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A shared service centre centralises business functions into a dedicated hub that supports multiple company divisions or regions. It suits organisations looking to take advantage of lower labour costs, access specialist skills that are difficult to find in other markets or build a presence in a strategic location. For many, it has become a powerful way to efficiently enhance operational capabilities.
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A shared service centre (SSC) involves bringing together different business functions into a dedicated hub, or network of hubs, that serves multiple business units, countries or regions. These hubs can take the form of a physical office or can be remote.
Historically, SSCs were set up to improve efficiency. This is achieved through process standardisation, sharing resources, and access to lower-cost labour markets. The impact of this can be significant, with 65% of organisations achieving cost savings of up to 40% on their support functions.
Many centres focus on transactional and operational activities. These cut across a variety of departments including finance and accounting, human resources, technology, procurement and supply chain, customer service, marketing, legal and administrative support.
The organisations seeing the greatest success with SSCs focus on more than operational efficiency. They use SSCs to improve access to talent, strengthen workforce planning, and create greater flexibility across the business.
One of the biggest drivers behind SSC growth is access to skills that may be difficult to find locally. By expanding talent acquisition beyond existing markets, organisations can access larger pools of specialised professionals across business-critical functions.
SSCs can help organisations accelerate growth by providing access to big talent pools that support larger hiring volumes. This flexibility is particularly valuable during periods of business transformation, expansion, mergers and acquisitions, or rapid growth.
Centralising functions creates opportunities to standardise processes, improve consistency, and free up resources in local teams to focus on higher-value and face-to-face interactions.
For global organisations, locating teams across multiple time zones can support round-the-clock operations, faster response times, and improved customer experience.
Modern SSCs help organisations respond more quickly to changing business requirements. With their centralised data and team expertise, SSCs can quickly pivot to meet changing demands and free local teams to focus on emerging priorities.
There is no universal answer as to where to locate your SSC. The right location depends on your workforce strategy, business objectives, growth plans, and access to talent. Some organisations focus on in-country SSCs, locating workers away from expensive capital cities, while others focus on offshoring, where their operating base is moved to a different country to their headquarters, somewhere where labour costs are cheaper.
For those businesses with an international footprint, three regions are the most common and established locations for SSCs:
Region
Key strengths
Latin America
Large talent pools, near to the US, cost competitive.
Central and Eastern Europe
Multilingual talent, STEM expertise, near to Western Europe.
Asia-Pacific
Scale of available talent, technical expertise, mature outsourcing ecosystems.
Latin America continues to attract investment from organisations seeking access to skilled talent and greater operational flexibility.
The region is home to 660 million people and has a labour force of 322 million. Major talent hubs such as Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Chile offer growing pools of skilled professionals across finance, technology, customer service, HR and business operations.
Many organisations are also attracted by the region's time-zone alignment with North America, growing English-speaking talent pools and expanding SSC ecosystems in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.
For US-based companies, the region's close proximity and time zone alignment makes collaboration significantly easier than more distant locations.
Countries such as Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic remain popular locations for finance, technology and multilingual SSCs.
These markets benefit from strong education systems, multilingual workforces, and established business service ecosystems. Central and Eastern European countries continue to develop highly skilled talent pipelines, particularly across technical and STEM disciplines, helping organisations access hard-to-find skills at scale.
These locations are attractive for organisations supporting multiple European markets for their favourable business rates and close proximity to Western Europe.
Asia-Pacific remains one of the most established regions for SSCs. India, the Philippines and Malaysia continue to play a major role in supporting multinational organisations through deep talent pools, mature delivery infrastructure and strong technical capabilities.
The Asia-Pacific region is home to approximately 3,855 million people and a labour force of around 1,902 million. India alone has 618 million workers and, while it supports fewer SSCs, China has 768 million workers. As such, the Asia-Pacific region provides organisations with significant opportunities to access talent at scale.
The region is also experiencing significant investment in digital infrastructure, technology and education. Southeast Asia is expected to remain one of the fastest-growing regions globally, supported by digital transformation and foreign direct investment. As such, it remains an attractive option for multinational companies.
Cost is important, but it should not be the only factor influencing location decisions.
The most successful SSC strategies assess:
Enterprise Solutions from Michael Page has helped customers set up dozens of shared service centres across diverse regions and sectors. By taking the time to understand our clients' priorities, we can build tailored solutions that suit their SSC needs.
This approach can be seen in a recent project for a global technology firm:
A global technology organisation partnered with us to establish a new shared services centre in Brazil and hire approximately 300 specialist professionals across multiple functions.
The challenge was not only hiring at scale, but also identifying the right talent strategy, building local talent pipelines, attracting candidates willing to relocate to the SSC’s city, and achieving ambitious growth targets within a tight timeframe.
Through our Project RPO solution, we provided workforce intelligence, dedicated recruitment support, talent attraction strategies and scalable hiring processes. We also implemented early-tenure support to help reduce initial turnover and improve long-term retention.
The result was the successful delivery of 220 technology specialists and 80 finance professionals, spanning entry-level roles through to experienced managers. This gave the organisation the capability mix it needed from day one and helped launch an SSC at speed, with the right skills, structure and support in place.
Every SSC project is different. Factors such as location, talent availability, compensation expectations and workforce scalability can significantly affect long-term success.
Enterprise Solutions from Michael Page partners with organisations to design and deliver talent solutions that solve complex workforce challenges. This covers everything from deciding where to set up an SSC through market mapping to full-scale hiring.
To help leaders make more informed decisions when assessing SSC locations and workforce strategies, we use our proprietary tool, Michael Page Insights+. This provides market intelligence at a region, country, and city level, showcasing salary benchmarks, applications per role type, talent availability, and competitor hiring activity.
As a company moves from location planning to hiring for a new SSC, we adapt alongside them. Our outsourced solutions, such as project recruitment process outsourcing (Project RPO), enable rapid hiring of talent at scale.
Ready to explore your shared service centre strategy? Discover how our Project RPO offering can help or take a look at our latest case studies to see our impact in action.
