Two studies differ on F & A practices.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Finance and accounting - Survey of companies' finance outsourcing practices

Surveys about the use of outsourcing--be it offshore, onshore or "best shore"--offer some conflicting data, especially when it comes to finance activities. And while these practices are still the domain of the largest corporations, many of those continue to use shared-services centers rather than outsourcing firms.

The Hackett Group, a strategic advisory firm and benchmarking expert, finds that despite the widespread attention and publicity paid to finance outsourcing, companies do very little of it today. Moreover, onshore or offshore shared-services centers remain the preferred options, according to findings of a new Business Process Sourcing study.

Hackett's study found that companies are outsourcing only 4 percent of all finance processes, but turn to onshore or offshore shared-service centers 65 percent of the time. Companies said they expected their use of outsourcing to more than double in the next three years, but reliance on shared-services centers will increase slightly as well, and shared services is expected to remain the preferred sourcing alternative for finance by a wide margin.

While most shared-services...