Tom Sheahan

The “right” GBS operating model doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s shaped by your services, your markets, your stakeholders, and your digital maturity. Yet many organizations still wrestle with “model confusion” (GCC vs. GBS vs. SSC vs. hybrid), unclear governance, and competing demands for global standardization and local flexibility. GBS leaders who’ve faced these challenges head-on will share how they’ve redesigned, repositioned, and rebranded their models to meet evolving business expectations, while navigating governance complexity, stakeholder skepticism, and the relentless push for service expansion. We will discuss:

• Naming & Framing: Why clarifying your model (GCC, GBS, SSC, hybrid) matters for stakeholder engagement
• Agility vs. Scale: Balancing local responsiveness with enterprise-wide standardization
• Governance Simplified: Strategies for reducing role ambiguity and making decision rights clear
• Model Transitions: Lessons learned in shifting from one structure to another (e.g., SSC to GBS, centralized to hybrid)
• Digital Alignment: Ensuring your model accelerates—not slows—technology adoption and AI-enabled services
• Change Management Realities: Winning stakeholder buy-in and overcoming resistance
• Future Outlook: Why federated and platform-based approaches may dominate the next wave of GBS