Shared Services - Location Variations

Location Variations

It is sometimes argued that there are three basic location variations for a shared service including:

On-shore

Work is carried out in the same country but at a different location

Near-shore

Work is carried out in a close location (e.g. continental Europe relative to the UK)

Off-shore

Work is carried out anywhere in the world that is not on-shore or near-shore

This is not just to take advantage of wage arbitrage but to appreciate the talents of particular economies in delivering specific service offerings.

The difficulty with this argument is that near-shore and off-shore are normally associated with the outsourcing model and are difficult to reconcile with the notion of an internally shared service as distinct from an externally purchased service. Clearly the use of off-shore facilities by a government department is not an example of shared services.

One alternative to centralizing or offshoring operations, is one which is being delivered successfully by UK based BPO group TBS Shared services. They work with organisations from across the globe, building systems before bringing those systems, and using the resource of local people to deliver those services. This revolutionary way of setting up shared service contracts means that local communities continue to thrive, as employment stays local.