Lessons from Digital Pinnacle GICs™ | Market Insights™
August 28, 2018
Lessons from Digital Pinnacle GICs™: What GICs and their parent enterprises can learn from the Pinnacle, or best-performing, GICs
Lessons from Digital Pinnacle GICs™: What GICs and their parent enterprises can learn from the Pinnacle, or best-performing, GICs
Digital Pinnacle GICs™ – different from the start
Six high-impact differentiators for Pinnacle GICs™
The best-performing, or Pinnacle, GICs differentiate from others in six distinct ways
Pinnacle GICs™ leverage digital to differentiate: Pinnacle GICs™ have developed differentiated capabilities through digital initiatives
Pinnacle GICs™ significantly exceed other GICs in three key impact areas
Sourcing center setups at all-time high in Q2, driven by increased location activity in Nearshore Europe, Middle East
The global sourcing industry experienced a lucrative Q2 2018, marking notable rises in outsourcing demand, setups of global in-house centers (GICs) and service provider revenues compared to Q1, according to Everest Group. In addition, Everest Group reports that overall location activity was at an all-time high (87 setups of delivery centers by GICs and service providers during the quarter) due to significant increases in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Middle East.
Everest Group discusses these and other second-quarter developments in the sourcing industry in its recently released Market Vista™: Q3 2018 report. The quarterly report highlights the trends in the fast-evolving global sourcing market, exploring the key developments across outsourcing transactions and Global In-house Centers (GICs), as well as location risks and opportunities, and service provider developments.
“We’re coming off a great second quarter for the global services industry as a whole,” said Salil Dani, vice president at Everest Group. “For starters, location activity was at an all-time high and transaction activity rose in comparison to Q1. More than two dozen of the world’s leading companies announced plans to expand or set up new centers, which is a strong indication that enterprises anticipate that the market will continue to validate their sourcing strategies in the near future. We expect that this positive momentum will continue through the remainder of the year, which suggests the global sourcing industry will post significantly improved metrics compared to 2017.”
***Register for Complimentary Webinar***
Everest Group will review the findings of the “Market Vista: Q3 2018” report in a webinar to be held on Wednesday, August 29, at 9 am CDT. In addition, Everest Group presenters will address the results of a brief survey the firm recently conducted with leading service providers to gauge their market perspectives for the remainder of 2018 and into 2019. Register here for the complimentary, 60-minute webinar, “Service Provider Vantage Point, Plus Q3 2018 Market Vista™ Briefing.”
Additional highlights from the Market Vista: Q3 2018 report:
***Download a complimentary 14-page abstract of the report findings here.*** (Registration required.)
Here’s the big reason why most of the big IT services companies are still struggling to accelerate: Many large banks have got into a do-it-yourself mode for their IT. Where once they outsourced work, they are now choosing to do more of it in-house, mostly in their own global inhouse centres (GICs) in countries like India.
Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of IT research & consulting firm Everest Group, said the Indian players have been living in denial. “They have all been forecasting good years in banking and we have been telling them that for many reasons this was unlikely to happen. The banks’ GICs have matured and they are clearly growing them at the expense of third parties. For some functions, they are also bringing work back on-shore and this work they are keeping in-house. They have largely decided that they like the big Indian firms as their legacy (partners to maintain their traditional IT),” he said.
There are two primary commercial options – or export-oriented schemes – available to GICs looking to export IT/ITES services from India. One is setting up a 100 percent Export Oriented Unit (EOU) under the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) scheme. This allows operations to be carried out from any location in the country. The other is setting up a delivery center in a specified, demarcated, duty-free enclave called a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). These offer additional economic benefits (e.g., tax holiday) in lieu of positive net foreign exchange earnings from the export of IT/BP services.
Which option is best for your company? Read on to learn the differences, the trade-offs, and the variables you should factor into your decision.
Everest Group recently supported a U.S.-headquartered financial services company looking to set up a small-scaled GIC in India to deliver high-end niche IT services. Our setup advisory team used a three-step process to ultimately recommend the right facility and commercial model to meet all the client’s requirements: outlining the space, handover timeline, and proximity to the central and/or secondary business districts; assessing potential savings in operating from an SEZ; and evaluating and scoring the additional pros and cons of shortlisted sites to make our final recommendation.
When we evaluated and scored the client’s “must-haves” — scope for expansion or relocation, access to social infrastructure, lower commute time, and proximity to talent hubs – against the limited SEZ options available, it became clear that an SEZ was not the right answer for the client.
Thus, we recommended that the client go ahead with an STPI option in a large IT business park, and register the unit with the STPI to benefit from indirect tax benefits. This option allows the client to take advantage of all the business park’s large talent pool, marquee tenant profile, social infrastructure, and other amenities, and gives it flexibility for any future expansion or potential relocation within or outside the business park.
More than 30 new GICs are set up in India annually, and half of these are first-time center setups. In order to ensure their success, the enterprises establishing these centers must take the time upfront to clearly understand their objectives and requirements against the trade-offs of SEZs and STPIs.
Growing GIC Center Segment Now Accounts for One-Fourth of $185 Billion Global Services Market—Everest Group
Enterprises are increasingly leveraging global in-house centers (GICs) as strategic partners; GICs are playing a significant role in enterprises’ digital transformation journeys as they move from a “arbitrage-first model” toward a “digital-first model.” According to Everest Group, GICs are perfectly suited to serve as Centers of Excellence, driving innovation for their parent companies. One key way that GICs are accomplishing this is by collaborating with the external ecosystem, such as nimble tech startups.
Three models typically adopted by GICs to engage with external innovation ecosystems comprise:
“GICs typically have an enterprise-wide perspective, deep domain and process experience, and access to niche skills at a favorable cost, and so, for these reasons, GICs are often in a unique position to foster innovation and serve as Centers of Excellence for their parent companies,” said Sakshi Garg, practice director at Everest Group. “Leading GICs are adopting several best practices for fostering innovation, such as dedicated investments for innovation, special recognition for thought leadership, and driving customer centricity to grow beyond the service delivery mindset.”
The global sourcing market continued to evolve and grow rapidly in 2017 to cross US$185 billion, and the global in-house center (GIC) model remains an integral component of this evolution, accounting for one-fourth of the market, according to Everest Group.
The GIC market saw a 10 percent increase in 2017 over 2016 in the number of new GIC setups by companies from technology and communications, manufacturing, healthcare, and energy and utility verticals. The market has grown consistently with more than 2,800 centers set up across leading offshore and nearshore locations, compared to approximately 2,100 about five years ago.
The research supporting these findings is summarized in “Global In-house Center (GIC) Landscape Annual Report 2018 – GICs Emerging as Innovation CoEs for Global Enterprises,” a report recently published by Everest Group. This report provides a deep dive into the GIC landscape and a year-on-year analysis of GIC trends. The research brings out key insights into the GIC market across locations, verticals and functions, and concludes with an assessment of the role played by GICs to drive innovation for the enterprises.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
©2023 Everest Global, Inc. Privacy Notice Terms of Use Do Not Sell My Information
"*" indicates required fields