Overview
Business services organisations that are constantly under pressure to reduce costs have traditionally done so by centralising manual processes, with little innovation. By taking such a narrow approach, opportunities can be lost to drive efciencies and deliver efective and value-driven services across the organisation to users of all types.
To achieve an optimum balance, organisations are increasingly layering in more diverse, value-add services into their GBS capabilities portfolio.
How do you go about elevating your GBS? There’s plenty of commentary on why it’s a good thing to do. In this guide, we set out six steps that will help you make real progress. Follow them for tips on how to say goodbye to functional silos and email, and hello to integrated operations and self-service.
How do you go about elevating your GBS? There’s plenty of commentary on why it’s a good thing to do. In this guide, we set out six steps that will help you make real progress. Follow them for tips on how to say goodbye to functional silos and email, and hello to integrated operations and self-service.
This approach can lead to:
- Enhanced employee experiences
- Improved wider stakeholder relationships
- Providing greater value to a larger user population, using fewer resources
- Improved operational performance
- Driving internal customer service culture
- Creating efcient cross-functional workfows, enabled by automation in AI
Create a GBS culture by repurposing a technology your organisation is probably already using.
01 Understand where you are now
02 Develop a realistic plan
03 Focus on user experiences
04 Unleash innovation with AI
05 Extend the enterprise
06 Develop a GBS Centre of Excellence
Understand where you are now
This might not be as simple as it sounds, but it is crucial to understand the scope of what you can do next, and any potential limitations to your ambition. Help is at hand — there are publicly available aturity models that provide a decent indication of how you stand, including our own.
There are five states of GBS maturity. Which one sounds like you?
Fragmented
You’ve got ticketing in place. But support is accessed by email and phone. You don’t offer self-service. And ServiceNow is only set up for IT support.
Siloed
Your delivery model is more consolidated. You offer self-service portals, although these are limited. Your services are still siloed by function.
Scaled
You have a recognisable GBS function that is beginning to deliver above average performance. You provide wide-ranging functional processes. You’ve started integrating automaton and AI with your ERP. And you have a unifed business services portal.
Integrated
You have integrated processes across functions. You have a portal that acts as a single shopfront to your services. This extends to external services (supply chain, source-to-pay). You support innovative tech, like online supplier bidding and knowledge databases.
Strategic
You deliver multi-functional, multi-channel, range of services. You provide expert and analytical services. You have high levels of automation and AI. And your model is outcome-driven.
Develop a realistic plan
It’s good to have a vision of what you want your ultimate GBS to look like. But implementing that level of change in one go could be a push too far. Just starting out? Planning a project with high degrees of automation and integration will be too much of a leap. Instead create a plan that delivers tangible improvements at each stage. This will help provide buy-in from across the business for further change and investment. It also means you can be more adaptable as new tech becomes available.
Having a strategy of ‘enhance, then expand’ can help you
keep your continuous GBS journey on the right track.
Enhance then expand: from email ticketing to integrated services in tangible steps
01
Develop your first proof of concepts
Develop a proof of concept that shows how you can move from email ticketing to self-service. Develop this for individual functions, with the aim of integrating later.
02
Consolidate and extend to further functions
Roll out self-service to pilot functions. Develop self-service capabilities for a wider set of users and functions. Introduce basic automation to provide insights for end-users and service agents.
03
Get feedback and start to integrate services
Seek feedback on first phases of roll out. Build out cross-functional automation and personalised content
to deepen the user experience. This is the start of a one-stop shop.
04
Measure the benefts and extend to third parties
Check that you’re delivering on your KPIs. Step up automation and integration with your ERP. Extend use to third parties across your supply chain.