Critical Success Factors for Shared Services: Results from Two Case Studies

Shared services have been heralded as a means of enhancing services and improving the efficiency of their delivery. As such they have been embraced by the private, and increasingly, the public sectors. Yet implementation has proved to be difficult and the number of success stories has been limited. Which factors are critical to success in the development of shared services arrangements is not yet well understood. The current paper examines existing research in the area of critical success factors (CSFs) and suggests that there are actually three distinct types of CSF: outcome, implementation process and operating environment characteristic. Two case studies of public sector shared services in Australia and the Netherlands are examined through a lens that both incorporates all three types of CSF and distinguishes between them.