Shared services in accounting and finance

The purpose of this paper is to present examples of the current state of the Shared Services Concept as applied to the finance function. The paper arises out of the ongoing research after current developments in the finance function enabled by information and communication technology, at the University of Twente. The rapid developments in information and communication technology (leading to new ‘economics of information’) combined with developments in organisation theory, have far-reaching implications for the way activities are best organised (‘the new economics of organisation’). As a result, organisations are being restructured, and boundaries of organisations are shifting. These developments are captured by the powerful concept of the virtual organisation. As being argued by the authors, the Shared Service Concept could be understood as providing an answer to these new economics of organisation. As such, it is related to the more general concept underlying the virtual enterprise. The Shared Services Concept implies consolidating certain support services into a shared services centre. The relations of the shared services centre with business units is governed as much as possible by market conditions. After having explained the Shared Service Concept in general, the authors will focus on the way this concept is applied to the finance function. In the finance function, several examples exist of the Shared Services Concept. Such examples include accounting houses and in-house banks. For the next years, financial shared services can be expected to enjoy an increasing amount of attention.