Check out your Company Bowl for anonymous work chats.
The push to prove ROI in Shared Services and GBS isn’t going away, if anything, the bar just keeps getting higher. If you’re feeling the "transformation fatigue," let’s fix that. We're hosting SSOW in San Diego (Sept. 14–17) to cut through the AI hype and get into actual benchmarking with the people who are really doing the work. The logistics: If you’re planning to go, do it now. The Super Early Bird discount ends this Friday, and it saves your team $2,200. Register here: https://lnkd.in/eeWu3kpF
Over the last 24 hours, the enterprise AI story has not been “better models.” It has been better orchestration with stronger control. Atlassian expanded workflow-native agents in Confluence, Google Cloud positioned Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview inside Vertex Inc. AI’s governed enterprise stack, and Lucidworks pushed MCP-based connectivity for enterprise knowledge access. That matters because enterprise adoption is increasingly being decided by three things: 1️⃣Where agents show up in day-to-day work; 2️⃣How securely they connect to enterprise data; and 3️⃣ How much governance leaders have over what those agents can actually do The next competitive gap may not be who has the smartest model. It may be who can safely connect agents to the right systems, with the right permissions, telemetry, and escalation paths. Enterprises are moving from pilots to production, but concerns about agent sprawl and fragmented governance are rising just as quickly. That is why orchestration, governance, and interoperability now belong in the same leadership conversation. These are the conversations we’ll be unpacking at the Agentic AI Exchange.
I’m noticing a pattern in my research regarding the #AgenticAI conversation. Things are shifting from “cool capability” to where it actually lives in the enterprise and who governs it. On the news side, I'm seeing more vendors framing agents inside governed workflows (not open-ended autonomy), and more "#Agentic” positioning moving into core enterprise platforms and operational use cases. At the same time, in the conversations and inputs we’re collecting ahead of the #AgenticAIExchange, the same themes keep surfacing from enterprise leaders: 1️⃣ #Orchestration is the bottleneck, not models. Everyone has access to strong foundation models; fewer have reliable toolchains, permissions, and monitoring across systems. 2️⃣ Governance is becoming a build requirement, not a compliance afterthought. 3️⃣ The ROI discussion is maturing: less “chat” and more cycle-time reduction (intake → decision → execution → audit). If you’re implementing agents this year, I keep coming back to three practical questions: 🤔 Where do agents run — and who owns the runtime? ❓How do you enforce tool access, data boundaries, and audit trails? 🤔What does “safe fallback” look like when the agent is wrong? Curious where you’re feeling the friction most: governance, integration, or proving ROI? These are the conversations we’ll be unpacking at the Agentic AI Exchange — join us.
It’s that time again…. Saturday Selfie Sessions!!!! #SSOWeek was a whirlwind and I definitely did not get selfies with all my #sharedservices friends, but my phone is filled up with a bunch! I love seeing my friends each year like Sue Brauer and Sherin Abraham and some, like Robert Phillips, Liliana Becerril Ovalle and Jazmin Alvarado Gonzalez who I haven’t had the pleasure for years! Keep coming back everyone. It makes us so 🥹. Stay tuned here for th next several weekends for more selfie smiles!
While I’ve only seen a fraction of it, I can confidently say this year’s #SSOWeek showed what three decades of building this community adds up to. In an industry that’s constantly reinventing itself (from offshoring to AI to whatever comes next) reaching a 30-year milestone is a testament to staying resilient, relevant and relentlessly focused on bringing people together. Honestly, milestones like this are a marketer’s dream but delivering something that actually lives up to it deserves celebrating too - and the Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Americas team pulled it off with style. Huge thank you to James Curley, Francesca Flores, Carter Cronwell, Blake Chung, Tara Bhandari, Vincent Roazzi Jr., William Rhodes and Big Event Media for bringing the 30th anniversary to life. Couldn’t be prouder of what we accomplished together! 👏 I didn’t think it was possible, but the bar has been raised… again
Some photo fun at #SSOWeek! Today is our first main day and we have so much going on, starting with 12 🤯 workshops, main stage kickoff and our keynotes with Eckard Eberle and Kim Skanson. Can’t wait to see everyone in our Innovation Hub later today for games and treats and good conversations!
Today marks 30 days until the 30th Anniversary of SSOW! 🎉
🚨 JOIN US NEXT WEEK for the AP Automation Digital Summit! This year's event (March 10-12) brings together Finance and Accounts Payable leaders to explore how organizations can thrive in the era of autonomous AP, redefining roles, processes, and technology to unlock smarter, faster, and more strategic finance operations. Check out our amazing speaker line-up: 🔹Helen Emmett, Experian 🔹John Adams, MIT Lincoln Laboratory 🔹Gary Hall, Medius 🔹Camill Reid, xSuite 🔹Hanna Ballantine, xSuite 🔹Matthew Pitcher, Serrala 🔹Christine Monk, Serrala 🔹Tara Letourneau - Bal, University Health Network 🔹Kevin Kamau, Basware 🔹Ernest Labbe, IntelliChief 🔹Shelsea Adrian, Yooz 🔹Michael Rizzo, Graphicsland, Inc. 🔹Michael Rowe, Ramp 🔹Matthew Wright, AppZen 🔹Jon Hendrix, Georgetown University 🔹Rajat (Raj) Aggarwal, GEP Worldwide 🔹Sami Nikula, GEP Worldwide Hosted by Bethany Brown and Heather King Don't miss out - there is still time to secure your place! Register here: https://bit.ly/4qvSmxz
What does 30 years of #SharedServices tell us? To find out, we went through the SSON and #SSOWeek archives — literally! We went to our storage unit and dug out all our old stuff. What a goldmine, and so much fun! And we spoke to some of our shared services and #GBS friends to hear their stories. Check out our piece mapping the milestones, pivots, and breakthroughs that shaped the industry 👉 https://lnkd.in/e4JnF7Eg and give me your perspectives on the last 30 years in the comments 👇 . Thanks so much to our fountain of knowledge and archivist, Barbara Hodge for leading this endeavor, as well as to our contributors,
We’re officially less than a week out from the #WorkX Conference (Feb. 23–25) at The Statler Dallas. If you’re planning to join, now’s the time to register and lock in your schedule: https://lnkd.in/eu2Zujh2
