How to Build a Shared Service Centre That Scales
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Every enterprise reaches a point where duplicated back-office functions start costing more than they should. Running separate finance, HR, and procurement operations across every business unit creates inefficiency that compounds over time. A shared service centre solves this by consolidating those functions into one centralized, scalable operation. Whether you’re setting up your first shared services centre or transforming an existing one into a global capability hub, this guide walks through strategy, operating model design, change management, and the characteristics that separate good shared service centres from great ones.
How to Set Up a Shared Service Centre
Building a shared service centre isn’t something you can rush. The organizations that get it right treat the process as a business transformation, not just an infrastructure project. Here are five steps that form the foundation.
Define Your Shared Service Centre Strategy
Before anything else, you need senior sponsorship. Not passive approval from a steering committee, but active executive backing that treats the shared service centre as a standalone business with its own business plan, its own KPIs, and its own accountability structure.
That means getting clear on a few things early. Which processes are moving? Which ones stay in-country? How do you harmonize systems and workflows across regions and divisions that have been operating independently for years?
The strategic planning phase is also where you confront the less tangible barriers. Cultural resistance. Organizational politics. The fear (sometimes justified) that consolidation means job losses in certain locations. None of these go away on their own. You address them in the strategy phase or you fight them throughout the entire implementation.
The goal here is a shared service centre strategy that’s specific enough to execute against and realistic enough to survive contact with reality.
Architect the Operating Model
The biggest structural decision is whether to build a captive centre (fully in-house) or outsource operations to a third-party vendor. Each path has trade-offs, and the right answer depends on what you’re optimizing for.
Captive centres suit organizations that need confidentiality for critical functions, want full control over their accounting and reporting processes, and plan to build long-term institutional knowledge. You own the team. You own the data. You own the process evolution.
Smaller organizations sometimes outsource non-core functions like basic accounting as a practical first step. But for enterprises that want the cost advantages of a shared services centre without giving up operational control, the captive model, structured as a Global Capability Center, is increasingly the preferred path.
Location is the other major decision. The three most established options in Asia are India (with centres in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Gurgaon), the Philippines (primarily Manila), and Malaysia. The right location depends heavily on non-financial criteria: talent availability in the specific functions you need, language capabilities, time zone alignment with your headquarters, and the maturity of local infrastructure.
Manage the Change Process
Setting up a shared service centre means changing how people work. That’s harder than changing where they work.
Start by evaluating the entire function you’re consolidating. Which roles transfer to the new centre? Which ones stay? Which ones get phased out? These are difficult conversations, and organizations that try to handle them internally without experienced support tend to underestimate the complexity. Bringing in external expertise for workforce transition planning isn’t a luxury. It’s risk management.
Don’t forget external stakeholders. Customers, suppliers, bankers, auditors, and consultants all interact with the functions you’re centralizing. They need to know what’s changing, when it’s changing, and who their new points of contact are. Surprises create friction.
Regular cross-functional communication is non-negotiable throughout this phase. Share progress, acknowledge bottlenecks, and celebrate quick wins. The people affected by the transition need to feel informed, not blindsided.
Take a Phased Approach to Shared Service Centre Migration
The most common mistake in shared service centre migration is trying to move too much too fast. Overly optimistic timelines look great in a board presentation, but they collapse under the weight of real-world complexity.
Start with a simpler, well-understood process. Employee expense reporting is a classic first candidate because it’s high volume, relatively standardized, and low risk if something goes wrong during the transition.
Handle one process at a time. Get it to steady state. Make sure the team is comfortable, the workflows are stable, and the quality metrics are where they need to be. Then move to the next one. This approach takes longer on paper, but it gets you to full operational capability faster in practice because you’re not constantly firefighting across multiple half-migrated processes.
Set up a Centre of Excellence
The shared service centre that just does the same work cheaper isn’t the one that survives long-term. The one that evolves into a Centre of Excellence is.
What does that look like? It means using digitization, analytics, and automation not just to run existing processes more efficiently, but to actively support the parent company’s digital strategy. Think new online products, predictive analytics for financial planning, social media responsiveness, “next-best-action” guidance for customer interactions, and automated workflows that eliminate manual touchpoints.
The shared service centres that make this transition become strategic assets. They stop being cost centres and start being capability centres. And that’s the trajectory that eventually leads to a full Global Capability Center model, where the India (or Philippines, or Malaysia) operation is contributing to product development, R&D, and innovation alongside its shared services mandate.
Investing in digital workspace infrastructure early accelerates this transformation by giving your teams the collaboration tools and secure access they need to operate as a true extension of the global business.
What Services Does a Shared Services Centre Provide?
A shared services centre can handle virtually any back-office function that benefits from consolidation and standardization. The specific services vary by organization, but the most common ones fall into seven categories:
Finance: Accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger management, financial reporting, tax processing, and compliance. Finance is typically the first function to move into a shared services centre because the processes are well-defined and the efficiency gains are immediate.
Human Resources: Recruitment support, benefits administration, payroll processing, employee relations, and training and development coordination. HR shared services free up local HR business partners to focus on strategic talent management rather than transactional processing.
Procurement: Centralized purchasing, supplier management, and contract administration. Consolidating procurement into a shared service centre gives the organization better visibility into spend and stronger negotiating leverage with vendors.
Information Technology: Help desk and service desk operations, network and system administration, software support, and data management. IT shared services are particularly well-suited to the model because many support functions can be delivered remotely without quality loss.
Customer Service: Order fulfillment, billing support, call centre operations, and front-line customer service. Organizations often start with internal-facing customer service before expanding to external-facing support.
Supply Chain Management: Inventory management, logistics coordination, and transportation management. These functions benefit from centralized visibility and standardized processes across regions.
Legal and Compliance: Contract management, risk management, and regulatory compliance monitoring. These tend to move to the shared service centre later in the maturity journey, once the centre has established credibility with more transactional functions.
The underlying principle is consistent: eliminate duplication, reduce cost, and standardize processes so the rest of the business can focus on growth instead of administrative overhead.
What Makes the Best Shared Service Centres Stand Out?
Not all shared service centres deliver the same value. The ones that become genuine strategic assets share a few characteristics that set them apart from the average cost-cutting exercise.
Thinking globally. Many companies start their shared service centre journey domestically, consolidating functions from a few business units in the same country. That’s a fine starting point. But the best shared service centres don’t stop there. They expand to serve all geographies and business units, operating as a truly global function rather than a collection of regional silos optimizing independently.
Continuously evolving scope. It’s tempting to measure a shared service centre purely on cost savings from high-volume transactions. The leading organizations resist that. They continuously widen their geographic reach and service range, pulling in specialized functions that weren’t part of the original mandate. The shared service centre that was set up to handle accounts payable five years ago might now be running analytics, automation, and compliance monitoring. That evolution is deliberate, not accidental.
Investing in people. Successful shared service centres treat employee development as an investment, not an overhead line item. Problem-solving ability matters more than functional expertise for delivering excellent internal customer service. Research suggests it’s roughly four times more impactful. That means training programs focused on critical thinking, cross-functional understanding, and communication skills alongside the technical curriculum.
Standardization through global process owners. The most advanced shared service centres appoint global process owners who have end-to-end accountability for processes like order-to-cash and purchase-to-pay. This is what breaks down the siloed thinking that undermines shared services. When one person owns the entire process across all regions, you get consistency, continuous improvement, and clear accountability.
Benefits of a Global Shared Service Centre
The benefits of a shared service centre fall into two categories: efficiency gains from consolidation and effectiveness gains from specialization. Here’s how they break down.
| Increased Efficiency | Increased Effectiveness |
|---|---|
| Economy of scale: consolidating volume drives down per-transaction cost | Specialization and skill leverage: dedicated teams develop deeper expertise than generalists spread across business units |
| Technology leverage: shared infrastructure and platforms reduce total IT spend | Freed management focus: business unit leaders spend time on strategic issues instead of managing back-office operations |
| Standardization and coordination: consistent processes reduce errors and rework | Information and resource sharing: cross-business visibility enables better decision-making and eliminates knowledge silos |
| Greater spans of control: fewer managers overseeing larger, standardized operations |
As Cliff Struhar, VP and Advisory at Gartner, noted: “Successful organizations take a long-term view of shared services from day one.” The enterprises that treat a shared service centre as a short-term cost play tend to plateau early. The ones that plan for sustained capability building are the ones that unlock the full value.
India’s Shared Service Centre Landscape: Why It’s Changing
India remains the most established destination for shared service centre operations, and the landscape is evolving fast.
According to the 2021 Global Services Centre and Outsourcing Survey Report by Deloitte, India continues to be the most attractive location for most industries. The projection is that 500 MNCs will open shared service centres in India by 2025, raising SSC exports to between USD 58 billion and USD 81 billion and employing up to 2 million people.
But the nature of that work is shifting. The era of India as a call centre destination is giving way to something more strategic. Companies like Lowe’s, Mercedes-Benz, and Walmart are using their India operations as global innovation and research centres. The demand for AI, machine learning, cloud computing, and data science skills is growing faster than the demand for traditional transactional processing.
This shift from basic shared service centres to strategic capability hubs isn’t just a rebranding exercise. Enterprises that started with transactional back-office consolidation in India are now running R&D, product engineering, and AI/ML operations from the same locations. The shared service centre model in India has evolved into something closer to a full Global Capability Center, and the enterprises leading this transition are the ones getting the most value from their India operations.
For companies evaluating India as a location, the key cities remain Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Gurgaon. Each has a mature IT ecosystem, deep talent pools, and established infrastructure. The decision between them often comes down to the specific skills you need, real estate costs, and the competitive intensity for talent in your functional area.
Companies that need to hire quickly in India while their shared service centre infrastructure is being built often use an employer of record model to onboard talent compliantly from day one, then transition those employees into the permanent entity once it’s operational.
Why Partner with ANSR to Build Your Shared Service Centre
ANSR is India’s leading firm for setting up and managing Global Capability Centers. With more than 100 customers and over 15 years of experience, ANSR brings a global team that designs, builds, and manages multi-functional business operations at scale.
What sets ANSR apart is the end-to-end approach. Rather than handing you a playbook and walking away, ANSR’s team works alongside yours through every phase: strategy definition, location selection, entity setup, talent acquisition, workspace infrastructure, and ongoing operational management.
Whether you’re building a shared service centre from scratch, expanding an existing one into new functions, or evolving your SSC into a full Global Capability Center, ANSR has the frameworks, the local expertise, and the track record to make it work.
