On a global scale, I have during the last couple of years witnessed a fast expansion and maturing of Global Business Services (GBS) organisations. Global Business Services (GBS) refers to a centralised, service delivery models for shared services to manage an organisation's support functions, such as finance, HR, IT, and procurement, on a global scale.
What used to be an outsourced Shared Service Center for some operational tasks within financial processes like Source-to-Pay or Record-to-Report has now matured – a lot!
After analysing the below maturity model, it gave me insights on where we are coming from and heading towards, and I would like to provide 4 compelling reasons why I strongly believe that investing in maturing your GBS is a wise decision. Maybe you can level up, by focusing on some of the reasons I list? I hope to inspire your priorities for your ‘2024 GBS levelling up!
1. Unleash specialised GBS capabilities via the service catalog
As disciplines like center of excellence and intelligent automation are realising from GBS service deliveries, the GBS can evolve to offer standardised capabilities to the business as enterprise services, freeing up capacity across the enterprise.
Capabilities close at hand for the GBS Service Catalog to expand on, are cross-enterprise capabilities like knowledge management, process automation, reporting, project management, risk management, compliance, vendor management and ESG initiatives.
2. Break down the silos
In many GBS, the end-to-end value streams are still not totally mapped out and aligned. In reality, the GBS cover their part of the process, while other global functions and local business units manage their part of the process. This creates for the GBS a situation of being between a rock and a hard place, as process owners are often within the GBS but without a mandate to deliver on the end-to-end value stream.
With a focus on continuous operational excellence and promoting the GBS as THE service function of the business, process owners should be given the mandate to design, optimise and align the end-to-end value streams and ensure the workflow is managed and governed in a single platform, where tasks can be distributed and seamlessly delivered, not only within the GBS but across the enterprise. This will create clearer roles and responsibilities and improve the user experience.
3. Improve customer satisfaction
The focus for the GBS has been on operational excellence and IT-systems to support the processes, whereas the user experience has not been given the right attention across the service domains. Few GBS have a single point of entry in a modern portal experience where requests, information and issues can be logged, tracked and reported on by the service consumer (be they employees, customers or suppliers).
The time is ripe to focus on that seamless service experience, where our service consumers can access the services offered by the GBS from one system of engagement, instead of one for HR, one for Finance, one for IT, one for Procurement, etc.
4. Avoid roadblocks
Just as a transportation planner needs real-time roadway data to predict future traffic patterns and make planning decisions, businesses need increased data visibility to predict future operational pain points and make better and faster decisions to improve service delivery.
A more mature GBS organisation can leverage its unified service delivery platform with capabilities such as predictive intelligence and analytics to anticipate trends and streamline workflows. In combination, these capabilities are key to maintaining future operational efficiency across the enterprise.
And yes, as you have probably read between the lines, at KPMG Enterprise Service Management, we believe that ServiceNow is THE enabling and orchestration platform for maturing and transformation of the GBS.
And to transform the GBS, we have developed a GBS Powered approach which you can read more about here. That way, you can start with a model answer and reduce risk and time.
I’m always happy to answer questions about how to elevate your GBS level and I’m also interested in your feedback on reasons listed in this blog.
