Exploring Shared Services from an IS Perspective: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

Shared services have gained significance as an organizational arrangement, in particular for support functions, to reduce costs, increase quality, and create new capabilities. The information systems (IS) function is amenable to sharing arrangements and information systems can enable sharing in other functional areas. However, despite being a promising area for IS research, literature on shared services in the IS discipline is scarce and scattered. There is still little consensus on what shared services is. Moreover, a thorough understanding of why shared services are adopted, who are involved, and how things are shared is lacking. 

In this article, we set out to progress IS research on shared services by establishing a common ground for future research and proposing a research agenda to shape the field based on an analysis of the IS literature. We present a holistic and inclusive definition, discuss the primacy of economic-strategic objectives so far, and introduce conceptual frameworks for stakeholders and the notion of sharing. We also provide an overview of the theories and research methods applied. We propose a research agenda that addresses fundamental issues related to objectives, stakeholders, and the notion of sharing to lay the foundation for taking IS research on shared services forward.

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One-Stop Government Portals: Transformation or Navigation

E-government is seen as a promising approach for governments to improve their service towards citizens and become more cost-efficient in service delivery. This is often combined with one-stop government, which is a citizen-oriented approach stressing integrated provision of services from multiple departments via a single access point, the one-stop government portal. While the portal concept is gaining prominence in practice, there is little known about its status in academic literature. This hinders academics in building an accumulated body of knowledge around the concept and makes it hard for practitioners to access relevant academic insights on the topic. The objective of this study is to identify and understand the key themes of the one-stop government portal concept in academic, e-government research. A holistic analysis is provided by addressing different viewpoints: social-political, legal, organizational, user, security, service, data and information, and technical. As an overall finding, the authors conclude that there are two different approaches: a more pragmatic approach focuses on quick wins in particular related to usability and navigation and a more ambitious, transformational approach having far reaching social-political, legal, and organizational implications.

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Where do we find services in enterprise architectures?

In recent years, enterprise architecture (EA) has captured growing attention as a means to systematically consolidate and interrelate diverse IT artefacts in order to provide holistic decision support. Since the emergence of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), many attempts have been made to incorporate SOA artefacts in existing EA frameworks. Yet the approaches taken to achieve this goal differ substantially for the most commonly used EA frameworks to date.

This paper investigates and compares five widely used EA frameworks in the way they embrace the SOA paradigm. It identifies what SOA artefacts are considered to be in the respective EA frameworks and their relative position in the overall structure. The results show that services and related artefacts are far from being well-integrated constructs in current EA frameworks.

The comparison presented in this paper will support practitioners in identifying an EA framework that provides SOA support in a way that matches their requirements and will hopefully inspire the academic EA and SOA communities to work on a closer integration of these architectures.

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The morphology of service bundling settings

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of what contextual factors influence the service bundling process in an organizational setting.

Although previous literature contains insights into the mechanisms underlying bundling and the artefacts for performing the bundling task itself, the body of knowledge seems to lack a comprehensive framework for analysing the actual scenario in which the bundling process is performed. This is required as the scenario will influence the bundling method and the IT support. We address this need by designing a morphological box for analysing bundling scenarios in different organizational settings. The factors featured in the box are systematised into a set of four categories of bundling layers which we identify from reviewing literature. The two core layers in the framework are the service bundling on a type level and on an instance level (i.e. configuration).

To demonstrate the applicability and utility of the proposed morphological box, we apply it to assess the underlying differences and commonalities of two different bundling scenarios from the B2B and G2C sectors which stress the differences between bundling on a type and instance level. In addition, we identify several prospects for future research that can benefit from the proposed morphological box.

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Service-oriented business models: A holistic perspective

The Business model Canvas below illustrates effectively that when we think about service-orientation from a business model perspective, we have a more broader view than just the service offering itself.

Alternative Business Model Canvas templates – The Bundling Business model

I have been exploring the use of the BMG Business Model Canvas and possible alternative canvas templates that do not change the core concepts or the language of Business Model Generation (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010). A first experiment with respect to co-creation can he found here.

My second experiment is the use of the template for (service) bundling, where two core services (can also be applied to products) are sold as one package to the customer. For simplicity I focus on pure bundling where the customer only has the option to buy the package, not separate services in the package. Below you find two simplified business model canvasses, one that stays within the existing template and one with an alternative template.

The first, traditional canvas seems to be most useful when although the two bundled services are separate, the activities, resources and partners for those services still overlap. The second, alternative canvas seems to be most useful that when the two bundled services are really independent of each other with separate activities, resources and partners.

Sourcing business and software services

With the advancement of Service-Oriented Architecture in the technical and business domain, the management & engineering of services requires a thorough and systematic understanding of the service lifecycle for both business and software services.

However, while service-oriented approaches acknowledge the importance of the service ecosystem, service lifecycle models are typically internally focused, paying limited attention to processes related to offering services to or using services from other actors.

In this paper, we address this need by discussing the relations between a comprehensive service lifecycle approach for service management & engineering and the sourcing & purchasing of services. In particular we pay attention to:

• the similarities and differences between sourcing business and software services,
• the alignment between service management & engineering and sourcing & purchasing,
• the role of sourcing in the transformation of an organization towards a service-oriented paradigm,
• the role of architectural approaches to sourcing in this transformation,
• and the sourcing of specific services at different levels of granularity.

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Business models for shared services

During my work, I have become more and more involved with shared services. Given my focus on business models, my interest is in understanding the business logic behind shared services.

Firstly, we have to address what we mean with shared services. Shared services can be defined as “The concentration of company resources performing like activities, typically spread across the organization, in order to service multiple internal partners at lower cost and with higher service levels, with the common goal of delighting external customers and enhancing corporate value” (Schulman et al., 1999).

An initial orientation on the business model of shared services has brought me to two core considerations for service provisioning in organizations. The first consideration is related to the centralization/decentralisation discussion that is quite common in organizational literature, for example in relation to the IT function. The preliminary proposition is that shared services combine the benefits of both approaches while circumventing the disbenefits, see the following link for a nice example.

The second consideration is the hierarchy/market discussion that is quite common in economic literature. An alternative for this is the insourcing/outsourcing (make-or-buy) discussion found in supply chain and purchasing literature. The preliminary proposition here is that shared services provide control (and internal capabilities) on the one hand and the discipline of the market (and a customer focus) on the other.

Note that, while we start with the optimistic mindset that shared services can provide us with the 'best-of-both worlds,' there is also the risk of 'worst-of both-worlds.' This provides the starting-point for research into how shared services can live up to its promises?

Service intermediaries

Intermediaries can act as service providers offering exchange services to two types of users: customers and suppliers. However, intermediaries do not always follow an explicit service strategy. What does following a service strategy entail and what chances does it offer to intermediaries to create impact?

Intermediaries can specialize in offering added value services to customers and thereby also serving suppliers that are not willing or able to interact with customers in a service-oriented way. According to Grönroos a service perspective requires a total service offering and focusing on the value-in-use for the service users with an emphasis on long-term relationships.

Grönroos also describes three ways to increase the service impact in user relationships:
1) Developing new services to the user
2) Activating existing but hidden services or service elements
3) Turning good components into service elements
Grönroos also emphasizes that too often only the first possibility is taken into account.

To be a ‘true’ service provider to both customers and suppliers, a service approach to both types of users is required. An alternative would be to focus the service approach on either customers or suppliers.

The Internet as preferred channel

I have started working on a new project in the area of multi-channel management. I plan to approach multi-channel management from a service perspective. What will be the benefit of this? And what does it mean? I don’t really know yet, but it seems an interesting endeavour. Let me illustrate this with an example. In multi-channel management the Internet is often perceived as the preferred channel, in particular of the supplier. One of the main arguments is the expected cost-efficiency of the Internet channel. Is this really true?

Grönroos differentiates in his book on Service Management and Marketing between three types of relationship costs for both customer and supplier: direct, indirect, and psychological costs. The Internet channel may be cost-efficient with respect to the direct relationship costs (such as the catalogue, ordering, and invoicing) but may be less cost-efficient with respect to indirect and psychological costs (such as correcting mistakes or handling complaints).

What are the unique value propositions of innomediaries?

In a previous post I discussed innomediaries and suggested that they can build unique capabilities (compared to other actors in a business network) based upon the following characteristics: connectivity, specialization, and neutrality.

Den Hertog (pdf of article) discusses services of intermediaries (or knowledge intensive business services) that can fill or bridge various gaps in innovation processes with respect to resources and innovation management capabilities. Relating this to the previous discussed intermediaries' characteristics, I would argue that the more these services make use of connectivity, specialization, and neutrality (and their linking), the more there is a need (and, therefore, opportunity) for innomediaries.

Following is a list of the services mentioned by den Hertog and a first attempt of relating them to the intermediaries' characteristics:

Based upon this mapping experience-sharing and benchmarking seem to be the kind of services that offers innomediaries opportunities for unique value propositions towards innovation seekers and solution providers.