2021 global shared services and outsourcing report

Shared services and outsourcing delivery models: More global, complex, and rapidly evolving

Service delivery models are constantly evolving. There is a rising shift to leverage global, multifunctional, and virtual or remote models for the world’s largest companies, especially driven by learnings from COVID-19. These organizations are prioritizing areas across work, workforce, and workplace to be successful in furthering the value that shared services and outsourcing models bring, increasing efficiency, reducing costs, and driving excellent business value. Apart from expanding the traditional functional scope, they are developing specialized capabilities such as analytics, reporting, digital capabilities, and enhancing the customer experience. These shared and global business services (GBS) constructs create an environment where new capabilities can be rapidly adopted and position their customers for success.

Since 1999, Deloitte has been conducting biennial surveys to understand how shared services organizations capitalize on leading practices and trends to address their business challenges and better meet customer needs. This year’s survey witnessed record participation:

• More than 600 respondents, a 58% increase from 2019, from 500 unique organizations globally

• Respondents from around 45 countries; with shared services locations across nearly 75 countries

• About 56% of respondents were from organizations with at least $5B in revenue

• Participation was highest among the consumer and energy, resources, and industrials sectors, contributing more than 50% of the responses

Explore highlights from the survey, and download the executive summary for more findings and trends.

Key attributes of successful global business services organizations

More than 50% of respondents are achieving three or more objectives they sought out when investing in GBS and SSC capabilities. These successful global business services organizations are:

• Adopting hybrid models, incorporating both shared services and outsourcing models; about 65% include outsourcers in their delivery model

• Multifunctional in scope, with Finance leading the way: Finance (94%), HR (57%), procurement (54%), IT (52%)

• Adopting digital transformation as a strategic agenda: 72% of SSCs have implemented RPA, 55% have single-instance ERP, and 53% have AWS or cloud

• Incorporating diversity into their leadership roles: More than 80% indicated that a third of their leadership teams are composed of minorities and women

• Adopting new approaches to retain talent: 67% are building continuous improvement and innovation into talent programs; 59% are leveraging contingent workers