In my research for Source to Settle as a Service, sharedserviceslink.com’s brand new event for 2013, I’ve been talking to leaders in shared services about their vision for the future. The focus of my research has been on customer satisfaction and service provision.

If we look at the evolution of shared services, it has been transformed over the past 30 years, from a purely back office and transactional function, to a highly automated and slick department. But in the process, have we lost sight of our raison d’être?

In other words, is everything we’re doing in shared services in the best interests of the business? And if not, if our customers aren’t engaged in what we’re doing, how sustainable is shared services?

The issue of sustainability first came up when I spoke to one finance director who was in the middle of a grand re-think of his company’s shared services operating model. In his view, shared services had over the years grown apart from the business in its pursuit of the biggest and best automation technologies and process mapping. As a result, engagement, and therefore investment, from the business was low.

Shared services should be the solution to the business’ problem, therefore only the business can really articulate the value of the shared services organisation, he explained. His aim was for everyone in the organisation – at both the front end of the business and in the C-suite – to understand exactly who shared services were, and how they added value to the business.

In other words, the future of shared services in his eyes was to become a truly aligned, but distinct part of the organisation. One which the business came to for expert advice, on KPI and performance metrics, talent development, and process improvement, for example.

By contrast, when I asked the director of global business services at one global billion-dollar company about what he envisioned for the future, his reaction was that he hoped in three years there was no such thing as global business services. In their case, they were utilising their close relationships with outsourcing providers to take much of the purely transactional activity away from the business. Their captive global business services staff were then able to become much more involved in the perfection of value-add activities, before they were eventually incorporated back into the business.

His view was that shared services, or global business services, should only be a temporary solution to the pain of streamlining back office processes.

Obviously these views represent two extreme ends of the shared services spectrum, but they both have one thing in common: the pursuit of excellence in service provision. After talking to many other leaders in shared services strategy, it seems that there is an increasing realisation in the market that without engaged and satisfied customers, shared services, and therefore the business, will be limited.

What do you predict the future is for shared services? And what route do you plan on taking to realise your vision?

Insourced or Outsourced? The Future of Shared Services According to Leaders in The Market