I've read with interest the number of posts written which suggest Finance roles should be pushed out to the BU's. During my long career I have seen times when much of these roles WERE with the BU's. What this means is that there could be SEVERAL BU people doing something that ONE OR TWO centralized people would be needed to do the job. Additionally, it serves the company well for "like" roles to be handled in the same manner. Decentralizing causes the roles to begin to change depending on where they are performed. Only time will tell, but based on history, if jobs are decentralized now, they may become centralized again somewhere down the road.
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I came to COP from a company that had decentralized many accounting functions. The groups competed with each other with one withholding innovations and "best practices" from the other groups in order to make themselves look superior. There was no uniformity in processes - a real mess.
I think that's probably correct. Centralized shared services have proven to be more cost efficient so there is surely another motive.
The roles are to be decentralized to better package the individual business units for a near future merger or acquisition. The better example is the refineries and the decentralized approach to the back office services. The individual refinery can be sold at a moment's notice. The individual refinery can be shut down at a moment's notice. The shared service model is setup to accommodate a certain size company but he company is about to get much smaller. The issue is not about effectiveness or efficiency. And yes the centralized model is more common in an environment of expansion vs. the current contraction.