Europe – and specifically the UK – was one of the early pioneers of the Shared Services model, and we therefore see strong maturity as well as sophistication in terms of leveraging emerging opportunities across the region.

One out of four SSCs is more than 10 years old, reflecting the long history of Shared Services as a strategic model for improved efficiency. The rest is pretty evenly split into either planning/early launch or the 4-10 years segment. The United Kingdom and Poland are the two most popular locations for Shared Services, with nearly 700 centres between them – roughly a third of the region's SSCs.