The Finance Factory 63 services, customers need to share responsibility for managing the interface between the shared service and its own processes. Throwing an inefficient process over the wall to a shared service unit and expecting it to miraculously improve is unrealistic. Similarly, failing to specify exactly the service levels you require essentially means that you won't achieve them. The essence of successful shared service structures is through accepting shared responsibility. Prime candidates in finance? So which parts of the finance function's activities should be outsourced, which parts should be allocated to some kind of shared service organization internally and which parts should be kept in their traditional functional home? The answer depends on a whole set of issues that are beyond the scope of this book. So, just a signpost here. One of the main drivers is the nature of the process and in particular its volume and variety characteristics. Very broadly speaking, very high volume/low variety processes are usually the prime candidates for outsourcing. An activity such as invoice payments,