Critical Success Factors of Shared Service Projects- Results of an Empirical Study

Following the “Management Tools 2009” study of Bain & Company,12, 17 cost cutting is still the number one topic for organizations, especially consid-ering the recent financial and economic crisis. As such it is not surprising, that management tools such as benchmarking, outsourcing or the shared service con-cept climb up the ranks and are becoming more im-portant than in the past. In this paper, those factors mentioned in literature as critical success factors of shared services are subject to an empirical study in which 84 managers and consultants experienced with shared services, participated. The majority of the sur-vey participants (87%) came from Central Europe (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). The results showed a clear ranking of the success factors and emphasised the high importance of change manage-ment within a shared service project. In the first in-stance, the results of the empirical study are ad-dressed to the scientific society as they should con-tribute to the comprehensive scientific analysis of shared services and its imminent success factors and detect the critical success factors in shared service projects. Furthermore, the results are addressed to practitioners considering the implementation of shared services. For all these, the results of the em-pirical study provide a clear and precise decision support network. The knowledge about the critical success factors provides information on how to plan, organise, transform and operate shared services.