Shared Services In Action
At UC Davis
Several UC Davis units are already implementing improvement initiatives to reduce costs and/or improve service. As we develop shared service centers, we will build on these models.
- Creating a single division, Administrative & Resource Management, by merging the Office of Administration and the Office of Resource Management & Planning to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and facilitate process improvements.
- Streamlining Academic Personnel processes and procedures to reduce staff workload in academic departments.
- Improving space utilization on campus to reduce the need for costly off-campus leases.
- Restructuring research gift assessments to generate additional revenue.
Administrative Clusters
Several schools and colleges are consolidating their own administrative services into “administrative clusters.” These serve as “mini” shared service centers at the local level by eliminating redundancies and creating efficiencies and cost savings. Two examples of academic units clustering administrative services are the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the Division of Social Sciences.
At Other Universities
Shared service centers have been or are being implemented at Oregon State University, Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University and the University of Georgia system among others.
What Research Says
Various studies of the financial outcomes of shared service centers indicate that a 20 percent reduction in operating costs is attainable. A 2009 Hackett Group study found that many organizations achieve cost savings of 40 percent or more. The level of savings depends on the following factors:
- Organizational goals
- Level of technology deployed to support service centers
- Size of service centers -- larger centers achieve greater savings through economies of scale