GCCs today must develop a pipeline of strategic leaders laser-focused on delivering business impact. An effective ecosystem of allies across the sector must be built in conjunction with the GCC leadership pool.
The largest tech centre for Rakuten outside of Japan, for example, is in India. TESCO, too, first invested in leadership, then built scale.
Gaurav Gupta, Partner M&A Consulting and GCC Industrial Lead at Deloitte, mentioned a recent report by his firm reflecting how
the L&D spend increased to 14% during covid from what was just 8% prior to the pandemic.
Of the estimated ~1700 GCCs in India holding a global market share of over 50 percent, there are a handful of global leaders from the sector. One can observe a slow yet steady increasing rate of diverse leadership roles emerging from the GCCs. The need will only increase making it even more imperative to build a robust leadership pipeline with a focus on N-2 and N-3 and retain them.
This has not only created depth in the quality of talent but has also helped create opportunities to move up the value chain amongst the various roles played by the GCC. Organizations now focus on grooming future leaders with a long-term strategy in mind. This has been achieved through succession planning; developing the right skills and upskilling; imparting coaching on progressive organization cultures; while leveraging the large analytics, digital and technology talent pool towards an innovation-focused mindset.
External factors like a fast-growing business and the abundance of talent that brought about digital transformation made the GCCs critical to achieving the competitive edge in global markets. A strong eco-system of talent and close collaboration with the global leadership have also significantly improved the chances of leapfrogging many stages in this journey as most organizations needed digital power to remain competitive.
Some GCCs today are already owning processes end-to-end, sitting as a horizontal across many markets, with their solutions creating immense value for the parent organization. There are also examples of one GCC process and business owner cutting across the organization—effectively playing the role of a second headquarter.
You need to ensure alignment to the global vision and culture,
mentioned Uday Odedra, former APAC Head and Chief Digital and Information Officer, UBS. Nalini George, Chief People Officer & Head HR of Rakuten India, further added,
the need for first understanding the global culture and coaching the leadership in the sector on cultural alignment.
Uday also highlighted the importance of
being ready when the work comes in, because with ownership comes accountability, risk and stakeholder management which means the stakes are higher!
There has been a push and realization on being a solution provider for higher end processes like business analytics, budgeting, financial risk management, amongst others. Mature GCCs have incubated Centres of Excellence around technology and innovation, effectively running the R&D Centres that drive product innovation.
This has been made possible by continuously investing in building the right capability to stay relevant and constantly questioning what we can do as GCC to step change the business,
