Digitizing global business services - Ernst & Young...04 Digitizing global business services: the...

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Digitizing global business services The future of Global Business Services

Transcript of Digitizing global business services - Ernst & Young...04 Digitizing global business services: the...

Digitizing global business servicesThe future of Global Business Services

1 | Executive summary 02

2 | Beyond first-generation GBS 04

3 | Next-generation automation 05

4 | On-demand customer experience 06

5 | Insight as a service 08

6 | Organizational agility 10

7 | Where could this lead? 12

8 | Summary 16

9 | How EY can help 17

Contents

Digitising global business services The future of GBS organization 01

“The global business services (GBS) operating model is

evolving. Rapid changes are expected as the influence of technology, competition and

internal demand for higher value services increases. The traditional

processing centers in low-cost locations will diminish and be

replaced by a larger number of smaller ‘centers of excellence’.

GBS leaders should prepare their organizations for the changes and

develop themselves into C-suite strategic business partners.”

Dom HollisDirector, EY Advisory Services

Digitising global business services The future of GBS organization02

1 | Executive summary

Traditional shared services and GBS models are set to change fundamentally. Historically, a Shared Services or GBS organization has delivered transactional processes at a lower cost through standardization, automation, offshoring and outsourcing. The future was predicted to deliver increasing in-function scope in search of more value-added activities, wider penetration into new functional areas, and further consolidation into fewer centers, further offshore processing, possibly run by an outsourcing partner.

We believe the future is already here and that GBS organizations will go much further by eliminating transactional activities altogether through automation. Instead, new services will be provided that leverage technological innovations and the abundance of data coming from virtual relationships with suppliers, customers and consumers. These services will be developed to meet the demands from the business to extract greater value from data assets to meet new opportunities and threats being driven by changing market conditions and consumer demands.

In response to these changes, GBS organization leaders should focus on four priorities:s

Next-generation automationRobots are already being deployed to automate

existing services in both customer-facing domains and back-office transaction areas. We believe GBS organizations will be at the vanguard of exploiting this technology. As transaction processing becomes less dependent on headcount, the business case for centralized, offshore centers becomes less compelling.

1

On-demand customer experienceBreak through the siloes that traditional

SSCs have developed to link resources, information and systems in new ways. Develop on-demand, context-specific, customer-centric services that are digitally enabled for greater simplicity, quality and compliance.

2

Digitising global business services The future of GBS organization 03

Insight as a serviceThere is an ever-increasing availability of data from suppliers, customers and

consumers. However, harvesting this data to provide insights as and when the business needs it, in a language and business context that is readily understood, has been too difficult. The GBS organization’s expertise in robotic process automation can be leveraged to pull data from many disparate sources without the complex integration challenges of the past. Furthermore, emergent technologies in cognitive computing are starting to enable business users to ask questions of what was previously unstructured proprietary and non-proprietary data. This presents an opportunity for the GBS organization to provide new services that were previously too complex or too onerous to even contemplate.

3Organizational agilityThe shift to greater automation challenges the role of the outsourcer,

whose business case is based on charging a lower cost per seat than can be delivered in-house. Additionally, the advent of digital and analytics-based services creates an opportunity to reap value from a new ecosystem of partners, who can deliver immediate benefits through their tools, expertise, delivery infrastructure and access to data and comparative benchmarks. As such, GBS organizations should develop the capability to evaluate sourcing decisions, drive better value through contracts and ‘plug and play’ third parties in an agile, responsive, demand-led way.

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These factors will lead to radical changes to existing operations. The basic tenet of “processing centers” is coming to an end. It is likely that GBS operating models of the future will be characterized by a greater number of small, skill-based centers of excellence thereby reversing the trend of fewer, larger centers executing routine tasks.

The traditional view that the delivery partners of GBS organizations (usually described as “BPO” or “outsource providers”) are likely to be long-term delivery partners providing leverage to reduce costs will change. Third parties instead will be chosen based on delivering a step-change in innovation and competitive advantage. Relationships with outsourcers will be based on innovative commercial models that charge based on value created rather than number of heads or volumes of transactions.

GBS leaders must start to plan for these changes. They must investigate the feasibility of robotics and service digitization, take control of the sourcing decisions that impact them and target the delivery of outcome-based, value-added services through analytics and by harnessing the economies of skill that already exist in their organization.

04 Digitizing global business services: the future of Global Business Services

2 | Beyond 1st generation GBS

2.1 Rapidly changing markets are creating new opportunitiesMarkets are rapidly changing in response to a number of factors, among them the evolution of digital technologies, the growth of social media and the expansion of mass consumerism to new markets. This presents a wealth of opportunities for businesses that can respond quickly — and significant threats to those that do not.

Through their pan-organizational and global reach and their experience of innovating with technology, GBS organizations are ideally positioned to help identify threats and opportunities, and develop capabilities to enable business leaders to respond to them.

The existing models for GBS organizations will be challenged as the next generation start to move beyond delivering incremental cost savings to providing value-added services that help grow revenue, market share and margins.

2.2 Incremental savings are not enoughMany organizations are implementing GBS to target the next incremental savings to be realized from their back-office functions. We defined the main considerations for how to achieve this in our paper, Delivering tomorrow’s companies today — how global business services can transform your business. These considerations include:

• Broadening the services offered to become multifunctional

• Expanding to have a global reach

• Implementing consistent governance and organization structures

• Mandating end-to-end process ownership

• Delivering ruthless standardization of process and technology

• Leveraging facility integration

These areas are now considered “the basics” for any successful GBS organization. New, varied responses to add incremental value to the business are necessary to remain ahead of the competition. By default, the GBS organization is often the largest function (by staff number or budget controlled) in a business. Furthermore, they have a track record of applying technology to improve process efficiency and effectiveness. These large functions must leverage their scale, global skills pool and unique point of reference to deliver new value.

This point of view explores the means of unlocking further value from four critical areas:

1. Next generation automation

2. On-demand customer experience

3. Insight as a service

4. Organizational agility

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3 | Next-generation automation

3.1 The case for roboticsSimply put, robotics is the automation of a process where software (rather than a human) executes basic tasks using desktop and enterprize applications. Robots can interact with applications through the same screens as the human workforce. They have user IDs, passwords and access rights in the same way as any other user.

Robotic technology is enabling organizations to increase the level of automation in their processes dramatically. Businesses that have adopted robotic technology are realizing efficiency saving of over 30%, with some areas achieving much greater returns with software companies declaring one robot can do the work of fourteen white-collar workers. Processes that have traditionally required individuals to move information from one system to another, or to manipulate data to deliver reports or analysis, present perfect candidates for automation. These types of processes exist in all GBS organizations.

Additionally, robotic technology is a flexible, simple tool to use, and has an agile, iterative development methodology that means business users can define their requirements, and have robots “plugged in” and operational, in very short periods of time.

3.2 Fear of the unknownFor many organizations, the main challenge is internal resistance to deploying this relatively new technology, as well as unhelpful media coverage that fixates on the impact on jobs versus the additional value and services that robots will help the human workforce to focus on instead. Typical concerns include:

• Security: will the software open up new avenues for malware to infect my core business systems?

• Data: is the data that is handled by the robotic secure?

• Systematic error: a robot may systematically process thousands of transactions in error in a short period of time, increasing the risk of material misstatements and issues.

These concerns are compounded by the fact that robotic automation in GBS environments is a relatively new concept and may undermine hard fought investment cases to offshore low value tasks or outsource “heads.” These concerns are stopping organizations from re-evaluating their structures and GBS strategies.

3.3 Deliver a proof of conceptGBS leaders must understand the extent to which robotic technology can enhance their existing services. Pilots and feasibility studies should be conducted, and the results extrapolated, to determine the potential impact on resourcing and ultimately operating model designs. The internal concerns and processes that may currently be blocking the uptake of robotics must be tested and challenged.

GBS leaders should challenge the design of the existing operating model and update their five-year strategies to reflect the impact of this new technology. These studies will lead to radical new operating models and new cost savings being targeted. Outsourcing has the potential to be scaled back with a focus on in-house automation to deliver greater savings. Where outsourcing is still the preferred delivery approach, gain share arrangements should be negotiated to ensure future savings from robotics are equally distributed.

Global telecommunications companyThis global business is testing the feasibility of using robotic automation to deliver new process efficiency savings in their GBS organization. One area they are investigating is the process that delivers “network unlock codes” to customers. Currently, there are approximately 30 people performing this task. Through applying robotic technology, it is anticipated that this number will reduce to 4 or 5, a reduction of greater than 80%.

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4.1 GBS organization customers are demanding moreAs consumers, GBS customers are used to services being delivered on demand in a user-centric manner. Mobile applications, personalized online shopping experiences, on-demand television and 24/7 access are just a few of the ways in which consumers now expect to interact with businesses and each other. Against this backdrop, having an internal service organization that expects you to log into different systems to request different services from say IT, HR and finance, depending upon what I want to know, is increasingly at odds with what we expect from a “service-oriented” function. Leading GBS organizations are rethinking how they deliver services to their customers to meet the expectation of 24/7 service through one interface from a hand-held device.

“The expectations of today’s consumers have been shaped by digitally native companies that offer simple and intuitive customer journeys for their products and services. More traditional companies, that weren’t born into the digital age, are now working hard to catch up. Developing new customer-centric designs for existing GBS services will achieve cutting-edge service levels and a step change in process compliance and customer experience.”

EY Seren

4.2 Accessing the value inherent in a GBS organization is restrictedA mature GBS organization has access to, and control of, a broad and unique set of functional and personal skills. These will typically include IT, Finance, Human Resources, Procurement, Customer Contact, Facilities and Data Management. Supplementing these technical skills are softer, customer-facing skills that are needed when providing a global service. These include excellent language skills as well as cultural diversity and awareness.

In addition, GBS organizations often manage many of the core systems of a business and the data that resides within them. As such, there should be an ability to respond to new customer demands quickly; delivering services in new ways that provide a seamless experience across systems, data and functional or process silos.

However, traditionally, GBS organizations have been organized with process, functional and geographical siloes that limit the ability to connect and provide a seamless, context-specific experience or service. Technology is also often fragmented, with unconnected systems making processes clunky and hampering end-to-end process execution. The end user of a service delivered by the GBS organization can need to understand the background structures and responsibilities to resolve their issues, or at worst find getting the outcomes they want to difficult and become disengaged altogether.

4 | On-demand customer experience

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4.3 Break down the siloes to unlock new valueGBS leaders should focus on the outcomes its customers are trying to achieve and break through the process, functional and geographic silos that exist to develop customer-centric services. Innovative and disruptive technologies enable a customer experience that is seamless across systems, process and organizational silos where the customer determines what services they want, when they want them.

To deliver this level of customer experience, GBS organization should focus on two areas:

1. Develop on-demand, context specific, customer centric services: redesign core services to place the customer or user at the center. Define pathways that a user “travels” through that stitch together the various process and system components to serve the customer “mission.”

2. Use emergent technologies to deliver a seamless customer experience: the digitization of a service is the application of any technology that connects people and machines with each other or with information in a more user-centric manner. The GBS organization should develop the skills to digitize its new customer-centric services, connecting core business systems, (e.g., ERP, CRM, HR) with peripheral or third-party systems and data, GBS resources and end users, delivered on the go through hand-held devices. This will increase the simplicity of a process from a user’s perspective and, in turn, improve process compliance, quality, timeliness and cost to serve.

Service DescriptionNew staff onboarding The processes of on-boarding a new member of staff require the interaction of finance

(pay, tax), HR (benefits, line management, learning and development) IT (logins, access rights, laptops and telephony), and facilities (desk space and building access). The process can be complex for a new user to navigate and disrupt the pace at which they can become effective. Digitizing this process will link the systems, focusing them on the end user, making the process simpler and more effective.

Back-office “lite” Support the “organic” entry into new markets through the provision of a ‘back office lit’ GBS organization service that links HR, IT, finance and procurement services around simple-to-use cloud systems and user-centric processes.

Innovation services Link the capabilities inherent in the GBS organization to support the launch of a new product or service. This would combine financial reporting, data analytics and technological services to support the launch. Real-time data from finance, market research and social media can be connected to assess the impact the product is having on the marketplace.

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5 | Insight as a service

5.1 Turning unstructured data into a valuable assetThere is no shortage of data, whether stored in corporate systems or accessible via the internet, and it is growing exponentially. Clients, customers, shoppers and consumers are going online and telling the world about how they spend their time, what they like and what they don’t like. What’s more, they are publishing this information before, and at the point of, consumption. This provides real-time, actionable insights for those able to access the information and make sense of it.Two new technologies are available to help a business harness this data:

1. Robotic data manipulation: robotic automation can enable businesses to capture data from multiple sources at the point at which the data becomes available. Processes that were previously deemed too time-consuming or onerous to justify the investment of human time can be given to robots that can constantly scan external data sources, looking for intelligence that might trigger an intervention, whether from a sales team, a supply chain team, a finance team or even line managers. Examples include virtual real time closes, real-time compliance checks or real-time supply chain analytics.

2. Cognitive analytics: cognitive computing is the simulation of human thought processes in a computerized model. It involves self-learning systems that use data mining, pattern recognition and natural language processing to mimic the way the human brain works. Cognitive computing systems use machine learning algorithms that continually acquire knowledge from the data, fed into them by mining data for information. The systems refine the way they look for patterns, and the way they process data so they become capable of anticipating new problems and modeling possible solutions. This new powerful data mining approach can be applied to enable businesses to interrogate unstructured data to create insights or provide sensible responses to unstructured questions.

GBS organizations provide an ideal environment in which to exploit these new technologies, as they traditionally own IT development budgets and have an enterprize-wide view of corporate data and information. As such, the GBS organization should become the center of excellence for robotic-led analytics.

09Digitizing global business services: the future of Global Business Services

5.2 Take the lead in data analysisThe capabilities required to structure the right questions, access the data, design and deliver the new services and create new insights should be an area of focus for GBS organization leaders wanting to include value-added services in their existing portfolio.

There is an abundance of third-party service providers with ready-built tools and expertise that can be plugged into to a GBS ecosystem to accelerate value. Why spend months or years creating your own expertise when you can fast-track?

It will be imperative for a GBS organization to work with the business to identify and design new insight-driven services. Our observation of the market is that if these capabilities are built without a clearly defined customer requirement, business adoption is very poor. Feasibility studies should be completed within the GBS organization to assess which new data and analytical services should be created. There are a couple of more obvious areas to go for as highlighted in the table below.

These services will deliver new insights and greater automation. Benefits will include improved cash flow, increased margins and new revenue streams. The level of accuracy of these insights will improve as errors associated with human manipulation of large quantities of data will be eliminated.

Global TV/Film Production Company — real time customer insights and predictive analytics increase sales revenueOn release of a new film, the real time response on social media is analyzed. Trending terms both positive and negative are assessed and real time information is shared with the sales and marketing teams. Based on the results, various strategies are deployed to drive revenue such as negotiating better terms with distributors should an unexpected blockbuster be developing, to offering incentives and increasing marketing should sales be forecast to drop below plan.

Service DescriptionWorking capital optimization

Real-time analysis of key metrics to identify interventions that can be made (and automated) to drive cash flow as required (e.g., sending of payment reminders to customers automatically).

Pricing services Modeling real-time pricing responses to changing market conditions based on an automated analysis of market data. Centralization and automation of the pricing processes globally or regionally.

Customer insights Automated, real-time scanning of market information obtainable from electronic media sources (e.g., Twitter, Google) to analyze customer responses to marketing campaigns or a new product launch.

Audit services Live, constant compliance checks on high-risk data sets (e.g., forensic assessment of payment patterns to identify fraud).

Employee services Review of all available staff benefit, training and compliance information and identification of any gaps or issues, which are automatically reported to the employee.

10 Digitizing global business services: the future of Global Business Services

6.1. The role of the outsourcer is changingRobotic automation technology challenges the traditional operating model and the sourcing decisions historically made by organizations. New questions are being posed that challenged the status quo, for example:

• With robotic automation now available, are current outsourcing arrangements still appropriate? Could services be provided more cost-effectively by automating activities in-house rather than offshoring heads with an outsource provider?

• We should certainly be expecting our outsource providers to innovate with new technology to drive greater year-on-year savings. Are contracts sufficiently flexible to hold outsourcing providers to apply innovation to drive costs out?

• Do our outsourcing contracts have sufficient flexibility to allow non-competitive deals to be exited, and is our supplier management organization sufficiently agile to enter new, potentially short-term contracts with up-and-coming suppliers who offer short-term advantages?

Strategic long-term partnerships, where both parties work hard to in-grain the outsource team into the customer’s organization may lock a customer into uncompetitive deals and give them feet of clay when it comes to being able to take advantage of up-and-coming alternatives.

New valued-added services driven by technological advances are putting pressure on outsourcers to develop new service offerings and invest in new capabilities. A new ecosystem of specialist providers, sometimes with a specific niche point solution, is emerging. They are quicker to plug and play, drive more value, and often bring capabilities that were otherwise absent.

6.2 Cost-based sourcing decisions can limit long-term valueCurrent GBS operating models are typically a hybrid of insourced and outsourced arrangements. Often, multiple contracts are in place with different outsourcing providers, some managed by the GBS organization, some by the functions themselves. Sourcing decisions are often taken independently of the GBS organization at a functional level, with the GBS entity required to manage the interface with the outsourcer at a process level.

The traditional approach to outsourcing contracts is based on performance metrics that target the delivery of services at a lower cost than the insourced option. For higher-value services, often driven by technology innovation, or knowledge and insight, contracts are more appropriately priced on service outcomes or value delivered.

6 | Organizational agility

11Digitizing global business services: the future of Global Business Services

6.3 Take control of all sourcing decisionsGBS organizations should take control of all sourcing decisions related to services provided under their control. Accordingly, the business should behave as a true customer to GBS organization, focused on the quality of service rather than the means of service delivery.

GBS organizations should develop a cross-functional, end-to-end sourcing strategy that considers all short-, medium- and long-term benefits. Strategic partnerships with a small number of outsourcers should be developed and the GBS organization should become a center of excellence for contract management and sourcing skills.

Other arrangements with specialist providers should be considered to accelerate and de-risk the development of new capabilities. These arrangements should be identified and negotiated quickly on short-term, flexible contracts that are focused on outcomes and value creation. The GBS organization should be able to deploy providers as required to supplement the business’s existing skill base. As demand or technology changes, these relationships should be adjusted with new providers replacing existing ones to ensure the capabilities of the business remain relevant.

The existing arrangements with outsourcers should be revisited. The processes that they perform should be independently analyzed to identify the scope for further savings through robotic automation and where appropriate, contracts should be renegotiated to release more savings.

These recommendations will enable new benefits to be achieved such as:

• Immediate cost savings through contract renegotiation

• Scale efficiencies by using fewer strategic outsourcing partners

• Longer-term savings from automation from robotics, either through gain share arrangements or by moving or keeping the activities in-house

• Innovative outsourcing arrangements in areas often left in the retained teams, which will deliver savings by eliminating stranded cost (e.g., compliance and reporting) or providing greater service quality where developing and maintaining the right skills in-house is difficult (e.g., in fast-moving parts of the business such as end-to-end supply chain analytics)

• Accelerated capability development in the GBS organization, enabling the creation of new value-adding services

Global consumer products (CP) company — innovative outsourcing arrangement delivers leading practice reporting‘As part of an effective financial control and reporting program, a new R2R process model was created, with a focus on outsourcing as many nonjudgmental transactional processes as possible.

Two strategic outsourcing partnerships were entered into that provided global support for the process. The outsourcing firms formed a key part of an innovative three-tiered delivery model where the outsourcers

delivered the transactional processing, the global consumer product company managed the end-to-end process from their operating centers and the national Finance Directors retained accountability in-country for financial statement sign-off.

The strategic partnerships delivered scale efficiencies, removing localoutsourcing arrangements, and the relationships enabled future process improvement savings made by the outsourcer to be shared with the global CP company.

12 Digitizing global business services: the future of Global Business Services

7.1 New operating model considerationsThe way in which back-office services will be delivered in the future is changing. The current operating model is being shaped by the influence of robotics and digitization of processes, coupled with technology innovation that leads to off-the-shelf analytics and insights. This context will increase the familiarity and confidence

GBS organizations will have in engaging third parties to deliver new services and capabilities, which will changes the way services are consumed.

The changes are impacting operating model designs as summarized below:

The traditional maturity path has led to GBS organizations typically having large regional service centers complemented by global “mega” processing centers in the lowest cost locations. We believe the fifth stage of maturity is a digital one where scale and location become irrelevant.

7 | Where could this lead?

Area of change Impact on operating modelGreater process automation through robotics

• Lower staff numbers

• Reducing impact of wage arbitrage and influence of low-cost countries on location decisions

• Reducing use of outsourcers for standard transactional processing

Demand for new analytical services

• New skills in analytics and robotic technologies required in the GBS organizations

Demand for new outcome-driven services

• Access to broad set of capabilities with a global reach

• Flexibility to link resources in new ways to deliver new services

Requirement to manage new, strategic outsourcing relationships

• Requirement for specialist contract management skills

13Digitizing global business services: the future of Global Business Services

Fifth stage of maturity?

Stage 2• Often strong regional governance and control• SSCs with regional and business unit scope across

the globe• Regional and business unit process and system

alignment• Regional service and demand management• Stronger focus on automation but regionally

developed

Regional finance operations setup

Stage 1 • Initial regional or business unit governance models• SSCs for some countries and processes• Limited standardization with lack of global process

and technology model• Service management with KPI and SLA started, but

immature• Some automation of process, but inconsistent

Hub and spoke

Stage 3• Regional governance, but with some central learnings

and alignment• Independent regional SSCs with central coordination• Move from regional and business unit to global

process standards• Leverage of internal best practices• Alignment of KPI and SLA• Greater technology and system coordination,

alignment and standardization

Global finance operations network

Stage 4• Global governance and process owners • Typically front-office and back-office SSCs as well as

multifunctional country platforms• Single global process model for all entities• Strong automation• Global service and demand management• Technology and system standardization levels are high

Global processing hubs

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Center of GBS organization management

Located at the corporate HQ alongside global business leadership

Strategic GBS and global outsourcing decisions

managed from HQ

Americas customer contact center

Providing English and Spanish language

customer service and internal query resolution

Operated by global services provider

KeyCorporate center Center of GBS management, sourcing decisions and talent management

Centers of excellence — analytics Located close to highly skilled workforce (e.g., university towns and technology centers)

Tax and regulatory center Located in country/region, using specialist outsourcers to provide the technical knowledge and appropriate skills sets

Global transaction processing team Manage automated processes for core functions, manage exceptions, located close to corporate center

Non-automated or voice GBS organization Smaller shared services for process elements not able to be automated (e.g., customercontact centers)

Analytics CoEEmploying graduates from

local universities with analytical, business and

technology skillsets

7.2 The fifth stage of maturityThe idea of the single global processing center being the ideal will diminish. Digitization, technology innovation and automation will make headcount less relevant and services more valuable. Some will close and consolidate with regional centers.

The focus and growth in the operating model will come from a series of small, high-value centers delivering specialist services including analytics. Where these specialist centers are located will be dictated by the availability of skills and business need, not cost. They will grow close to educational or technological hubs and to the business units that benefit most from the services.

Existing outsource providers that continue solely with their current “seat-based” business models will see revenues and profits diluted by new, technology-led providers who will offer smaller, more agile, higher-value services. Businesses will manage small numbers of strategic partnerships with outsourcers that will deliver:

• Specialist skills difficult to source internally

• Transactional processing services for the activities that cannot be automated (e.g., customer contact activities such as credit control)

• IP and insight-focused services

Illustrative GBS operating model of the future

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Automation CoE Employing graduates from

local universities with specialist technology skills;

exploring further GBS automation opportunities

Regional compliance and reporting centersProviding services to Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacific respectively. Operated by specialist, GRC outsourcing provider under global contract.

Located in region close to source of skills (e.g., Buenos Aires, Johannesburg).

Asia-Pacific customer contact center

Providing multiple language customer service and internal

query resolutionOperated by global services

provider

Automated transaction processing center

Oversees the operation of automated global business processes, incorporating

finance, HR, IT, procurement and supply chain

Command and control of the internal delivery centers will become a corporate function, where the head of business services will be a strategic partner of the business, influencing the board. A small central team will manage the service levels, strategic sourcing decisions and relationships with outsourcers. Talent management will become a vital part of the GBS organization as the capabilities of the team become more specialist and valued.

How success of the GBS organization is measured will change. There will be less focus on the cost of a process, although this will still be important, and greater emphasis will be on measuring the outcomes achieved and the business benefit delivered whether revenue, market or margin growth.

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The potential changes to GBS operations are significant, and leaders must equip themselves for these changes. We recommend that GBS organization should:

• Test the feasibility of robotics and other emergent technologies to understand how to drive better value internally and from third-party relationships with them

• Redesign high-priority GBS processes around the customer to increase service quality and process adherence

• Target the delivery of outcome-based, value-added services through robotic-led analytics and by harnessing the economies of skill that already exist in their organization

• Take control of the sourcing decisions and ensure the right contractual arrangements are in place to adapt the partnerships as needs evolve

These steps will require a new operating model, and GBS leaders must prepare the business for these changes, where more, smaller centers of excellence develop and large processing centers in low-cost locations become less important.

8 | Summary

17Digitising global business services The future of GBS organization

EY can help you navigate the expected changes to the GBS organization operating model. We provide a full set of services within our GBS team, including:

GBS strategyReviews of your existing operating model and strategy.

Robotic proof of concept to implementationAssessment of your processes for suitability for robotic automation, delivering a live proof of concept, automating your processes through robotics and the delivery of robotic process transformation.

Outsourcing renegotiationAssessment of your existing outsourcing contracts, the processes performed by your outsourcer and the renegotiation of the contract based on the expected savings to be delivered by robotic automation.

Process digitizationCustomer centric process redesign and digitization.

GBS organization design to implementationDesigning the detailed operating model through to implementation.

Should you be interested in our support or discussing this paper in any more detail, please contact:

Ross LaceyPartner+44 7876 145 684 [email protected]

James MeaderPartner+44 7769 880 581 [email protected]

Dom HollisDirector+44 7747 766 871 [email protected]

Graeme ButterworthPartner – GBS and Outsourcing+44 7711 147327 [email protected]

Ioannis MelasDirector – Digital Transformation+44 20 795 19399 [email protected]

Additional authors of this paper include Ben Wilson and Sunny Sanghera.

9 | How EY can help

EY | Assurance | Tax | Transactions | Advisory

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