This book examines Shared Services, moving deeper than politics and marketing hype. It includes a number of real-life interviews with senior practitioners, and studies experiences from the SAP Best Practice Network for Finance and HR.

It provides a conceptual framework to assess today’s and future best business practices in Shared Services. Shared Services serve to reorganize and manage business processes. This involves reengineering, simplification, harmonization, consolidation, centralization and standardization. This is the essence of Shared Services. Human interaction is gradually being replaced by interactive information and communication system support, leading in some cases to full automation. Technology advances in recent years are the main drivers for this breakthrough in Shared Services.