At the end of the day shared service centers have to contribute to the competitiveness and the (financial) performance of the firm. As competition shifts to innovation of business models and in relation to this there is a higher dynamics in the composite customer value proposition to be performed, changes in the customer value proposition need to be translated timely and effectively in (back office) processes. As a consequence standardization of processes cannot be based on "best practice processes" as used to be promoted by IT (enterprise systems) but need to be based on basis of modularity. Coordination of demand and supply In practice the coordination of demand and supply of services between business units and shared service centers, as expressed in a SLA turns out not to be effective, this only serves a generic capacity planning. In sync with the shift in business firms from budget-driven strategy execution to strategy execution based on validated cause-effect diagrams, the specific performance of shared service centers needs to be defined through cause-effect relations, linking the customer value proposition to back-office processes and vice versa. In this way, beyond defining shared service centers as cost centers, the contribution of shared services centers to competitiveness and performance can be established and controlled. Also this is an enormous boost to the morale and motivation of workers in shared service centers. See also Offshoring Offshore development center Outsourcing Shared services References Business terms Outsourcing