Whilst we hear of Citi cutting back on 75,000 jobs globally, and BT reducing their workforce by 10,000, I am struck by the amount of alerts I get about Shared Services positions available.  Every day postings for ‘Shared Services Director’, ‘Head of Business Change – Shared Services’ and ‘Shared Services Managers’ circulate the Internet like a vast net, looking to catch the eye of a premium catch.  Speaking to a shared services leader the other day, he highlighted that there’s a mushrooming effect coming in shared services – the business model has been delivering benefit in most organisations thus far, but companies’ boards have been sitting on funding, which is generally needed to take the SSO to the next level.

This has changed.  The economic climate is like a gun to the head for many CEOs and CFOs who now look to their senior finance teams for salvation.  The pendulum has swung and rather than SSO Directors pushing for investment, and pushing for more countries and processes to be included in scope, senior management is coming to them, asking then what they need to ‘make things happen… and quickly’.

Another symptom of this mood is that vendors selling technology to this ’space’ haven’t been this busy in years.  I talk to vendors alot, and although there are reductions in most teams, the departments that serve the F&A and P2P markets are buoyant.  Invoice automation projects which have sat on the shelf for years are beginning to move again. 

So whilst there a squeeze felt on a macro economic scale, the finance shared services market is growing.  Seeing that growth in this market has been relativey slow, with only the exceptional darting off and moving with haste through the decentralised-shared services-outsourced/off shored route, movement is very welcome.