Compendium of Shared Services Profiles
How 24 Shared Services Centers Deploy Staff and Technology to Scale Administrative Support
Shared services is a topic of perennial interest among institutions looking to improve efficiency, boost service quality, reduce compliance risks, and respond to increasingly complex administrative needs. Not surprisingly, institutions planning to implement shared services—or to revise an existing model— want to know how other colleges and universities have structured their organizations.
This resource is designed to shed light on this common question. Notably, no two campuses’ approaches to shared services are the same. In other words, there is not a single “right” model to adopt. Rather, leaders at campuses with successful shared services organizations have invested time and effort to craft service offerings and reporting structures that reflect the unique needs of faculty, staff, and student customers.
3 ways to use this resource:
- Learn how other institutions have designed their shared services organizations
- Understand the major staffing and funding models for shared services
- Compare your institution’s shared services plans to the models at peer schools
Key trends from shared services profiles
Nearly every shared services center profiled in this compendium offers administrative support for HR, finance, and procurement tasks. Other functional areas include strategic budgeting, research administration, IT, and marketing and communications.
Read the executive-level takeaways, trends, and insights based on EAB’s analysis of the shared services organizations profiled in this compendium and gain a macro-level understanding of trends in the creation of shared services organizations to inform implementation decisions.
Shared services model comparison matrix
The profiles and analysis in this compendium began with interviews with over 100 finance and administrative leaders at institutions across the United States and Canada, which formed the basis for a questionnaire distributed by EAB.
Most questionnaires were completed by either shared services center directors or university executives overseeing the centers.
Get a high-level summary of the functional areas supported by each of the profiled shared services organizations and easily compare functional areas centralized through shared services organizations and identify institutions with demographic profiles or service offerings of interest.
Detailed profiles of shared services organizations
Get detailed descriptions of the most important design elements of 24 unique shared services organizations, presented in a standardized format for cross-institutional comparison and review services offered reporting structure, staffing allocation, technology investments, and other details for each profiled shared services organization.
This resource requires EAB partnership access to view.
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