Lessons from the World’s Leading GCCs: Key Takeaways for New Entrants

The primary evolution of GCCs has been from centers focused on cost efficiency to strategic pillars of innovation for their parent companies.

• • Innovation and Value Addition: Today, GCCs are at the forefront of product R&D and digital strategy formulation. For instance, companies like JP Morgan Chase have leveraged their GCC in India to become a hub for AI and blockchain technology development.
    
  • Alignment with Corporate Strategy: GCC companies that are successfully aligned with their parent organizations’ strategic framework are considered to be successful. They participate in global decision-making, thus ensuring their activities are in line with corporate objectives.

Location is not just about cost anymore; it is about access to talent, infrastructure, and an ecosystem valuable to growth. They’ve established themselves as more than just mere outsourcing hubs and cost-efficient platforms for offshore development centers due to their access to a vast talent pool with credible skills.

• • Talent Hubs: Setting up a GCC in India continues to be among the top choices around the world for having access to the most massive tech talent across geographies, with names of cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune leading the charge. Besides GCCs setting up more in tier-2 cities like Ahmedabad and Pune, the growing trend is supported by cost advantages as well as unexplored talent. Studies have found that in FY2024 about 8% of total GCCs will have their presence in tier-2 cities, which rose from only 5% in FY2019.
  • Government Support: Government policies in regions like India offer incentives, easing the setup and scaling of GCCs. The ‘Make in India’ initiative, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), and tax incentives, for instance, have been pivotal in attracting tech investments.

An agile culture is crucial for GCCs to respond quickly to market changes and technological advancements.

• • Agile Methodologies: Adoption of agile practices in project management and product development ensures that GCCs can adapt or scale operations swiftly based on business needs due to changing market conditions.
    
  • Innovation Labs: Many GCCs now feature innovation labs or centers of excellence where ideas can be tested and developed into products or services. This develops a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement, allowing them to create newer strategies and tools to skyrocket their growth.

GCCs have evolved to manage global operations offering insights and solutions that are not just local but have a global impact. They have adopted strategies such as hybrid work models and smoother communication tech tools to leverage real-time interaction with clients all across the globe. Here’s how:

• • Global Teams: GCCs manage teams across time zones, providing non-stop operational support and global market insights. For this, they leverage sophisticated management practices and communication technologies.
    
  • Regulatory and Market Knowledge: Understanding and navigating different regulatory environments and consumer behaviors across regions is a key competency developed by top-performing GCCs.

In a nutshell, these lessons are more like eye-openers for new entrants in the GCC landscape. Learning from the success stories of a few of the world’s leading centers can help them get valuable insights into innovative strategies and effective techniques that can help foster growth. The journey, however, is not merely about setting up and running a low-cost center, but rather about transforming this into a strategic asset so that it can lead innovation, drive digital transformation, and contribute to the global business strategy.

The critical point here is to set up an ecosystem that values talent, technology, and visibility with corporate vision while being flexible enough to readjust as per change in the global business environment. These learnings inspire the new GCCs to survive and thrive eventually in terms of their contribution to the parent organization’s global success. However, instead of simply following the footsteps of giant MNCs, it is a good idea to collaborate with top GCC enablers like Inductus GCC, who can help tick off the unique needs of specific organizations.