And Now Museums Adopt Collaborative Shared Services
Museums are not immune to the effects of our global downturn. Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA, North America, are among others feeling the squeeze and facing a number of options: sell a collection; be subsumed by a larger enterprise; or implement shared services.
By consolidating duplicated operational efforts, museums can become more efficient and proficient. Importantly, adopting shared services can help reduce the reliance on revenue-generating activities that may conflict with mission-strengthening activities—a persistent hazard when museums pursue many business strategies.
Benefits for museums include: cost control; purchasing power; expansion of specific department’s activities; and the possibility of bringing some activities inhouse to avoid paying inflated costs (ie like the conservation departments, marketing and technology management to name a few).
Bringing together the best thinking from multiple organisations should result in better processes and practices. Also, as employees talk across organisations, they may develop synergies that have nothing to do with shared resources. For instance sharing pieces of work or exhibit to each other, coordinating schedules, co-marketing efforts to name a few. This can help in creating world-class centres of excellence, museums can then become outsource providers to other museums at a regional and why not international level
