Deloitte 2015 Global Shared Services Survey: Expansion of Shared Services is on a Sharp Climb, Increasing Value for Companies Across the Globe

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Mar 05, 2015, 10:47 ET

NEW YORK, March 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Organizations are increasingly expanding their Shared Services organizations, demonstrating benefits to the broader enterprise and overall success, according to the latest global survey from Deloitte. Companies are pursuing multi-function Shared Services Centers (SSCs) from the beginning of their journey, many skipping single-function centers altogether. In fact, survey respondents reported that SSCs with more than three functions have increased by more than 40 percent over the last two years, based on a total of more than 1,000 SSCs across all respondents. Additionally, 71 percent of respondents are looking to increase the number of functions within their SSCs in the future.

Deloitte released its 2015 Global Shared Services survey, polling organizations around the globe on their Shared Services journey. This is Deloitte's seventh biennial survey, collecting data, insights and trends on the growth and evolution of SSCs since 1999.

"Deloitte's research reveals organizations are continuing to see strong value from leveraging a Shared Services model. It also demonstrates that an organization's journey takes many different paths, and while there may be no single right answer or one-size-fits-all solution, there are critical elements and lessons to be learned from others who are more mature in this space," said Noemie Tilghman, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "Taking the first steps to launch or evolve your SSC model is critical, and our survey provides a rich data set that companies can use to learn from the experiences and outcomes of many others."

Beyond Shared Services, organizations are also accelerating their journey by increasingly adopting Global Business Services (GBS) models, leveraging the lessons from single-function SSCs and, in some cases, skipping over the single-function SSC's journey completely. The potential benefits of moving straight to a GBS model include shared methods and tools, lower costs through optimized labor pools, a shared governance structure and improved controls. The survey results show that organizations most commonly define GBS models as multi-function, multi-region and multi-business led by a single GBS leader. The GBS leaders responsibilities include ownership of major continuous improvement initiatives and global process ownership (among others) – with over half of these leaders reporting directly to either the CEO or CFO (62 percent).

Additional trends revealed in Deloitte's 2015 Global Shared Services Survey include:

Geography
Key Trends: Expansion across the globe indicates that virtually every country is now a source for talent and in turn a potential SSC location. This is further made possible because organizations have addressed previous challenges — such as language barriers, time zone coverage, and regulatory requirements. The transition from developed to emerging markets is clear.

Opportunities for the Future: Organizations are building flexible and portable processes to expand their geographic scope and take advantage of new markets as they come into play.

Organization
Key Trends: As a result of better managing resources in SSC environments, organizations are experiencing fewer people-related challenges.

Opportunities for the Future: Organizations should source talent that not only has the appropriate functional skills but also an understanding of customer responsiveness as they anticipate that maintaining high customer service levels and providing high quality service within the SSC environment will be the primary challenge in the future. This is supported by the primary reasons organizations note that business units/divisions opt out of a SSC model is due to a lack of service responsiveness.

Operations and Governance
Key Trends: A myriad of successful SS/GBS models serve as examples — demonstrating the benefits of leveraging these consolidated labor models. The models continue to be underpinned with critical governance items including Service Level Agreements, global and regional process owners, customer councils, and a defined charge-back model.

Opportunities for the Future: SSCs/GBS leaders plan to significantly increase their role in higher-value activities, such as introducing predictive analytics to the organization. In order to be effective in delivering these types of higher-value services, the SSCs/GBS resources must become more familiar with the inner operations of the businesses they support. Furthermore, the critical governance items must evolve to reflect the change in the types of services an SSC provides.

Value
Key Trends: Continuous improvement mindsets have been increasingly built into the culture of SSCs to help achieve productivity targets. Surveyed organizations report the average annual increase in productivity remains consistent from 2013 at around 8 percent, with an average payback period for SSCs of 2.3 years. While the top three benefits, cost reduction, process efficiency and improved internal controls, have remained consistent since 2011, many other benefits are being realized including enhanced support of growth and acquisitions, increases in data visibility, and improvement of the organization's effective tax rate.

Opportunities for the Future: Some organizations are not incorporating tax as a strategic element in their SSC's decision-making process, which is often leading them to leave money on the table. Additionally, organizations feel that technology automation is the largest challenge in support of the SSC's objectives.

About Deloitte's 2015 Global Shared Services Survey
Since 1999, Deloitte has conducted biennial research to help provide insight to organizations regardless of where they are in their Shared Services or Global Business Services journey. The survey identifies emerging trends in Shared Services based on the most recent response as well as comparing and contrasting responses from past Deloitte Global Shared Services surveys and shares concepts and insights from multiple geographies, industries and revenue bases. The goal of the survey is to provide the latest thinking to help organizations that are beginning their Shared Services journey learn from others and to infuse fresh ideas into more mature Shared Services operations. This year's survey includes input from 311 participants from around the globe and provides data for more than 1,000 Shared Services Centers globally. Survey participants represented companies from most sectors with annual revenues ranging from less than $1 billion to more than $25 billion. For more detail, please read the Executive Summary and download the Infographic.

For additional Deloitte perspective on Shared Services, please visit us at www.deloitte.com/us/servicedeliverytransformation.

As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.

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