A tribute to Michael Hammer and James Champy — and a call to action for GBS and SSC leaders
In 1993, Michael Hammer and James Champy published Reengineering the Corporation. I have been reading it back and forth for years. My copy is the revised and updated version from 2001, dog-eared, marked up, revisited so many times I have lost count. And every time I open it, I find something more relevant to what we are trying to do today than most modern transformation books offer.
At roughly the same time, after working in Quality Assurance, I took a new role in Internal Control and I became obsessed with understanding my own company's Business Processes in as much depth as I could. This was the start of my own journey to explore every Process I could, and this has never stopped since.
This edition is dedicated to Mr. Hammer and Mr. Champy – and those who inspired them, like Peter F. Drucker.
Because their vision — radical, uncompromising, and ahead of its time — has never been more current. And because I believe it is now our turn, as GBS and SSC leaders, to carry that vision into the AI era.
The 3 C's Are More Alive Than Ever
Hammer and Champy built their argument on what they called the Three C's: Customers, Competition, and Change. Customers had become more demanding. Competition had become more global. Change had become constant.
Thirty years later, every one of those forces has intensified — and Generative AI has multiplied them. Customers expect outcomes generated in seconds. Competition is reshaped monthly by a model release. Change is no longer constant; it is exponential.
Their prescription was equally bold: do not optimise the past. Obliterate it. Start from a white canvas. Reengineer the Process around the outcome, not the org chart.
I find myself asking the same question almost every week: how would Hammer and Champy have written this book today, with the technology we now hold at our fingertips?
The Historical Irony Every GBS Leader Should Notice
Here is what makes this even more striking. When Reengineering the Corporation was published, Global Business Services did not exist. Shared services were a niche idea. Few could have predicted that GBS would eventually become the platform for reengineering business Processes at enterprise scale.
And yet here we are. The very capability Hammer and Champy were calling for — cross-functional, Process-centric, outcome-focused — is exactly what GBS has been quietly building for two decades.
We are the platform they envisioned without knowing it. We just have not fully owned it yet.
What "Generative" Actually Means
Before going further, let me break down the word that gives this new era its name.
Generative means capable of producing or creating. Not assisting. Not automating. Generating.
Generative Business Services, then, is not GBS that uses GenAI. It is GBS where the operating model assumes intelligence is generated — analyses, decisions, drafts, even Process redesigns themselves. People shift from executing transactions to orchestrating outcomes. Process Excellence shifts from documenting flows to curating quality. Data shifts from being a by-product to being the cipher key that makes everything readable.
This is GBS 3.0. And the best way to see it is through a real Process.
A White Canvas Walkthrough: Supplier Onboarding
For years, many of us chased the dream of a single supplier onboarding platform, fully connected to Contract-to-Pay. Beautiful in PowerPoint. Brutal in reality. Fit-to-standard rarely fits, and platform lock-in is always a risk.
So let us start from a white canvas instead.
First, what does the Process actually look like? Not the PPT version — the real one running in your systems. Process mining gives us this, factually.
Second, where can we redesign? Imagine targeting reducing a process turnaround time from 15 days down to 4 hours. That is only possible with intentional, end-to-end design.
Now generate the new Process. Acquire third-party Data externally — why build supplier records from scratch when reliable, refreshed market Data is available at a fraction of the cost? Plug in specialised partners for bank Data security and fraud prevention. Add another for third-party vetting. Integrate where possible; deploy agentic AI where you cannot, running checks systematically with no human queues. Add existence checks to avoid duplicates, and automatic classification. Close the loop with a secure portal for the supplier to confirm Data and consent.
The orchestration layer is human: Process Owners and Data Stewards supervising and continuously improving. Process mining becomes the monitoring layer — feeding AI agents that surface improvement ideas, humans who approve them, and Process Excellence agents that implement progressively.
What you get, after decades of dreaming, is the possibility to design, deploy, and run the Perfect Process.
And you can go further. Once you have the Perfect Process, you can share it. GBS Condominiums become the natural next step — the Perfect Process entering sustainable operation, orchestrated through the Virtuoso Dynamic Model and Amplified Intelligence.
A Call to Action for GBS and SSC Leaders
Hammer and Champy could not have predicted GBS. They could not have predicted Generative AI. But the principles they wrote about — radical redesign, outcomes over tasks, the courage to start from a white canvas — have never been more current. Their legacy has never been more actual.
So this is the call to action.
To every GBS and SSC leader reading this:
Stop optimising the cow paths. Hammer and Champy warned us in 1993. Adding AI to a broken Process is not transformation — it is faster failure.
Own the platform. GBS is the cross-functional, Process-centric, outcome-focused engine the corporation needs to be reengineered. No other function is positioned the way we are.
Lead with the white canvas. Pick one Process. Strip it back. Redesign it from the outcome backwards, with Generative AI as the assumption — not the addition.
Build the orchestration layer. Process Owners. Data Stewards. Master Data as cipher key. Without them, AI generates noise. With them, AI generates value.
Think bigger than your own walls. Once you have the Perfect Process, share it. Mutualise it. The next chapter of GBS is collaborative, not competitive.
We are the generation that gets to reengineer the corporation for the AI era.
The vision is Hammer and Champy's.
The platform is GBS.
The technology is at our fingertips.
The decision is ours.
Do you believe in this vision?
