Shared services is the provision of a service by one part of an organization or group, where that service had previously been found, in more than one part of the organization or group. Thus the funding and resourcing of the service is shared and the providing department effectively becomes an internal service provider. The key here is the idea of ‘sharing’ within an organization or group. This sharing needs to fundamentally include shared accountability of results by the unit from where the work is migrated to the provider. The provider, on the other hand, needs to ensure that the agreed results are delivered based on defined measures.
Shared services is the consolidation of business operations that are used by multiple parts of the same organization. Shared services are cost-efficient because they centralize back-office operations that are used by multiple divisions of the same company and eliminate redundancy.
