Business services are a subset of economic services that are provided to businesses and organizations. Examples of Business services include telecommunications, computing services, data storage, management services and training services. The Business service industry has been growing rapidly as more companies are outsourcing their non-core functions to low-cost markets. These outsourced functions can range from IT support to customer service and data analytics. Shared services have many benefits including increased productivity, better communication and flexibility during mergers and acquisitions.
Services can be delivered in a number of ways depending on how they are used, who is performing them and the technology being utilized. Service delivery can be impacted by inconsistency, which is a natural part of the process. Services are also different from goods in that they can be consumed but cannot be saved or stored for use at a future date.
The globalization of business services is increasing as more companies are leveraging shared services across multiple regions and geographies to lower costs and improve efficiency. This is especially true for back-office functions such as IT, HR and procurement. Front-office functions such as sales and marketing also involve certain routine tasks that can be pooled across divisions or geographies to reduce cost, increase accuracy and improve efficiency. This trend is referred to as global business services (GBS).