"Make a difference with what you have." Delivering maximum public value to your stakeholders is the never-ending challenge in the public sector – and the never-ending pressure. If you're looking for a service delivery model that will maximize resources while lowering costs, look to shared services.

Shared Services: A Growing Demand in the Public Sector

Shared services is a collaborative strategy in which common business functions are consolidated and standardized in a single organizational unit that can deliver the same services to different agencies within a government enterprise – promoting efficiency and cost savings, and improving service for stakeholders.

Conceived in the late 1980s in the private sector, the shared services model has emerged as the model-of-choice for businesses interested in economies of scale. Today, over 70% of the Fortune 500 use some form of shared services, with top quartile companies seeing cost savings of 21% - 41%.

Today, a growing number of governments at all levels are pursuing a shared services delivery model for both financial benefit and social value. A 2006 Economist Intelligence Unit research report highlights the trend among public sector organizations:

• 70% of the respondents polled stated that the use, or intend to use, shared services as a strategy to enhance citizen service and increase efficiency.
• 54% indicated that they use a shared services model now, while 16% expect to introduce shared services within the next three years.
• Up to 67% of respondents believe that IT processes would benefit most from shared services. This finding highlights the fact that government transformation can be best enabled by technology.
• 75% stated that a shared services model would make its deepest impact on business process improvement.

Partnering with SAP in Shared Services

SAP provides unified solutions, flexible technology, and shared services experience to help governments excel with shared services while maximizing public value. Our shared services delivery model provides a framework for leveraging economies of scale through the standardization and automation of the public administration ("back-office") and service lines of business ("front-office") services common to multiple agencies and departments. The end result is improved, shared outcomes at a better cost for the stakeholder, and higher public value.