The world is evolving rapidly – is GBS really keeping up with the pace of change?

In this blog, we summarise a debate session at this year’s SSOW Europe 2022, where Maciej Piwowarczyk, Former Head of GBS at Discovery Inc, and Sumit Mitra, Chief Executive Officer at Tesco Global Business Services and Tesco Bengaluru, talk about the fate of GBS in the next decade.

The future of GBS

Maciej stated that GBS will have to die to be reborn in a different way and gave his top reasons as to why he thinks GBS will be dead in a decade.

1. The labour arbitrage game is almost over and in 10 years, it will be gone.

2. The struggle with people retention, especially around transactional work, will only get worse due to the future workforce and great resignation trends.

3. The definition of value-add has evolved to relevancy and speed of response.

4. GBS will struggle to survive and deliver value without a technology revolution. The last few years of technology adoption, these were the baby steps. We must finally take off.

5. The bigger GBS becomes, the more complex and difficult it will be to work with GBS. Making it less relevant and slower to respond.

Whereas Sumit believes that GBS will be very much alive, but it must evolve to deal with the changing world. To do this, GBS needs a new strategy, and needs to be more agile to drive innovation and change. GBS also needs to create value and unlock value opportunities, to take GBS to the next generation, and form a key part of the strategy of enterprise businesses going forward.

What do you think GBS or GBS leaders should do?

Sumit gave four key pieces of advice on what GBS and GBS leaders can do to take it to the next generation:

1. A GBS must connect with the bigger purpose of the overall organisation (the line between GBS and the rest of the organisation must be blurred, for GBS to become the enterprise).

2. You need to have a seat at the table, where you are a core part of strategic thinking. The ability to influence strategies is critical to make decisions and become a transformation engine, that drives cost transformation and the right behaviours within an organisation.

3. “Data is the future of GBS”. There is so much untapped value opportunity across processes that can be unlocked and extracted through data. It is crucial to understand how to trap and harness data, to create insights for the business. In addition, harnessing data is important for making decisions and creating an intelligent-driven GBS, where data is at the heart of everything you do.

4. You need to have a clear and simple strategy. For example, if your data or analytics teams provide you with insights, how do you convert those insights into actions? To do this, you need a combination of the right technology to manage your processes/tasks, as well as people with next-generation skills and capabilities.

Maciej also gave his top three suggestions on what he believes GBS and GBS leaders should do:

1. Consider taking a different approach and operate GBS more in the shadows, as a charismatic enabler (not in the front seat leading the way) to be even more influential. Accept the role of the orchestrator including even a role of a legacy function extension, rather than a front-line leader disrupting the company by building the new silo i.e. GBS. You shall still have a seat at the table, just a different one that is far more accessible.

2. Simplify the way your GBS operates by going back to basics. As you automate more of your transactional scope, you will have more time to take care of what is critical. For example, customer experience, technology enablement and overall orchestration of the ecosystem. Observing future workforce needs and the way they operate, GBS must drop its archaic ways of working and reduce its dependency on human capital for transactional work and use freed up energy and time for effective talent reskilling. Without simplification and making it easier for others to work with us, GBS will die.

3. Pick up the phone and call your technology lead or CIO and spend 20-30% of your time on how you can use technologies to revolutionise your operations. Connect with your local start up and venture capital communities to learn more and get inspired. You also need an intelligent operations leader who understands the technology, as well as engineer tech enablement skills and innovative thinkers to lead the technology revolution. As GBS leaders, we need to reflect on whether we understand the technology. If the answer is no, then we should step aside and leave room for the next generation of leaders who can take operations to a tech-enabled type of service.

Want to learn more about the future of GBS?

Join the world’s industry experts on 17 – 19 October 2022 in London, UK to discover how you can transform your GBS for the future and position your company for success at SSOW Europe Autumn 2022.

View the 2022 agenda here!

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