GBS: The Backbone of Business Operations

What’s in a name…well, here’s a new take on global business services

It’s a perennial debate at all conferences…what to call that enterprise organism we commonly refer to as global business services. Don’t like the implication of servant? Tried global business solutions but it wasn’t much of a change? Ditto for global shared services? Or got cute and named the baby integrated business services which is a very unfortunate acronym? Added a T or a B or whatever the first name of your company is in front of business services to make it seem like it’s personalized to the enterprise, but it isn’t much of a change?

At SSOW Europe 2023, I had one of my brainwaves—GBS is the backbone of the enterprise. So I dusted off my Oxford English, Merriam-Webster Collegiate, and even the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (all online, I might add) and defined the word backbone. It’s an apt metaphor for the role of global business services in the enterprise as depicted by my famous artist husband. And, to make it more modern and chi-chi, let’s add the word global and double the B, ending up with GB2 (don’t confuse it with the band U2).

So the next time your GBS team has a hankering for a rebrand, consider GB2. Even if you don’t bite the bullet and create a new logo, it’s worth thinking about the fact that we’re not a service provider, we really and truly are what keeps the enterprise upright.

P.S. Join the discussion on LinkedIn.