Global business services: Worldwide business services (GBS) are either already in use by several significant corporations or will be investigated soon. To ensure that innovations in processes and services lead to quantifiable business outcomes that support company goals and value generation, it is essential to establish a strategic framework for GBS. What follows is an explanation of GBS, including its purpose, advantages, and the information business executives will need to launch GBS in 2023.
What are global business services?
Organizations and business units all around the globe rely on what are known as global business services (GBS) for support. These services are integrated and shared. These business solutions improve efficiency in a variety of ways while also consolidating essential functional offerings.
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A wide range of services, including accounting, finance, marketing, customer care, IT, and human resources, can be part of GBS. GBS has the potential to help multinational corporations save money, work more efficiently, and simplify their processes.
GBS vs Shared Services and Business Units
In contrast to the shared services model, which usually only caters to a single organization, global business services (GBS) aim to supply integrated services to business units and organizations all over the globe. However, these functions can be unified to improve optimization and strategic value by moving from a basic shared services model to an integrated Global Business Services (GBS) architecture.
You may also look at it from the angle of how mature your company is. GBS is an improved version of shared services. Due to the need to address varying linguistic, cultural, and legal concerns on a global scale, GBS may prove to be more intricate than shared services. Additionally, due to the increased infrastructure and resource requirements, GBS can be more costly than shared services.
GBS and Centers of Excellence
Although they are usually seen as separate entities, global business services and global centers of excellence (CoEs) could work hand in hand to promote operational excellence. An agile center of competence, a worldwide network of shared delivery platforms, and a customer-centric interface are important components of operational excellence.
Centers of Excellence (CoEs) provide centralized expertise in a particular technology (such as process intelligence, intelligent automation, or RPA), whereas Global Business Services (GBS) focuses on providing integrated services to business units worldwide. Organizations can benefit from GBS in terms of increased scalability and flexibility, and from COEs in terms of increased competitiveness through the utilization of specialized skills.
5 key advantages of GBS
There are many benefits that business companies can reap by implementing a GBS strategy.
- Get digital transformation moving forward.GBS can improve company processes by coordinating and expanding the use of cutting-edge digital tools and capabilities.
- Put the customer first. Using GBS, businesses may better coordinate various business processes to benefit customers, which in turn improves the customer experience.
- Raise productivity (and contentment in one’s job). Businesses that use GBS can train their employees to use technology effectively in the workplace of the future.
- Decisions are based on data. By utilizing GBS, organizations may make better use of data and analytics when making decisions.
- Positive performance benchmarking. By implementing GBS, firms may ensure that different teams are following best practices by using internal competition and benchmarking.
Typical goals and targets of GBS
Even in the face of these shifting priorities, the GBS organizations have never wavered from their underlying principles. The following are examples of typical objectives for GBS deployments.
Cut expenses: This is a crucial consideration for coworking spaces. Companies are still hoping for favorable results from GBS groups, which are taking over more and more activities. Increasing operational performance while maintaining low expenses is no easy feat. By outperforming their competitors and delivering strategic value, successful GBS firms gain a competitive edge.
Continuous transparency: Harmony from beginning to finish. The standardization and alignment of critical business processes greatly enhance numerous GBS operations. Processes were enhanced and simplified. One of GBS’s most important objectives is to help organizations improve their processes and apply best practices across all of their locations.
Swiftness and ever-increasing quality: Continuous operational excellence and global disturbance response are faster with GBS functions. aiding corporate expansion. Even if they may not make money, GBS firms should be seen as more than merely cost-cutters. By improving end-to-end procedures, shared centers can benefit other businesses besides GBS.
GBS and Intelligent Automation (IA)
Through the implementation of intelligent automation, GBS may streamline processes, gain process efficiencies, and decrease costs. One way to increase efficiency and productivity is by using intelligent automation to automate data entry and other repetitive operations. Robotic process automation (RPA) allows for the complete automation of repetitive work, and GBS can be utilized to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize operations based on customer behavior insights.
GBS transformation challenges in 2024
GBS organizations confront many obstacles, but these are the most prevalent and significant.
- Organizational transformation resistance. According to the 2024 Hackett Group GBS Agenda report, change aversion has been a major obstacle to GBS transformation.
- Dependence on resources. GBS centers depend on the parent organization and don’t make money. GBS organizations spend a lot on salaries because most SSC operations are labor-intensive. Only 5% of firms successfully change GBS support functions and platform deliveries.
- Disunity of government. GBS centers may be less effective without integrated governance to share best practices in using technology and tools across units and locations.
- Unready for automation. First, GBS center infrastructure should enable process automation. A goal- and growth-oriented team culture and transparency should characterize the unit.
- Inefficiency increases with headcount. Unfortunately, all organizations, including GBS, cannot solve their problems by hiring more workers. The ideal solution is to use innovative technologies for the correct processes and timing.
- Setting midterm goals. Visionary thinking is crucial, but knowing which tools and technologies will benefit the organization shortly is too. Companies often spend time and money on the wrong big goals.
Adapting to Covid and new ways of work
Companies’ operations have been drastically altered by COVID-19, and GBS organizations have also been significantly impacted. By prioritizing the needs of their customers and acting quickly, GBS teams are promoting cross-border cooperation and producing substantial financial results. Prioritizing location-specific strategies and cost-effectiveness, they have been making strides towards becoming industry leaders in embracing new technology and solutions to enhance worker performance and apply best practices.
To better assist their core businesses all across the globe, GBS enterprises are diversifying the services they provide. However, obstacles always exist, therefore it’s evident that there must be constant efforts to enhance quality while reducing costs. This essay will delve more into the primary goals of GBS in 2022 and the obstacles it faces as it strives to improve its effectiveness.
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