Global Capability Centers (GCCs) have come a long way from their early days in back-office operations. Today, they are strategic powerhouses and are central to the innovation and transformation agendas of global enterprises, playing an important role in driving growth, agility, and competitive advantage. However, the accelerating pace of technological disruption, talent dynamics, and changing business expectations means that GCCs can no longer remain static. To stay relevant and valuable, GCCs must continuously reinvent themselves.
Let us explore a few ways in which GCCs can sustain reinvention and consistently deliver value to their parent organisations.
adopt a product mindset
Earlier, the focus was on working on projects with a traditional project mindset. This involved taking inputs and requirements from global teams and delivering within the timelines specified for a project. Things have changed and we are now seeing a clear shoft to adopting a product mindset. This approach focuses on solving customer problems and driving outcomes, rather than simply delivering within strict timelines. A product mindset requires continuous improvement and iterations ensuring that products evolve based on user feedback and market conditions. Teams and managers need to take end-to-end responsibility and be accountable for the product’s long-term success.
from execution to strategy
In the past, GCCs primarily functioned as back-end support centres and primarily focused on transactional tasks such as payroll processing, data entry and IT support. Today, GCCs are no longer confined to routine tasks. They have moved significantly up the value chain. The focus is now on delivering strategic, high-impact work in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), product engineering, financial services, analytics and cybersecurity. This transformation can be achieved by fostering domain expertise across functions in the GCC and showcasing high-value projects that have delivered measurable outcomes. This reinforces the role of GCCs as value-creation hubs.
intense focus on innovation
To keep up with changing customer expectations and stay ahead of the competition, companies need to keep the innovation engine running. Innovation should be embedded in the DNA of the organisation and must be a way of working across the GCC. An innovative mindset can be encouraged across the organisation by running hackathons, ideathons, and internal pitch days regularly. Brainstorming and idea exchanges should be the norm, and successful innovation should be recognised and rewarded well.
Apart from the above, enterprises need to promote a culture that accepts failure. Employees must be encouraged to experiment and take risks. All this, without a fear of repercussions for unsuccessful attempts. Enterprises should serve as centres where new technologies, software and processes can be tested. If these testbeds are successful, they could be scaled across the organisation at a global level.
learning as a way of life
One of the key reasons enterprises set up GCCs is to gain access to a diverse and skilled talent pool. However, with technology moving ahead at a breathtaking pace, it is crucial for talent working at GCCs to constantly learn and upskill.
Organisations can support this by using a mix of different channels to upskill their personnel – it could be through MOOCs, internal training or expert mentorship. To stay relevant in a fast-changing industry, employees should be encouraged to earn certifications and work on live innovation challenges. According to recent reports, leading GCCs such as those of Intuit, Barclays, Walmart, SAP and Thales are investing heavily in talent development. Their initiatives include upskilling platforms, partnerships with top universities, simulation and virtual reality tools, hackathons, and job shadowing opportunities to upskill their workforce in emerging technologies.
increase collaboration with the ecosystem
GCCs cannot operate in isolation and expect to succeed. They must build strong networks by reaching out to the surrounding ecosystem that includes local academia, research institutions and startups. Most organisations do this by partnering with local universities for research and talent and sponsoring accelerator programs or startup challenges to drive innovation.
Partnering with academia gives GCCs access to cutting-edge research. Take the case of Google. The company is joining hands with one of India’s premier institutes, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, to develop text-to-speech models and speech recognition in Indian languages.
It is upon organisations to continuously reinvent to deliver value, and let their GCCs not be just seen as cost arbitrage hubs. This will need concerted efforts at all levels of the organisation, right from the leadership to the individual team members, to see themselves as innovation hubs that are constantly challenging the status quo and looking at the most effective ways in which work can be done and delivered.
