2024 has been another year of “interesting times” for business services and business in general. Consumer demand remains weak due to higher cost of living which flows directly or indirectly into every business.
The luminaries of the SSON Global Advisory Board were corralled to give us some food for thought to ponder over the festive meal, a welcome diversion from drunken Uncle Fester banging on about the “good old days” . . . . .
You can read it all at the link below, but I have summarized some key points here;
- Cost pressures will continue to increase with the softer economy – expect a mandate to cost by 5-10% annually
- “Value Creation” will focus on Cash, Working Capital and genuine bottom-line cost efficiencies.
- Can GBS drive and champion the transformation opportunity that comes from true end-to-end processes for enterprise productivity?
- Will GBS start to be accountable for enterprise data?
- How much progress can we make in “Experience” – for customers, suppliers, employees and stakeholders?
- Acceleration of the next ERP hype cycle – S/4HANA will be an outlier as the de-rigeur massive multi-year investments continue, but maybe some new approaches to this program behemoth will emerge to ease the pain – you can read more here . . .
- AI adoption will slow progress as companies try to navigate too many AI options without a clear “WHY”. Everything will look shiny, but investments will start to be challenged more rigorously.
- Landlord model will receive more focus. “Landlord’s Not a Dirty Word”, get over it, control is an illusion . . and an unhealthy one – you can read more here . . .
As much as we all love GenAI, and we will all continue to embrace and use it, we will start to get irritated by soul-less generated narrative in communications, and will crave human originality and quality of thought in the written word . . . . we may even invest in training in “written communication” 😉
12 months ago, Deborah Kops, the “Seer of GBS”, took a look at the 2024, and it’s worth casting your mind back;
- Cost containment will drive strategy and decision-making
- Transformation funds will be scarce on the ground
- Growth in new scope will mitigate somewhat
- Supply chain will grab the GBS headlines
- Talent mobility will decline
- Process improvement will become GBS’s primary fixation
- The landlord model will get another look.
- Outsourcing relationships will continue to morph
- The GBS construct/deconstruct soap opera will continue.
A lot of this did come to pass –you can read more here . . .
You can read the unfiltered 2025 Predictions from SSON’s Global Advisory Board here . . .
. . . with thanks to Naomi Secor, Sally Fletcher, Sandy Khanna, Chris Gunning, Steve Rudderham, AJ Wijesinghe, Gavin Ifield, Angela Mangiapane, Carla Sarti and Viral Chhaya.
Wishing you all the very best for the festive season (with or without Uncle Fester!) and for a Happy 2025!
The expression “May You Live in Interesting Times” is ironic: “interesting” times are usually times of trouble.
Let’s hope that 2025 presents us all with “fulfilling times”.
Thanks for reading . . .