Consolidating Back Office with a Shared-Services Center:

A Case Study From the Housing Facilities Sector in the Republic of North Macedonia

Abstract

Purpose: The paper points out a novel approach to e-Government back-office reengineering based on creating a Shared-Services Center at the sectorial level.
Design/Methodology/Approach: To prove the Shared-Services Center as a proper solution for e-Government back-office reengineering, the authors used the case study of the Housing Facilities Sector in the Republic of North Macedonia. The research process follows Kettingers et al.'s framework of IT-enabled change with a holistic data-driven approach.
Findings: The study indicates a complex information flow between stakeholders, an abundance of the same information and data collected from local stakeholders, and enormous citizen and institutional burden. The e-Government back-office reengineering solution for the specific case study based on creating a Shared-Services Center overcomes the problem of data redundancy, radically simplifies the information flow, and reduces citizen burden in line with the "Once-Only" principle.
Practical Implications: The paper shows that by observing the network of all relevant stakeholders at the sectorial level, based on the information flow of core data, back-office problems can be identified, whereby the Shared-Services Center proves itself as a suitable solution. It may be a prerequisite for further studies on back-office process reengineering at the sectorial level.
Originality/Value:  Publications concerning back-office research at the sectorial level and, as in our case, within the House Facility Sector are almost non existing in scientific literature. Considering that there is a lack of analyses based on information flow and visualization of the information-flow network at the sectorial level (before and after the reforms), this paper will add original value to scientific literature.