Outsourcing Dilemma: The Search for Competitiveness, The

The client’s own shared service centre

The term SSC is most commonly used to describe attempts by major client organizations to centralize a function like finance by continent or even globally. Multinationals have always been concerned about the theoretical waste involved in having separate accounting and other services in all or most of their overseas subsidiaries.

Few of these major organizations had risked making any moves in this direction until the onset of the 1990s. But then communications and other technological advances reached a stage that made their desires a possibility. Elizabeth Arden, Union Carbide, Whirlpool and Mars had all centralized their accounts in one European country by the first half of the decade and many others have ...