Made-in-France Shared Services Centres

In this paper, Eight Advisory highlights the benefits of a very nearshore approach and presents best practises for designing a CSP-type target organisation and its implementation plan. 

In 2024, Emmanuel Macron announced that France would upgrade its economy with a series of measures, in particular the France Relance and France 2030 plans, which aim to catch up with certain sectors of the economy and accelerate the relocation of the secondary sector. Bringing this know-how back to France has a number of benefits for French companies. These include: better quality, more secure business continuity, proximity to their decision-making centres and greater competitiveness, proximity to their decision-making centres and to their partners and markets. We saw this announcement as an opportunity to draw a parallel with the localisation of support functions, particularly the Finance function, which is our area of expertise. 

Over the past two decades, many large companies have opted to centralise the transactional activities of their finance departments in offshore locations, while others are still weighing up this option.  

However, given the impact of successive crises, increasing digitalisation and the changing expectations of internal stakeholders, this model is being re-evaluated, making the establishment of Shared Services Centers (SSC) in France increasingly important for those who have not yet centralised their accounting teams. 

This white paper is intended for financial directors of French companies that have not yet implemented an SSC or have started to centralise transactional tasks and are now looking to expand their SSC to include specialised functions or tasks that require closer collaboration with the business units. It aims to demonstrate the benefits of setting up a very nearshore operation and provide best practises for defining an SSC target organisation and its implementation strategy. 

To learn more, request our whitepaper (French content): Made in France Shared Services Centers 

Editorial team: Pierre Gauthier, Florian Jouvenot, Clément Defretin