Unleash the potential of your GCC with this guide
Global capability centers (GCCs) have long been hailed as strategic levers for cost optimization and access to global talent. Yet, despite their proliferation, many organizations find their GCCs failing to deliver the transformative value initially envisioned. The narrative often gets stuck on cost arbitrage, overlooking the immense potential for innovation, strategic impact, and even revenue generation.
So, what's holding them back, and more importantly, how can businesses truly monetize their GCCs?
Why GCCs often fall short
The primary reason many GCCs fail to deliver significant value beyond basic cost savings stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of their purpose and potential. They are frequently treated as mere cost centers or extended back offices, tasked with lift-and-shift operations rather than being empowered as strategic hubs.
Everest Group, a leading research firm in this space, consistently highlights this underperformance.
- Their research indicates a "growing number of small- to mid-sized GCCs (<500 Full-Time Equivalent (FTEs)) stall out within 2-3 years". This stalling is not a shutdown, but a failure to evolve and deliver higher value.
- Everest Group also notes that "less than 10% of GCCs have managed to move to the top tier of maturity states.”
This cost-center mindset leads to several pitfalls. Some are —
- Underinvestment in critical areas: A relentless focus on cost often results in under-resourcing, particularly in areas like advanced talent, technology, and innovation initiatives. This limits the GCC's ability to move up the value chain.
- Lack of a clear strategic mandate: Without a well-defined mandate that extends beyond transactional tasks, GCCs struggle to evolve. They often lack the authority and autonomy to engage in complex, value-generating activities or to influence global processes.
- Talent misalignment: Staffing based purely on lower labor costs, rather than the best-fit talent for complex tasks, hinders performance and limits the ability to attract top-tier local professionals who seek growth and innovation.
- Insufficient cultural integration and leadership development: Overlooking cultural nuances in communication and decision-making, coupled with a lack of investment in local leadership pipelines, can lead to disengagement, high attrition, and a ceiling on the GCC's strategic impact.
- Inadequate performance metrics: Measuring GCCs solely on cost savings or headcount, instead of value delivered, quality, innovation, or talent growth, reinforces the cost-center perception and fails to incentivize higher-impact contributions.
- Missing the potential of automation and artificial intelligence: Failing to work backwards from a desired outcome and engineering by design automation and AI to accelerate and optimize mundane tasks allows a leaner labor force to concentrate mostly on value creation.
The imperative of an outcomes focus
To truly monetize a GCC, the shift from a cost-centric to an outcomes-driven approach is paramount.
This means defining clear, measurable business outcomes that the GCC is expected to influence, beyond operational efficiency. For instance, instead of merely processing invoices, a finance GCC might aim to reduce the days sales outstanding (DSO) or improve cash flow forecasting accuracy. Similarly, an IT GCC could focus on accelerating product launch cycles, developing marketing differentiating experiences or enhancing cybersecurity posture.
Research shows that enterprise perception of GCC value consistently trails GCC self-perception across strategic alignment, talent, innovation, and agility. This gap in perceived value signifies that many GCCs are not effectively communicating or delivering on higher-order objectives, most of which is driven by lack of clear outcomes, drive from the top and a business case that doesn’t stand up to its own abilities (i.e. a narrow focus on cost out).
Consideration for an outcomes-based approach requires:
- Co-ownership with business units
The GCC must be integrated into the global operating model and have shared KPIs with the business functions it supports. This fosters collaboration and ensures alignment with enterprise-wide objectives. - Value quantification
Robust frameworks quantify the dollar value of the GCC's contributions, not just in terms of savings but also revenue impact, risk mitigation, and innovation. This involves linking GCC activities to CXO-level metrics. - Investment in transformative technologies
Empowering GCCs to adopt cutting-edge technologies like AI, machine learning, and automation can significantly enhance their capabilities and unlock new avenues for value creation. - Being ready to monetize bench resources
Build a different type of partnership with your suppliers to co-own resources.
Right-skilling and right-sizing for strategic impact
Monetizing a GCC necessitates a deliberate strategy for talent. It's not just about having a large workforce, but the right workforce with the right skills, and reach in a timely manner.
- Right-skilling: This involves a proactive approach to identifying future skill requirements driven by evolving business needs and technological advancements. It goes beyond basic training to comprehensive upskilling and reskilling programs that equip employees with advanced domain expertise, digital literacy, and problem-solving capabilities. This might include developing centers of excellence within the GCC for areas like data analytics, AI development, or cybersecurity. Build inherent curiosity and the need to upskill / reskill into your culture.
- Right-sizing: This isn't just about reducing headcount but optimizing the workforce to match the demand for specific skills and outcomes. It involves strategic workforce planning, analyzing current capabilities against future needs, and making informed decisions about talent allocation, internal mobility, and external hiring. This dynamic adjustment ensures the GCC remains agile and responsive to changing business priorities. Join portfolio management and workload planning dynamically and intelligently into your talent strategy.
Operate a virtual bench for future skills
A critical component of right-skilling and right-sizing is the intelligent operation of a "virtual bench.
This refers to a pool of talent within the GCC that is not actively deployed on projects but is being strategically developed and cross-trained for future demands.
Here’s what this entails:
- Always engaged: Be where your future talent exists. Build conversations and interest in readiness for your next move. Never rest and always be ready. Find partners that optimize technology to hold a virtual bench 5-6 times broader than need.
- Building brand equity and desire thereof: Precede market entry or location with brand building messaging, company vision and values and demonstrate culture that will attract interest.
- Proactive skill development: Instead of waiting for a skill gap to emerge, the virtual bench enables proactive investment in learning paths for emerging technologies and strategic capabilities. This creates a ready pipeline of skilled professionals who can be quickly deployed when new projects or initiatives arise.
- Talent mobility and retention: A well-managed virtual bench can enhance employee engagement and retention by offering continuous learning opportunities and clear career progression paths. It allows for internal mobility, reducing the need for external hiring and its associated costs and time.
- Agility and responsiveness: In a rapidly changing business landscape, an intelligently operated virtual bench provides the agility to pivot quickly. When new opportunities or challenges emerge, the organization has a pre-trained workforce ready to tackle them, significantly reducing time-to-market for new solutions and services.
- Leveraging AI for talent intelligence: AI-powered platforms can play a crucial role in managing the virtual bench by analyzing skill gaps, recommending personalized learning paths, predicting future talent needs, and matching individuals with suitable development opportunities.
A different type of GCC partner
Businesses are looking for a GCC partner who can confidently scale their operations, integrate complex processes, and lay the groundwork for truly transformative digital capabilities, rather than being limited by fragmented or outdated systems and operations.
Atos distinguishes itself as a unique partner with GCC operations that support our clients with a rigorous digital core and provide intuitive flex to meet the specific needs today and for the many futures ahead. For organizations looking to turbocharge their existing GCCs into profit centers, Atos provides the strategic insight and technological prowess to move beyond cost-cutting to value creation. With tailored solutions for automation, AI integration, data analytics, and intelligent process optimization, Atos enables mature GCCs to unlock new revenue streams, drive innovation, and evolve into highly profitable, strategic assets for the business.
It's not just about empowering GCCs to operate, but to innovate, lead, and contribute directly to the bottom line by shifting their mindset from cost centers to value creation engines.
The future of GCCs lies not just in efficiency, but in their ability to deliver tangible, impactful, and measurable business value.
>> Find out more about Atos’s Global Capability Centers operations
>> Connect with me to find out how you can create or modernize your own GCC.
Posted 08/12/25
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