Human Resources
Business capabilities such as human resources are commonly run as a shared service. This allows an organization to manage risks such as legal or compliance risks from one center of competency.Information Technology
Operational capabilities such as an internal IT department. Allowing business units to go outside of IT and deal with technology vendors directly has a variety of risks as business units may not have the capabilities to manage things like architecture, compliance, data and information security.Help Desk
Providing a single point of contact for information technology support and inquiries.Data Centers
Specialized facilities such as data centers can be wrapped in a service contract and operated using IT service management frameworks.Project Management Office
Internal consultancies such as a project management office that provides consistent program and project management using a set of methodologies.Information Security
Information security is often centralized and offered as a service. For example, information security may offer consulting, security testing and incident response services.Tools
Offering technology tools such as mobile devices that are standardized across an organization.Platforms
Offering platforms such as cloud platforms or database services in one place across an organization or team.| Overview: Shared Services | ||
Type | Business StrategyOperational Strategy | |
Definition (1) | Doing something in one place that was previously replicated in many places across an organization. | |
Definition (2) | A centralized business function or capability that is wrapped in a service contract with the expectation that it be used by an entire organization or group. | |
Value | Cost reduction by reducing duplication of effort.Achieving economies of scale.Improving quality of services with standard methodologies and service level objectives. | |
Risks | Shared services can represent a bottleneck and single point of failure. In many cases, duplicating the same service in many places has resiliency advantages.Shared services initiatives tend to be painful from a change management and project management perspective. They commonly run over budget.There is overhead in having all teams rely on an external team for a critical service. In many cases, teams are most productive when they have control.A tendency for shared services to become inflexible and bureaucratic in imposing standards, technologies and processes across an organization. | |
Related Concepts | ||
