The new administration's shared services opportunity: stepping up use of shared services in the federal environment can redeploy resources from routine, low-value work to urgent national needs.

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The new administration's shared services opportunity: stepping up use of shared services in the federal environment can redeploy resources from routine, low-value work to urgent national needs.

The shared services revolution began in the late 1980s with the adoption of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) enterprise resource planning (ERP) software packages by leading commercial enterprises. These highly standardized and scalable technology platforms fully integrate administrative functions and entire business supply chains, thereby enabling consolidation of redundant information technology (IT) infrastructure, business processes, and organizations across a large base of shared services organization (SSO) customers. The cost and service improvements enabled by SSOs are achieved through

* standardization, such as standardized systems and transactions;

* simplification, such as streamlined processes and fewer disparate systems, databases, and organizations; and

* technology leverage, including processing more transactions electronically, making greater use of partnerships with best-in-class providers, and extending to self-service.

The earliest SSOs were created to serve--at an arm's-length, business-like basis--the business units from which they were created. Some of these internal SSOs have become so successful that they have transformed themselves into commercial providers of the same services to customers external to their host enterprises. Today, more than 80 percent of the Global 2000 largest companies receive back-office support from either an internal or an external third-party SSO.

Whether internal or third parry, an SSO's sole mission is to provide services to its customers as efficiently and effectively as possible. This relationship has tw...

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