Tag: shared services

GBS Share of Market Expands to 27%, with 54% of New Setups Focused on Digital Services | Press Release

April 21, 2020
Setups of Global Business Services centers outpaced outsourcing growth in 2019 as enterprises looked in-house for high-value contributions beyond arbitrage

Everest Group reports that the Global Business Services (GBS) market1 commanded a 27% share of the US$210 - $212 billion global services market in 2019, outpacing the growth of outsourced services and continuing the segment’s gradual increase in share of market over the last decade.

Enterprises are extensively leveraging the GBS model to accelerate enterprise-wide digital transformation initiatives, with approximately 54% of new GBS centers focusing on digital services. In particular, GBS centers in the engineering services and research and development (R&D) space have gained traction during the last couple of years, with focus on building deep capabilities in areas such as machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), mobility, analytics, cloud, and cybersecurity.

GBS organizations are also undergoing changes in their operating and governance models, driven by three key needs: building greater alignment with business teams, building agile organizations, and improving performance reporting mechanisms. As a result, GBS organizations are increasingly:

  • moving from a horizontal to a vertical reporting model.
  • shifting to dual-responsibility leadership roles where the site-head’s responsibilities are entrusted (or co-trusted) to other functional leaders.
  • collapsing IT and operations silos into integrated teams focused on business objectives.
  • taking global ownership roles across various domain or functional areas.
  • deploying a wide array of metrics to measure value beyond costs.

“GBS organizations are evolving to become strategic partners to enterprises, playing a significant role in enterprise digital transformation journey as they continue the move from an ‘arbitrage-based model’ toward a ‘value-based model,’” said Rohitashwa Aggarwal, practice director at Everest Group. “We see GBS organizations building deep domain capabilities and shifting to operating models that allow them to build “agile” into their core philosophy and to work closely and freely with key global business leaders. Another major shift is in evaluation—GBS organizations are linking their goals to business- or domain-specific targets and shifting beyond cost-arbitrage as the key metric of performance to a wide array of operational, financial and innovation-related indicators.”

Everest Group shares these findings in its recently published report, GBS State of the Market Report: Evolving Operating and Governance Models to Build GBS of the Future. This report analyzes the GBS landscape, sharing key insights on the GBS market across locations, verticals, and functions.

Additional Findings

  • The GBS market continues to experience strong growth, with 3,300 offshore and nearshore GBSs established until 2019.
  • The GBS model continues to attract new adopters. Around two-thirds of the companies that established GBS centers in 2019 were new entrants with no existing offshore or nearshore GBS facility. At the same time, there are several global companies that have divested their GBS operations, mainly due to talent-related challenges, especially for IT services.
  • India dominates delivery, with a 35-40% share of the overall GBS market. U.S.-based companies are especially inclined towards leveraging India; approximately 58% of the total GBS centers in India are set up by U.S.-based companies.
  • European firms prefer the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region (39% of GBS centers in CEE belong to European firms) due to geographical and time-zone proximity. However, in 2019, the share of U.S.-based companies in the mix of GBS setup in CEE increased considerably.
  • APAC-based firms experienced an increase in overall GBS activity, driven by an uptick of 80% in R&D GBS centers set up by enterprises in China.
  • GBS setups by small companies (annual revenue less than US$1billion) have increased on the back of higher demand for R&D and innovation. In 2019, small companies’ GBS setups increased by 22% over 2018.
  • A majority of GBS centers focus on delivering a single function, such as information technology (IT) or voice-based business process services (BPS), but many (44%) have multi-functional capabilities such as a combination of R&D and IT capabilities.
  • Technology and communication firms lead GBS activity in terms of the number of GBS centers (38%); but the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector dominates in terms of scale (34%).

***Download a complimentary abstract of this report.***

About Everest Group Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global enterprises, service providers, and investors. Through our research-informed insights and deep experience, we guide clients in their journeys to achieve heightened operational and financial performance, accelerated value delivery, and high-impact business outcomes. Details and in-depth content are available at http://www.everestgrp.com.

1Everest Group uses GBS as the preferred term for in-house Global Business Services setups, which are also referred to as Global In-house Centers (GICs), shared services, global capability centers, or captives. The scope of this research does not include GBS centers serving the domestic market.

The Evolution of the Automation CoE Model – Why Many GBS Centers Are Adopting the Federated CoE Model | Blog

April 15, 2020
Automation CoEs in Global Business Services (GBS) centers or Shared Services Centers (SSCs) have evolved over time. Mature GBS adopters of automation have made conscious decisions around the structure and governance CoEs, evolving to extract maximum value from their automation initiatives. Some of the benefits they have hoped to gain from the evolution include:
  • Faster scaling
  • More efficient use of automation assets and components, such as licenses and reusable modules
  • Better talent leverage
  • Greater business impact

The typical CoE model evolution

CoE models generally evolve from siloed model to centralized and then to a federated:

Siloed model – kick starting the journey

Most GBS centers start their automation initiatives in silos or specific functions. In the early stages of their automation journeys, this approach enables them to gain a stronger understanding of capabilities and benefits of automation and also to achieve quick results. However, this model has its limits, including suboptimal bot usage, low bargaining power with the vendor, lower reusability of modules and other IP, limited automation capabilities, and limited scale and scope.

The centralized model – building synergies

As automation initiatives evolve, enterprises and GBS organizations recognized the need to integrate these siloed efforts to realize more benefits, leading to the centralized model. This model enables benefits such introducing standard operating procedures (SOPs), better governance, higher reusability of automation assets and components, optimized usage of licenses and resources, and enforcement of best practices. This model also places a greater emphasis on a GBC-/enterprise-wide automation strategy, which is lacking in the siloed model. However, this model, too, has limitations, suffering slow growth and rate of coverage across business units because the centralized model loses the flexibility, process knowledge, and ownership that individual business units bring to the bot development process.

The federated model – enabling faster scaling

The federated model addresses both of the other models’ limitations, enabling many best-in-class GBS centers to scale their automation initiatives rapidly. In this model, the CoE (the hub) handles support activities such as training resources, providing technology infrastructure and governance. Individual business units or functions (the spokes) are responsible for identifying and assessing opportunities and developing and maintaining bots. The model combines the benefits of decentralized bot-development with centralized governance. The federated model has some limitations, such as reduced control for the CoE hub over the bot development and testing process, and, hence, over standardization, bot quality and module reusability. However, many believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. The three CoE models are described in the figure below. Automation Adoption in GBS centers and the Rise of the Federated CoE Model The table shown below shows how the three models compare on various parameters. Comparison of salient features benefits and limitations each CoE model

Why GBS organizations are migrating to the federated model

There are several reasons why GBS centers are moving to the federated model, as outlined below.
  • The federated model helps to better leverage subject matter expertise within a business unit. With bot development activity taking place within the BU, the federated model ensures better identification of automation opportunities, agile development, and reduced bot failures
  • The federated model leads to efficient resource usage. Centralization of support activities ensures: efficient use of resources, be they human, technology, reusable modules, licenses, etc.; standardization; and, clear guidance to individual business units
  • The federated model facilitates development and sharing of automation capabilities and best practices, which helps in the amassing of standardized IP and tacit knowledge important for rapid automation scaling

Federated model case study

A leading global hardware and technology firm’s GBS center adopted the federated CoE model, which houses the CoE hub, in 2017. In the three years since, it has grown to over 400 bots across more than 20 business units in a wide variety of locations, and saved more than $25 million from automation initiatives. The CoE hub has also successfully trained over 1,000 FTEs from technical and business backgrounds on bot development. As a result, firm-wide enthusiasm and involvement in the GBS center’s automation journey is high. Transitioning to a federated CoE model has helped many GBS programs scale their automation initiatives rapidly. For more details, see our report, Scaling Up the Adoption of Automation Solutions – The Evolving Role of Global In-house Centers or reach out to Bharath M  or Param Dhar for more information on this topic.

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