Shared Services Center

Definition: a Shared Services Center is a specialized organizational entity having specialized skills, experience and know-how in some operational area and offering these capabilities in the form of services to various business units or departments. Unlike a regular staff department, it normally charges for its activities based on a transaction base as previously agreed in a Service Level Agreement.
Typical SSC areas are: accounting, facility management, human resources, IT, logistics, payroll, purchasing, and security.
An SSC can be part of the organization to which it provides its services, but is frequently transferred to an external third party in the form of business process outsourcing.

More on shared services centers. More on outsourcing: Business Outsourcing, Co-sourcing, Insourcing, Service Level Agreement.