Global Business Services (GBS) – Strategy, Key Issues & Priorities

There is no shortage of commentary on the opportunities presented by technology, and AI specifically.

Global Business Services (GBS) under all its many guises is, together with the CIO, CDIO, CDAIO, front and center of the business demands for technology-enabled transformation.

As always, things are more complex than the headlines suggest.  

Martijn Geerling and Amar Changulani at The Hackett Group curated their annual research report on the key issues facing GBS in 2026.  

They define the problem clearly;

• Geopolitical disruption, trade disputes and regulatory uncertainty dominate the agenda, while talent shortages and turnover are straining capacity. Automation itself introduces new cybersecurity, data privacy and compliance risks.
• Meanwhile, there is a productivity squeeze. GBS workload is expected to increase by 15% in 2026, while staffing and budgets are projected to grow by just 10% and 7%, respectively.  
• Challenged by the C-Suite, GBS leaders view expanding AI capabilities as central to maintaining service quality and cost competitiveness in 2026.  

To accelerate progress in 2026, Hackett report that GBS leaders are focused on five priorities:

1. Expand automation into higher-value and complex activities
2. Build digital skills and capabilities
3. Align cost optimization with value creation
4. Strengthen data integrity and governance
5. Redefine performance management to include customer experience, employee engagement, service quality and innovation alongside traditional cost metrics.

There are, however, some challenges in achieving progress against these priorities;

• 1 & 4 – By most accounts (privately, rather than in the hubris of conference presentations😉) GBS has not yet delivered on the promise with regard to the core transactional activities of finance, sales, HR, procurement et al. Addressing higher-value and more complex activities requires a solid foundation at the base. A major part of the challenge is that, counter-intuitively, if we want to get to excellence in the silo transaction services delivered by GBS, we need to think and engage stakeholders “end to end”, across the value stream. End to end thinking also enables a much better way to approach data integrity and governance, where silos challenge us. This all echoes the “Think like a CFO” mantra articulated by Michael van der Ploeg. 
• 2 – “Building digital skills and capabilities” can be easily misinterpreted as the need to develop “hardcore tech” skills, when the sweet spot is in the understanding of business problems and opportunities, and how they can be best addressed from all perspectives – process, human, data and digital / AI  . . . These are the skills we need to develop.  
• 3 & 5 – Aligning cost optimization with value creation and redefining performance management are massively influenced by end-to-end process thinking, where we can focus on the genuine business outcomes as well as on the value hidden in the gaps between the silos.

Digital and AI skills are key. But they are not the whole story.

To quote Tom Goodwin, when we consider technology, and AI specifically, we should remember that every major wave: railroads, electrification, telephony, cars & highways, software/hardware, the internet/telecom buildout,  followed the exact same script:

• Insane capital expenditure spikes as a % of GDP
• Wild hype and overbuilding
• Bubbles, busts, bankruptcies, and a pile of broken balance sheets
• The infrastructure layer always looked like the future… until it became a commodity.
• The sustainable business value was created by the companies that showed up after the infrastructure was in place and dirt cheap. The ones who built new business models, platforms, and experiences on top of it . . . 

Technology is only an accelerator. It’s an accelerator on activities we perform. And that can be a positive acceleration, which is good news, or a negative acceleration, which we tend to call braking 😉. And negative acceleration is bad news.

You can download The Hackett Group 2026 Global Business Services (GBS) Key Issues Study here . . .  

You can read Tom Goodwin’s post on technology cycles and where the business value gets created here .. . .  

Global Business Services (GBS) – Strategy, Key Issues & Priorities

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