Every founder-led business past a certain size is running several small companies inside one. The sales team has its own spreadsheet of customers. Each location orders its own supplies. Payroll is done by whoever has always done it. Invoices are chased when someone notices. None of this is wrong at two million in revenue. All of it becomes a tax at eight, and a liability the moment a second company is added.
What shared services means
Shared services is the practice of doing certain kinds of work once, for the whole business, with one team, one set of systems and one set of controls, rather than repeating it in each unit, location, product line or acquired company. The functions are not outsourced in the sense of being sent away; they are centralised and made accountable to the operating review like any other part of the business.
The distinction that matters is between work that is the reason customers buy and work that is not. A nail-supply distributor is bought for its catalog, its delivery and its relationships. It is not bought for how it processes payroll. Anything in the second category is a candidate for shared services.
What belongs in the model
Functions that are usually shared
- 01
Finance and accounting
Bookkeeping, accounts payable and receivable, payroll, the monthly close, management reporting, tax coordination, and treasury with dual control.
- 02
People operations
Hiring workflow, onboarding, compliance, benefits administration, performance cadence and offboarding, on one system of record.
- 03
Procurement and vendor management
Approved vendors, negotiated terms, purchase approvals, contract renewals and spend visibility across the whole business.
- 04
Customer operations
Support tooling, service levels, escalation paths and the reporting that shows where service is failing before customers leave.
- 05
Systems and data
Identity and access, device management, integrations between the systems above, and the reporting layer that reads from all of them.
What does not belong is anything that differentiates the business in the customer's eyes: product, brand, the sales relationship, the craft. Centralising those in the name of efficiency is how portfolios destroy the value they bought.
What it changes
The obvious gain is cost: one finance team instead of four part-time bookkeepers, one negotiated vendor contract instead of five retail-price accounts. That gain is real but it is usually the smallest of the three.
The second gain is control. When payments run through one process with approvals and dual control, when every hire follows one workflow, when every vendor is on an approved list, the business stops depending on the integrity and memory of individuals. That is what the Security and Controls page describes, and it is what a lender's or buyer's diligence checks.
The third gain is reporting. A single chart of accounts across units, a single close calendar and a single management pack mean that the numbers a third party sees are the same numbers management runs on. In the formula this site uses, enterprise value equals sustainable EBITDA multiplied by a market multiple, shared services touch both terms: they take cost out of EBITDA and they take risk out of the multiple.
The order to build it
- Finance first. Chart of accounts, close calendar, payment approvals, bank reconciliation. Nothing else can be measured until this is stable.
- Then people operations. One system of record for who works here, what they are paid and what they are accountable for.
- Then procurement. Consolidate vendors, capture terms, route purchases through approval.
- Then customer operations and systems. Once the first three are stable, the tooling and integrations that connect them.
- Then the reporting layer. One management pack that reads from all of the above, produced monthly without a project.
A worked shape: three products, one company
The LACQ case study illustrates why this matters in a business that is not a portfolio at all. A company that carries a manufacturing function, a distribution and delivery function and a software function generates three sets of vendors, three cash rhythms and three kinds of data. Without a shared operating layer the founders become the integration point. With one, three products and a physical operation can function as one company, and scale as one. That operating layer is what Opsist is helping build.