Are We About to See a New Wave of Shared Services Activity?
We were recently a sponsor at the 18th annual Shared Services & Outsourcing Week conference in Orlando (part of SSON, the leading event for shared services). The significant portion of attendees that are just embarking on shared services for the first time and opening up new shared services capabilities was striking to us. It raises this question: Why are we seeing a new wave of shared services situations?
There are two perspectives for shared services and outsourcing: (1) two sides of the same coin or (2) differing vehicles to achieve the same goals. Either way, most of us now think of shared services as a mature space with companies refining their shared services.
So it’s certainly interesting to see new shared services starts on the upswing, especially since BPO in 2013 certainly performed less robustly than we had hoped for in terms of growth.
Are organizations moving to favor shared services? Or are we going to see a re-acceleration of outsourcing as companies move to build hybrid models (both outsourcing and shared services) going forward?
We’ll be watching this trend. But there can be no doubt that based on this conference we are seeing a pick-up in new shared services starts.
Photo credit: SSON
