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Rohitashwa Aggarwal, Author at Everest Group

Jan 28

The Three Components Your Shared Services Center Needs to Include in its Innovation Equation | Blog

By | Blog, Shared Services/Global In-house Centers

Supporting enterprises’ innovation agendas is no longer simply an opportunity for in-house shared services centers – what we call global in-house centers (GICs); it’s fast becoming a competitive imperative. And, contrary to popular perception, cracking the innovation code requires much more than just novel ideas. Success entails boarding the right people on the bus, gearing them up with the right mechanisms to drive agile decision making, and reengineering the organization’s cultural DNA to foster innovation. We’ve developed a simple approach that will help you solve this complex problem.

Let’s take a look at the three components.

The Three Components Your Shared Services Center Needs to Include in its Innovation Equation

Process

Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure – Albert Einstein

The first element is formulation of the right mechanisms to evangelize innovation initiatives. It requires the right idea generation mechanisms to harness unique ideas from both internal (GIC and parent company stakeholders) and external (including startups, academia, and service providers / specialists) ecosystems. A critical part of this is evaluating the strategic rationale for the partnership. While some shared services centers partner with third-party providers and start-ups for talent augmentation and skill acquisition, others leverage the connections to develop domain expertise or increase the speed of innovation.

Another essential component, specifically for GICs, is the right funding mechanism. While we see most shared services centers carving out a separate fund for innovation (which is part of the overall GIC CEO budget), we are increasingly seeing them push for a global/centralized fund where the innovation team within the center operates as an extension of the global innovation team(s), and is funded by centralized global venture funds / programs. For select initiatives, we have also seen GICs securing funding from business units and driving project-based innovation initiatives.

The third component here is timely deployment of robust governance mechanisms. Shared services centers need to adopt a disciplined approach to rigorously track performance and incorporate remedial feedback on a continual basis. This not only helps to assess the effectiveness of activities, but also guides allocation process for resources, and helps assign accountability for actions/responsibilities.

People

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have and how you’re led – Steve Jobs

Involving the right people in the right team structure is the second critical component. Leading GICs involve stakeholders from different parts of the organization, i.e., functional and business teams, central innovation groups, R&D departments, and corporate teams to invest time in exploring adjacent and transformational opportunities. This helps in cross-pollination of teams and enables development of a holistic solution in an accelerated go-to-market timeframe. While we have seen varied designs for innovation teams (based on organizational fit and business alignment), the common thread is the focused top-driven approach to creating structural changes, supplemented by continuous support from middle management to ensure smooth implementation.

Another key initiative leading centers are taking is remodeling their existing talent practices. They are now shifting their focus from hiring for specific “skills” to hiring for “learnability” / “thinking skills”, i.e., the ability to innovate. They are incentivizing innovation, and providing special recognition for outside- the-box thinking. We are also seeing strong innovators recalibrate their existing performance measurement metrics to align with the impact generated against the business objectives.

 Culture

“Innovation is not something you do for one afternoon a week, it’s got to be in your DNA” – Jasper de Valk and James van Thiel, Google

The third principal tenet to ensuring foundational success on the innovation journey is dedicated investment in developing a customer-centric culture with active CXO-level participation. Shared services centers are deploying multiple tools to reengineer their DNA and develop a culture that breeds innovation. Most successful examples include: gamification of programs and distinctive recognition for positive reinforcement; stimulation of an experimentation mindset and instillation of risk appetite; and adoption of flexible employment models, including remote working, crowdsourcing, and open innovation.

Although new technologies are path-breaking, we believe that the key to a GIC’s success is incremental innovation. They should keep testing small-scale POCs to demonstrate end-client value and build credibility. Successful implementation of pilots can help them instill confidence among parent stakeholders, and ensure adequate support and funding for much larger scale initiatives. This process also presents centers with an opportunity to course-correct early and drive/lead enterprise-wide digital initiatives.

If you’d like detailed insights and real-life case studies on how GICs have effectively driven the innovation agenda for their enterprises, please read our recently published report – Leading Innovation and Creating Value: The 2019 Imperative for GICs. And feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] to explore this further. We will be happy to hear your story, questions, concerns, and successes!

May 09

Simplifying skilling in Global in-house Centers (GICs) | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog

With technological developments and digital disruption driving changes across most facets of global enterprises, it comes as no surprise that talent strategy has evolved from an HR topic to a board room agenda item. Because of their evolving role in how they can best support their parent companies, talent strategy is a top concern for global in-house centers (GIC) as well.

Through our extensive research in the GIC space, we’ve identified several trends among GICs that have experimented with upskilling and reskilling their team members to prepare and enable them to address today’s known and tomorrow’s as yet unknown challenges.

Trend 1: Investments in Skilling Mid-level Employees have been Underwhelming

Skilling Needs in GIC

Most GICs have dedicated skilling programs for senior management (Layer 3) and programmatic hiring and training programs for entry-level talent (Layer 1), including partnerships with universities/agencies. But, interestingly, there’s a big gap in GICs’ skilling practices for mid-level/Layer 2 employees.

Because Layer 2 employees form the backbone of a GIC by providing strong domain and process expertise, and typically have deep organizational knowledge, GICs need to escalate the skilling initiatives targeted to them. The right skilling practices for these individuals will be critical to GIC’s successful evolution and ability to sustainably deliver services in the future.

Trend 2: GICs are Experimenting – Starting Small across Multiple Areas, then Deciding Where to put Their Money

Because they’re lacking clarity on areas to prioritize, GICs are piloting upskilling and reskilling initiatives across multiple functions. These are typically small-scale pilots of less than 50 team members for less than three months. After evaluating the success of the pilots, GICs plan to scale-up the initiatives across their broader employee segments and organizations.

These pilots will help GICs decide where to invest. But they must also consider their peers’ best practices for upskilling/reskilling in the same or similar functions. This will help guide them in how to best avoid unproductive investments.

Trend 3: It’s Largely an In-House Game

GICs are primarily using in-house teams to develop and run their reskilling and upskilling initiatives. They believe they can reduce risk with internal teams that have a strong context and understanding of the business. This approach also allows them to experiment more, given lack of clarity on exact requirements and end results.

However, they may benefit by making selective use of external specialist providers in areas where they lack internal capabilities, such as use of gamification and simulation for training, role mapping and employee suitability assessment exercises, and change management training.

Trend 4: It’s Just a Part-Time, On-the-Job Affair

In most areas, GICs prefer part-time upskill/reskill training for their employees. Full-time training is limited to certain next gen skills, like digital, or across functions, e.g., of contact center employees in the use of analytics. When used, full-time training often occurs over just one to two weeks.

There’s no clear cut, overarching answer on whether the   part-time or the full-time model is a better choice. GICs need to consider factors such as complexity of the new skills, employee time off their current jobs, and the rate of previous training successes to choose the appropriate model in each given situation.

We recently surveyed senior leaders from 80+ GICs across India, the Philippines, and Poland to assess the changing nature of skills/competencies needed for the future, and the roles GICs can play in addressing the changing skill requirements. Contact us here to see the results, and to exchange perspectives on evolving skills needs and approaches to future proof your talent strategy.

And keep your eyes peeled for our next blog on this topic, where we’ll talk about best practices and how some GICs have upskilled and reskilled their team members.

 

May 08

GICs are Evolving from “Delivery Centers” to “Capability Centers” | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog, Shared Services/Global In-house Centers, Talent

Historically, companies have leveraged the GIC model to deliver business process (operations) and IT services. However, as the model is maturing and incremental demand for these services is declining, enterprises are increasingly looking to their GICs to build more strategic Research & Development (R&D) and digital capabilities, drive innovation, and focus more on value-added services. In other words, they want their GICs to be “capability centers,” not just “delivery centers.”

There’s clear evidence that this is happening. In 2017, there was a significant increase in set-up of such capability centers focused on R&D and digital skills, especially in areas such as design, innovation, automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and cybersecurity. Indeed, our recently released GIC Annual Report 2018 shows that the share of centers supporting R&D/engineering services – including digital services – increased by almost 150 percent during 2017, as compared to 2016. And these centers accounted for more than 50 percent of total GICs setup in 2017.

Breakdown of new GIC setups by services delivered

These capabilities are expected to be the key differentiators and success drivers for global enterprises going forward. In 2017, ~46 percent of all new centers were focused on developing or expanding digital capabilities for the enterprise. There are multiple examples where offshore/nearshore GICs have been given a global mandate to lead organizational initiatives in new and emerging areas such as automation and blockchain.

Related: Simplifying skilling in Global in-house Centers (GICs)

So, how exactly are GICs becoming the global capability centers? What are the key enablers? Another of our recent research studies shows that GICs need to take a FORCEful approach:

FORCEful approach to becoming the global capability centers

  • Foster innovation: GIC leadership needs to invest in developing a customer-centric culture, and test small-scale Proof-Of-Concepts (POCs) to demonstrate end-client value and build credibility
  • Orchestrate transformation: GICs should leverage their well-established foundation by identifying their core strengths and upshifting the value they deliver through improved operational excellence with productivity enhancements, optimized pyramids, and better managed external spend. Simultaneous focus on leveraging these new capabilities to drive both growth and efficiencies will be critical to deliver true value to the enterprise
  • Reskill and upskill workforce: GICs must radically change their reskilling/upskilling initiatives to ensure talent readiness for next-generation skills. They also need to adopt a bespoke approach for specific requirements, and undertake pilots in areas with the highest skills gaps to assess the effectiveness and relevance of the capability centers model
  • Collaborate with ecosystem: GICs should proactively leverage the external ecosystem – specialist providers, startups, educational institutions, etc. – to develop holistic solutions, increase agility, and reduce go-to-market time
  • Expand existing capabilities: GICs have a unique insider’s view that enables them to provide strategic insights to orchestrate enterprise-wide digital/technological transformation, facilitate integration between IT and operations, and break functional siloes to achieve truly breakthrough results

Related: How we support shared services centers (or GICs)

To learn more about the research behind our FORCEful approach, please click here. And if you’ve already established a capability center, or are in the process of doing so, write to us at [email protected] or [email protected]. We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

Apr 02

Enterprises are Betting Big on India GICs for Driving Digital | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog, Shared Services/Global In-house Centers

The rise of India-based Global In-house Centers’ (GIC) role in supporting enterprises’ digital transformation through digital technologies, such as RPA, mobility, and IoT, has been significant in the past few years. In 2017 alone, over 50 percent of the GIC set-ups in India were focused on building/enhancing enterprises’ digital capabilities.

Indeed, enterprises are making their India GICs the hub for developing solutions and products for next-gen technologies, such as machine learning, NLP, predictive learning, cognitive, and blockchain. Recent examples include Samsung, State Street, and Western Union.

Why India?

  • Talent availability: The ability to scale next-gen skills at low cost is a key differentiator. For instance, India accounts for 50-60 percent of the talent pool employed for delivery of automation services from offshore/nearshore locations. A strong base of third-party service providers has also established digital and technology labs in India
  • Mature delivery model: India accounts for 30-35 percent of all nearshore/offshore GIC set-ups, and more than 45 percent of their FTEs. Mature operations and middle-/back-office delivery presence in India give them a strong foundation on which to build their digital efforts. And it allows them to develop more integrated operations, technology, digital, and analytics solutions to address the evolving business needs of their parent organizations
  • Strong start-up ecosystem: India has one of the most evolved technology start-up ecosystems in the world. As of 2016, it had more than 4,500 tech start-ups employing a pool of around 100,000 FTEs. This situation not only allows enterprises to access next-gen technological solutions, but also to tap into the ecosystem to accelerate progress when additional resources are needed
  • Economies of scale and cost benefits: While cost may not be the primary driver, it certainly is a key differentiator. Budgets are always scarce, and needs are always plenty. India offers quality talent at lower cost and allows companies to drive low cost innovation and development

Digital Pinnacle™

How are the best-of-the-best enterprises and GICs leveraging India and other locations for digital? To expand our insights beyond the work we conduct with our clients, we’ve launched a Digital Pinnacle™ survey to learn more about successful GICs’ digital journeys.  We invite you to participate in the survey and/or to share your thoughts and experiences with us at [email protected] or [email protected].

Watch this space for more insights on GICs and for the deep-dive survey results.

Mar 28

Talent Management in Global In-house Centers: Are You Future-Ready? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog, Shared Services/Global In-house Centers, Talent

There’s no question that digital technological advancements, evolving business requirements such as changing consumer needs and faster time to market, and a heightened focus on customer experience are significantly changing the profile of skills needed to deliver services. As most global in-house centers (GIC) are already facing challenges in hiring people with the right skills for the future, it is concerning that their talent-related preparation for such a tectonic shift is lacking.

Talent Management GIC_1

Here are four talent management imperatives for GICs to develop the workforce of the future.

1. Identification of Skills Gap

As automation and other technological advancements kick in, human skills, such as innovation, design thinking, problem solving, empathy, and ethical thinking will become more critical. Identification of skills gap will be pivotal for GICs’ talent acquisition and development strategy. A recent Everest Group study of 80+ GICs across India, Philippines, and Poland identified multiple, and difficult to hire, skills that are likely to become more important in the future.

Talent Management GIC_2

2. Upskill/Reskill Current Workforce

Firms’ talent challenges will intensify with the automation of transactional services. They will face the dual risks of a large existing workforce with many skills that are likely to become redundant, while struggling to find talent with the right skills for their future needs. Upskilling/reskilling existing talent is an important lever for GICs to address these challenges while preserving their trained workforce with string domain/industry know-how. (See our detailed report on upskilling/reskilling in GICs for additional perspectives.)

3. Evolve Talent Acquisition and Development Strategy

As GICs look to develop a future-proof talent strategy, they will need to think outside the box to tap into alternative sources of talent. Opportunities include hackathons, hiring from startups and other industries, project-based partnerships with specialist agencies, and flexible resourcing. From an L&D perspective, traditional classroom model needs to evolve as learning is becoming more real-time, customized, and digitized, e.g., MOOCs, simulation, and gamification.

4. Agile Human Capital Planning

With a dramatic decline in skills’ half-life, particularly in the technical space, GICs need to identify and focus on skills that are more likely to be critical for their growth. A more frequent approach to human capital planning might be essential to account for rapid changes in these skills.

While many GICs are still taking a wait and watch approach to the talent management issue, some have already embarked on this transformational journey. And those that are proactively addressing it are reaping big rewards.

Watch this space for more insights and success stories. And if you’d like to share your challenges, successes, or questions with us, please feel free to write us at [email protected] or [email protected].

May 30

Is Perceived Impact Hindering Your GIC’s Growth? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog, Shared Services/Global In-house Centers

The GIC model has evolved significantly over the last decade, and is gearing up for the third wave of evolution – GIC 3.0, as some are calling it – driven by GICs’ strong desire to move away from the “arbitrage-first” delivery model towards a “digital-first” model.

Everest Group describes the journey to mature GICs as progressing through four different stages.

Journey to GIC maturity

GIC maturity for optimal business impact

Our research shows that best-in-class – or Stage 4 – GICs deliver up to six to eight times incremental value beyond arbitrage. Yet, while many of our engagements over the last few years have made it clear that most Global 1,000 GICs deliver value beyond arbitrage, very few track and measure their impact. When they do, it’s typically in a piecemeal, selective manner. Thus, their parent perceives that they are delivering limited business value, beyond arbitrage, to the enterprise.

By educating their parent on their impact, GICs can improve their credibility, and build a case to secure support for expanding their role.

So how can GICs measure and articulate the value they deliver?

We believe that putting a dollar number to the business impact is the most objective and effective way for GICs to showcase their true worth. The framework we use maps value drivers linked to savings, risk, and revenue, quantifying all forms of impact created by the GIC.

GIC business impact model

Here’s an example: a U.S. company’s GIC was able to prove to its parent that it delivered US$20 to 22 million in overall business impact, compared to incremental cost arbitrage of US$4 to 6 million, through increased effectiveness, greater efficiency, and revenue growth. This helped the GIC secure the parent’s buy-in on increasing the scope of functions currently delivered out of their GIC.

A comprehensive quantification facilitates measuring the overall business impact across businesses/LOBs supported by the GIC. A GIC can use these results to:

  • Enable better understanding of its impact/role in the enterprise
  • Guide internal thinking on prioritization of value-add opportunities
  • Map its maturity to the market
  • Achieve greater sponsorship from parent stakeholders

Contact us about Everest Group’s business impact quantification framework, and learn more about our research on in-house delivery models.

May 02

Trump-type Protectionism Threatening Global Services in APAC | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog, Outsourcing

On April 18, President Trump signed an executive order for interdepartmental review of the H1-B visa program, a move largely aimed at curbing the allotment of H1-B visas to entry level IT professionals from other countries. While it took months for him to officially make a move, his protectionism agenda seems to be spreading far and wide, with several countries in the Asia Pacific region embracing similar protectionist stances to address unemployment.

Australia pulled the plug on its most popular temporary work visa, the 457 visa program. This program allowed companies based in Australia to employ foreign workers, for a period of up to four years, wherever they faced a shortage of skilled workers in the domestic market. It was largely used by global IT companies to source workforce from other countries, mainly India. The Australian government has stated that it will replace the 457 visa program with two temporary visas for skilled professionals. Certain IT skills (e.g., web developer) have been already removed from the list of ~200 occupations that qualify for these visa programs.

In a similar event, the Singapore government restricted the number of visas that can be issued to foreign IT professionals. This has impacted both new visa applicants and those seeking a renewal.

And two weeks ago, the New Zealand government announced plans to tighten access to skilled work visas in a “Kiwi-first” approach to immigration.

Crackdown on visas to skilled foreign workers a threat to global service delivery models

Policy changes that restrict movement of skilled professionals across borders can cause several operational challenges for the prevailing global delivery models of almost all major service providers. The regional delivery centers of leading global and Indian IT service providers based in these APAC countries are likely to face the biggest challenge, as the restrictions against importing talent will make them reliant on local, expensive talent. This, in turn, might negatively impact their margins.

In the short term, enterprises’ and services providers’ cost of operations might witness a spike due to limited availability of landed resources in the onshore workforce. Typically, the difference in cost between a landed and a local resource in most geographies is 10-15 percent. And, based on recently completed research, we estimate that service providers’ margins from onshore operations could drop by up to 16 percent due to the proposed changes to the H1-B visa program. This will likely require service providers to recalibrate their pricing strategy and/or revisit their onshore-offshore delivery mix.

In the long term, service providers are likely to push towards offshoring as a lever to protect their overall margin. And there might be increased instances of even complex work being delivered from offshore locations to reduce dependence on work-visas for onshore locations, in turn requiring increased training and upskilling of employees in offshore locations.

Do you have or run global services operations in APAC? Have you and your teammates formulated an immigration issue mitigation plan? Our readers would love to know how you’re addressing this challenge!

Learn more about Everest Group’s Locations Optimization practice.

Apr 18

Six Common Mistakes Enterprises Make when Developing Service Delivery Location Business Cases | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog, Outsourcing

Everest Group regularly supports clients in developing fact-based business case models to assess all relevant costs and benefits associated with their service delivery portfolio and delivery location decisions.

Not surprisingly, we’ve seen an increase in this type of activity in the last several years due to technology disruptions, potential immigration reform laws, intensifying competition for talent, and macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties. We’ve also seen an increase in the number of faulty/incomplete business cases that, if unresolved, can result in unnecessarily high costs and less than expected benefits.

Six common mistakes enterprises make when creating their global service delivery location business cases.

#1 Clarity on the primary objective of the business case:

Establishing clarity on the key objectives of the business case for service delivery location selection is of utmost importance. Companies often include benefits of other initiatives (e.g., transformation) which may impact their overall locations footprint, but fail to include costs associated with these initiatives, resulting in a faulty business case. As business case assessment is typically done for long-term strategic decisions, it is critical to ensure clarity on the locations strategy and implementation roadmap under consideration.

#2 Underestimating the costs of “what it takes to get there”:

Companies often underestimate the costs associated with exiting their current location (e.g., lease termination and severance costs); disruption in their existing locations (e.g., loss of knowledge due to higher than expected attrition); migrations (e.g., employee relocation, technology migration, parallel/shadow run); and set-up of new centers (e.g., capex, cost of hiring and ramp-up, training costs, etc.)

Example: A global Financial Services company had a 12-month long shadow/parallel run to effectively complete knowledge transfer for high complexity processes. This negated most of the arbitrage-related benefits for the initial 12-18 months. In fact, the company incurred relatively higher total cost of operations (TCO) until steady state operations was achieved.

Example: In a recent engagement, the location selection for a Latin American client’s shared services center was greatly influenced by applicable withholding taxes (i.e., the Argentinean government levies a ~31.5% withholding tax on import of global services from certain locations such as Mexico). These factors significantly impacted the relative cost attractiveness of locations under consideration.

#3 Overestimating benefits:

Companies often plan multiple transformation and optimization initiatives in parallel with changes to their services delivery portfolio. In such cases, things seldom pan out as planned, and the savings achieved are significantly lower than expected in areas including:

  1. Headcount reduction from process improvements
  2. Delivery pyramid optimization
  3. Implementation of automation/technology solutions
  4. Economies of scale (in cases of location consolidation)
  5. Optimization of management and administrative overheads

Example: A BFSI firm changed its planned strategy midstream, as its initial plans to fund the business case for large scale service delivery location consolidation by reducing FTE headcount by ~ 6,000 could not be realistically achieved.

#4 Stakeholder misalignment:

A service delivery location decision must involve multiple stakeholders including onshore business leaders, offshore delivery leads, functional and GIC leaders, migrations and/or transformation teams, corporate real estate, and technology teams. Any lack of coordination among these stakeholders can pose challenges in alignment on data used, key assumptions, the roadmap for service delivery portfolio changes, and the plan for other transformation/optimization initiatives. All stakeholders must be kept in the loop from the beginning of the location evaluation, and they must periodically periodic sign-off on the approach.

#5 Industry benchmarks:

While it is important to leverage industry benchmarks, companies must contextualize information to their own unique situation. The specificity of operations or the role a location plays for the company can be different from the typical value proposition of that location/geography.

Example: A recent engagement for a global Financial Services client demonstrated that, despite industry benchmarks that indicated Location A offered ~20 percent cost savings over Location B for typical BPO processes, the client’s specific processes and talent needs reversed the cost attractiveness of the two locations.

#6 Talent competition in the local market:

Companies often underestimate the true extent of competition in the local talent market, and the impact of attrition on sustainability of their operations. This impacts a company’s ability to scale initially, retain talent, and back-fill lost staff.

Example: A global manufacturing company faced significant challenges in hiring language skills for its newly setup shared services center in the APAC region, resulting in significantly lower arbitrage savings than expected.

While developing business cases models can be a significant challenge, we believe that addressing the above-mentioned points can reduce chances of error significantly. Learn more about Everest Group’s Service Delivery Locations practice.

Mar 06

From Captive to Catalyst: The Next Milestone in the Global In-house Center Evolution Story | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog, Shared Services/Global In-house Centers

At a conference I attended recently on the role of global in-house centers (GICs) in digital and RPA, one of the speakers asked everyone to imagine what their organizations would look like in the future. The answers from a room full of enterprise and GIC leaders were varied and fascinating. My personal favorite was the one where robots will manage all forms of work while people relax on a beach, soaking up the sun, and sipping their piña coladas. Tempting as that sounds, I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.

But what is happening now is a flurry of changes in the business environment globally. Amidst recent geopolitical developments in the U.S. and U.K., increasing talks of protectionist policies, the advancement of RPA and other service optimization technologies, and regulatory pressures affecting the global services sector, GICs and shared services centers find themselves at a crossroads. As the global services sector moves from an arbitrage first to a digital first delivery model, GICs have an opportunity to break away from the orthodox boundaries by taking the road less traveled, and enhance their role in enterprises’ global sourcing strategy.

Everest Group has seen first hand the evolving role of GICs, which has expanded beyond providing low- cost delivery to being agents of change – or catalysts – for enterprises’ back- and middle-office services.

Now, GICs are at an inflection point in their evolution journey, well positioned to take on this enhanced role driven by: increased endorsement from the enterprise and the shift towards insourcing; a strong foundation and ability to offer an insider’s view; tight integration with the existing core business; and strong adjacency with existing focus on driving efficiency and optimization.

What does the future of GICs look like?

Global Services - CatalystTo successfully undertake changes within their enterprises and redefine their role from captive to catalyst, GICs need to:

  1. Drive business impact and thought leadership
  2. Develop global leaders and talent/skills
  3. Play a pivotal role in the transformation of processes and service delivery
  4. Lead organizations through digital disruptions in global services.

Here are Everest Group’s recommendations on how GICs can capitalize on this opportunity:

  • Redefine the art of the possible, and adopt a business outcome-oriented mindset, which is significantly different from the current delivery mindset
  • Identify and prioritize investments, such as their choice of functional and technology segments, and the best approach to gaining more than just incremental growth
  • Change their talent model (e.g., hire for learnability, strengthen culture of innovation) and operating model (e.g., different onshore-offshore collaboration models due to agile/DevOps) to catalyze the digital agenda.

Our newly renamed CatalystTM subscription research program (formerly known as Global Sourcing) provides GICs and enterprise clients with actionable insights to navigate through the evolutionary journey from captive to catalyst. Benefits of a Catalyst subscription include:

  • Industry-leading research and viewpoints on multiple topics relevant to GIC market
  • One-on-one briefings with Everest Group analysts and SMEs
  • Exclusive invitations to GIC events – including webinars, roundtables, and virtual networking sessions – organized by Everest Group

Learn more about our work in the GIC space, and see details about our Catalyst research program.

Aug 20

When It Comes to IT-BPS, the Philippines Knows Its Strengths | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

By | Blog

I was introduced to the Philippines about two years back when I started working in the global services sector. And frankly, I was a bit startled by how little I knew about this giant of the contact center services market – I always thought India was the world’s largest contact center market. But its colonial heritage, accent neutrality, cultural affinity with the west, and BPS-conducive environment puts the Philippines at an altogether different level.

I began following the Philippines IT-BPS markets more regularly as I worked on this location for several client engagements. I observed how this country is a perfect example of the “playing on your strengths” approach. It is incredible how the government, iBPAP, and other partner associations have worked together to achieve the growth potential we highlighted in the Roadmap we developed in association with then BPAP and Outsource2Philippines back in 2009. Indeed, the market has doubled in size in less than six years. Today, the Philippines employs over a million FTEs, and is the second largest offshore services delivery location, next only to India.

While voice-based services have always been Philippines’ strength, it has experienced remarkable success in other areas, such as IT services, which grew at ~25 percent CAGR since 2010, and now accounts for ~10 percent share of country’s entire offshore market. While service providers have been key drivers of the growth in IT, Global In-house Centers (GICs) have pushed for growth in FAO and banking services. Several global banking companies, such as American Express, ANZ, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING Group, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, have established sizable centers in the country. Even though Bank of America has exited the country (it shut down its shop in 2014 as part of a global GIC restructuring), and JP Morgan Chase is scaling down owing to global cost cutting, overall outlook remains positive. The country has also made good use of its strong nursing talent—the largest pool of U.S.-licensed nurses outside of the U.S.—and is now the largest healthcare services provider to the U.S. The healthcare BPS sector has grown at over 40 percent YoY since 2012.

Another success area for the Philippines has been its ability to attract global companies. Over 100 have set up their GICs in the country, and close to one-fourth of them are on the Fortune 500. These GICs are expanding their Philippines strategy beyond cost arbitrage, and establishing regional hubs/HQs/CoEs. The U.S. remains the leading buyer market, with ~70 percent total demand. However, demand from Asian markets has been increasing steadily, with several Japanese and Australian companies establishing their captive centers in the metro Manila region.

With increasing emphasis on adoption of digital globally, government agencies (such as iBPAP and PSIA) are making proactive efforts to ensure that the Philippines stays ahead of the curve. It is already investing in building capabilities – from teaching the right curriculum at the universities to supporting companies’ development of required infrastructure to setting up training labs at colleges and universities –  to deliver mobility, analytics and cloud-based services. We have seen some evidence of companies already delivering mobility (focused application development services for mobile) from the Philippines in the last year or so. Digital has been the buzzword in the majority of our interactions with our clients looking into the Philippines lately.

Having done well so far, I am intrigued to see how the Philippines will sustain its growth in the evolving IT-BPS ecosystem. It needs to adapt to rapidly changing consumer needs, e.g., the adoption of digital, development of multi-channel delivery systems, and a multi-skilled labor force. It also needs to ensure continuous growth in other service lines, such as banking BPS, FAO, HRO services, animation and gaming, and creative services, by leveraging its interpersonal, voice-based, and strong domain-specific skills to build scale.

It will be interesting to watch what lies ahead in the years to come. Can the Philippines continue shaping its own destiny in the global services market?