Shared Service & Back-Office
Customer Contact/Development Centers
A customer contact/development center is part of a company’s customer relationship management (CRM) department that interacts with the customer. It includes components such as the contact center and technical support or help desk, among others. A contact center is a central point in an enterprise from which all customer contacts are managed. A contact center typically includes one or more online call centers but may include other types of customer contact as well, including e-mail newsletters, postal mail catalogs, Web site inquiries and chats, and the collection of information from customers during in-store purchasing. A technical support center or help desk is a place that a user of information technology can call to get help with a problem. Many customer contact/development centers provide clients with technical assistance or other support related to computer hardware or software, electronic equipment, telecommunications devices, mechanical items or other service issues. The value of the customer care market is expected to reach $377 billion by 2010, up from about $300 billion in 2006. Employment of customer service representatives is expected to increase faster than the average for all occupations through 2014.
Industries which have a high demand for customer service representatives includes financial services, information technology and healthcare. Different types of representatives which may include telemarketers, help desk agents, and customer service agents, all have different types of skills that require different pay scales. The average hourly wages for customer service representatives in 2007 were approximately $12.98 per hour, while technical support representatives averaged $14.37 per hour. Representatives who are fluent in more than one language can earn nearly a dollar more per hour.
Data Centers
A data center is a centralized location for the storage, management, and dissemination of data and information organized around a particular body of knowledge or pertaining to a particular business. A private data center may exist within an organization’s facilities or may be maintained as a specialized facility. A data center may also be synonymous with a Network Operations Center (NOC), a restricted access area containing automated systems that constantly monitor server activity, Web traffic, and network performance. A data center is the behind-the-scenes resource that houses the computing, data storage, and networking equipment that make routine tasks faster, easier, and more accurate. The growth of the Internet has already made information technology more a part of daily life, and organizations continue to enhance their data centers to meet ever increasing demands. Most mid-sized or larger companies today have some kind of data center and the largest companies have dozens of data centers. In recent years, data center projects have been one of the fastest growing sectors in site selection primarily due to new compliance mandates that require better handling and storage of data and government pressure to make data center facilities more energy efficient. Companies are looking to consolidate multiple outlying and outdated facilities. Corporate demand for data centers is likely to remain strong in the future. Cost issues may lead many companies to consider locating new facilities in smaller markets in the center of the United States. As the growth of the data center industry has begun to expand beyond major U.S. markets, a number of companies have established data centers in small and medium-sized cities. The most recent data centers established in the US employ between 50 and 200 with annual salaries ranging from $48,000 to $70,000.
Shared Service Centers
A shared service center (SSC) combines administrative, communication and financial expertise to create nerve centers for companies whose operations usually span worldwide. It consolidates back-office functions into one seamless operation. A SSC typically operates as a stand-alone business, treating individual businesses or business units as actual customers and managing accounting and financial functions such as accounts payable; accounts receivable; general ledger; cash management; and credit control; customer service activities; information technology; and human resources functions, including payroll, within one center. SSCs offer cost savings from streamlined processes and enhanced control and are estimated to deliver process costs savings of 30 to 60 percent. SSCs can use in-house staff or be outsourced. To be successful, a SSC must deliver a range of services that others value, at a cost, quality level and speed that are competitive with alternatives. Multi-function SSCs eliminate redundancies across major functions, thus further improving service delivery, driving higher productivity and accelerating innovation and transformation. By consolidating back office, non-revenue generating functions, companies can take advantage of economies of scale, better utilization of technology, greater automation and standardization to achieve higher productivity with fewer resources.
