University of Twente Student Theses
The support organization : a shared services approach : an explorative best practice study of shared services
Detert Oude Weme, Koen Bernard Jan (2015) The support organization : a shared services approach : an explorative best practice study of shared services.
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| Abstract: | Organisations should innovate their organisation setting on a continuant basis. Shared service designs are become more popular. Literature and big consultancy firms acknowledge the benefits of such shared service entities. Thales, as a big established firm is interested in the shared services concept and asked for a research. This explorative research focusses on the methods, motivations, actual benefits, best practices of shared services. Second, criteria that can determine which services can be shared are determined. A design needs to be carefully chosen, Hofman et al. (2011) states that a poorly designed shared service may result in lower service quality and even higher costs. The main research goal is “offer the group members who organise the support organisation recommendations design criteria to implement an efficient support organisation.” During this research an answer to the research question “What are the design criteria that exist in theory and companies that are comparable to Thales that will help make a shared services entity successful” will be answered. During this research results from theory and comparable companies are derived. In both the theoretical and practical research side interesting aspects came forward. Many models show the effects and best practices of shared service organisations. During this research a profound theoretical framework is established to give insights in how shared services works and their effects. These effects are tested in several cases and practical knowledge from those cases are derived and formed as recommendations for Thales to consider while considering the implementation of a shared service entity. Mainly high-tech and comparable companies are researched during the intensive case study. The choice for those companies is because of the support this research will get because of the comparability with other companies. This research will show that the theoretical framework is also applicable on the high tech companies. The cases studied agreed mostly on the benefits, challenges, criteria and best practises derived from the theory. Some new interesting best practices came forward during this research. During this research a combination of theory with practice. Several interesting new best practices arose, the click-call-face principle, actively promote your shared service to get awareness, service brochure and IT innovations, the importance of training, the methods to maintain in depth knowledge of business units and the importance of correct placing of shared service entity in the organisation. Criteria to share or not to share a service are the differentiation in needs, loose coupling, generic activities, non core business activities, repetitive and predictable. The results agreed with most of the theory, and therefore the theoretical framework of this research can be considered as sound. Practical innovations and best practices derived from the cases can be held as guideline during the implementation and the maintaining of the shared service organisation. The advise for Thales is to learn from this paper by considering the recommendations that are listed in chapter 6. All recommendations are elaborated and extended with examples from the researched companies. The researcher chose for that approach to combine theory with practice. Every theoretical recommended aspect is listed, in depth knowledge of all these aspects are listed below. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Clients: | Thales, Hengelo, Netherlands |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 83 economics, 85 business administration, organizational science |
| Programme: | Business Administration MSc (60644) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/68027 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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