Top locations of Shared Service Centers (SSC) by country 2019

India is the most likely destination for new shared service centers, with 18 percent of respondents in a 2019 survey choosing it as their preferred destination. The United States came in second place with 15 percent of respondents.

Shared service centers

Shared services refer to business functions that are shared across the organization, being used by multiple departments or business segments. Some of most common shared services are: information technology (IT), finance, human resources (HR), procurement, customer contact centers and legal. Many of these services can be outsourced to a third party, which is sometimes referred to as business process outsourcing (BPO). At the end of 2017, IT and HR were the largest segments of the outsourced shared services market. Globally, the market was valued at just over 85 billion U.S. dollars in 2018.

Extent of outsourcing

While shared services outsourcing is a large global industry, the majority of organizations still prefer to perform these functions in-house. In 2017, software development and maintenance were the only IT functions outsourced by a majority of organizations, however these functions fall outside the definition of shared services. Regarding HR, in 2018 only 20 percent of organizations worldwide outsourced any portion of their HR functions.