Everyone is different! exploring the issues and problems with ERP enabled shared service initiatives

In today’s increasingly competitive environment, there is constant pressure for corporate leaders to add value to their organizations. These contemporary organizations are increasingly moving into business models that attempt to reduce duplicate supporting processes and staff by streamlining business processes that are not central to the organization’s operations and concentrating on strategies on strategic or core, business processes. This concept, known as Shared Services, attempts to bundle some of the supporting processes and non-strategic activities into a separate organization, which in turn treats those processes and activities as the core of its own business. Shared Services consolidate and support redundant functions, such as accounts payable and procurement, for disparate business units. By leveraging economies of scale from a common IT infrastructure, such a group is able to market specific services to business units. Many organizations are employing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, for example SAP, to facilitate Shared Service initiatives by aggregating backroom functionality across departments. This research-in-progress paper investigates issues and problems with ERP enabled Shared Services in 19 organizations. The results reveal five main issues that organizations face in implementing a Shared Services initiative.