THE UK is one of the main beneficiaries in the development of shared service centres for multinational corporations.

According to a global survey, the majority of shared service centres are, not surprisingly, in the US, given that the concept originates there. However the UK is a very close second. In fact the US accounts for 42 per cent of the global market, with the UK accounting for 38 per cent. This is followed by Holland on eight per cent, with Germany, Sweden and Ireland with four per cent.

Shared service centres represent the consolidation of duplicate activities in order to serve a range of business units from one location. They are increasingly being implemented as part of an integrated programme of change, rather than as a stand-alone project.

"There has been no let-up in the pressure on multinational corporations and other large companies to improve profitability and increase shareholder value. This is being demonstrated by the increase in level of acquisitions, joint ventures and restructuring generally", comments David Heron, manager of the Southampton office of international finance & IT recruitment specialists, Martin Ward Anderson.

"To support these changes and achieve their objectives, companies are having to increase the efficiency of their support activities and eliminate unnecessary or excessive overheads".

Since September 1996, Martin Ward Anderson has been involved in recruiting for several multi-national corporations which have been setting up shared centres.

In particular, Martin Ward Anderson successfully completed a retained recruitment campaign on behalf of the American multinational 3M, to recruit more than 100 linguists for their European accounting centre. This is believed to be one of the largest campaigns to be handled by a single recruitment consultancy.

"The objectives of setting up the European accounting centre were to improve quality, reduce costs and act as a platform to move to common software," comments Peter Meldrum, manager of 3M European accounting centre.

"We have reduced overall head count and have a greater visibility of the practices, processes and systems previously utilised in 3M's European subsidiaries."

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.