Efficiency is on the mind of every ambitious business. A staggering 40% of global CEOs interviewed for PwC's 26th Annual Global CEO Survey doubt their companies will be economically viable in a decade if they don't start changing. How they change depends on the individual characteristics of each business, yet there are fundamentals: efficiency and digitisation rank highly as ways to strengthen capacity and prospects.
Yet both fundamentals often crash into the same challenges, such as the entrenched silos of an organisation. Silos are often unfairly demonised. They serve purposes such as creating space for specific operations or departments. But they also cause a lot of duplication, especially for services. This duplication and clash of priorities trip up digital transformation plans – and with that, the company's resilience and growth.
There are several ways to overcome digital transformation or efficiency challenges, yet only a few can achieve both outcomes and address silo limitations. Global business services, which emerged out of the shared services world, is an excellent example, says Muhammed Omar, ServiceNow's Africa Country Manager: "If one word describes companies before the current digital era, it's silos – especially in services. Shared services have become popular because they remove some silo barriers and create efficiency. Now we're seeing the next evolution, global business services, taken much further through digital platforms."
Global business services (GBS) is an exciting opportunity for most companies, not just multi-regional or multinational enterprises. GBS brings together shared services such as IT, HR, finance and customer service, into a single organisational structure that eliminates the silos between these departments, and others, and supports everyone regardless of function or location. And platform-based GBS is an excellent digital transformation catalyst, establishing key elements such as standardised data, enhanced analytics and hands-on user involvement.
Shared or global?
GBS is the evolution of shared services. The first shared services started to appear in the early 80s, when companies consolidated some administrative functions. In the 90s, the model included more functions and positioned itself as a cost centre where companies could manage different services under one umbrella.
Today, services can be even more integrated and consolidated, unified in one platform that crosses many types of silos: teams, departments, branches and even borders.
"GBS shares services across finance, legal, IT, etc, in a more consolidated way," says Omar. "You can deliver all services from a single shared centre. It's a real cradle-to-grave concept where you can automate, monitor and improve multiple processes and services using the input of different departments. You also gain a better view of your core processes and compliance."
GBS environments provide several advantages over standard shared services, including improved governance, end-to-end process visibility and business continuity planning. And it's not just for large multinationals.
Global, yet local
The 'global' in GBS might give some pause. It creates the impression that only large multinationals can use this concept. But 'global' means centralising and delivering a broad range of shared services across an organisation while remaining very personalised and relevant to specific parts of a company. Hence, GBS is key to managing silos as it provides what silos need without fracturing service origins.
"You can deliver GBS in a multinational, multi-geographical, multilingual and multi-currency kind of organisation," says Omar. "But you could definitely easily achieve it for an organisation that has a smaller scale. The needs of the employees don't change radically just because the organisation is multinational or not."
GBS is not a new concept – it first surfaced in the late 90s and exclusively applied to large organisations that could afford the investment to establish such a complex system. Yet the arrival of modern digital platforms has opened the door to smaller organisations and made it much easier to implement GBS across multiple geographies and businesses.
Platforms power services
Platform-delivered GBS also supports coherent digital transformation, delivering in four areas: improved user experiences, automation across business silos, robust analytics and common data standards. A GBS-capable platform integrates with other business systems and creates a central standardised hub for data, governance and line-of-business activities.
Perhaps more crucial – especially in light of overcoming silos and encouraging actual digital changes in business behaviour and processes – the right platform enables business users to design and influence enhancements directly. User-friendly low- and no-code development is a sought-after feature for this, says Omar: "Using a platform's no-code features, employees can design and improve integrated processes without straying from company policies or governance, and they can access standard data models to ensure they stay on the same page. This is a big jump from traditional shared services, which are typically pushed to the user. On a platform, you can create GBS that is collaborative and empowers individuals and departments."
When shared services first emerged, they started creating efficiency with consolidation. Today, the evolution into global business services achieves much more. It provides the foundation for more efficiencies and digital transformation, overcoming the worst tendencies of silos. If nearly half of global CEOs (and even their local peers) worry that their companies will not survive, global business services, through a single platform, will help deliver the change they need.
Share