveness. It will also provide a centralized system for easier access to information for planning and decision making, which could further drive down the cost of doing business.
Under this arrangement, the BSC will provide key Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology services to MTA employees, retirees, job applicants, and vendors. Mr. DeSimone indicated the following will be the breakdown of functions between the BSC and the agencies:
Human Resources: 80% of HR work will be done by the BSC. They will receive and process resumes; the agency will select; and then BSC will process new employees and conduct orientation sessions.
Accounts Payable: The BSC will handle 100% of this function across the agencies.
Clients: The BSC will act a call center for all internal and external clients.
SLA’s: The BSC will oversee all Service Level Agreements (SLA) that cover performance in the MTA business relationships.
Chart of Accounts: There will be one chart of accounts which has been developed internally over the past year.
People Soft: A single version of People Soft, the internal financial and time management program, will begin in January across all agencies.
Mr. DeSimone added that one goal is to minimize the use of paper by moving to an all electronic format. The expected results are a 30%-35% cost reduction across MTA. He stated that BSC should see a payback of its start-up costs in 5.2 years through an annual savings of $25-$30 million over current MTA operations. DeSimone concluded by noting that the BSC is the largest shared service operation in North America. To view his presentation click here.