Shared Services Center

A Shared Services Center is a centralized team, often based in a lower-cost offshore location, that consolidates support functions such as finance, accounting, HR administration, or IT support for multiple business units or regions within a single company. Rather than having each division or country office maintain its own separate finance or HR team, the company centralizes these functions into one location to standardize processes, reduce duplication, and lower operating costs. Shared Services Centers are common among large multinational companies looking to streamline back-office operations across a global footprint. By consolidating transactional and administrative work into a single hub, companies can achieve economies of scale, enforce consistent processes and controls, and free up regional teams to focus on higher-value, market-specific work rather than routine administrative tasks. Building a Shared Services Center offshore typically requires either establishing a local legal entity or partnering with an Employer of Record to hire staff compliantly in that location. The EOR route is often preferred by companies that want to test or scale a shared services function quickly, without the upfront investment and administrative burden of setting up their own foreign subsidiary.