GBS, Shared Services & Outsourcing – Moving Beyond Efficiency in 2026.
Welcome to 2026 and Happy New Year to you and yours!
There has been a discussion for some time amongst GBS and Shared Service leaders about the need for sharpened focus on delivering, and being seen to deliver, “Business Value”.
Sustained annual improvements in GBS/SSO/GCC service delivery cost efficiencies are “Table Stakes”. That is clear and reasonable.
GBS leaders extend their aspirations beyond this core expectation. They are looking to create;
- An enhanced reputation as a value creator as well as a cost reducer
- A Centre of Excellence (CoE), with expertise to optimize and automate, as well as operate
- An Outstanding Customer & Participant Experience
- End-to-End Business Process Collaboration & Alignment (within and beyond the scope of GBS services)
- Digitised, integrated, intelligent processes
But these aspirations and expectations remain a challenge.
GBS leaders share that they have, in many cases, largely delivered cost savings through location choices and wage arbitrage, but the C-Suite regard these as “one and done” improvements, even though the cost savings continue in subsequent years.
It is not solely a GBS problem either. Enterprise-wide productivity remains a challenge. Check out Solow’s Paradox . . .
So here is yet another paradox.
We remain focussed on “value creation”, but there is a lot of ambiguity.
SSON Research & Analytics’ State of the Shared Services and Outsourcing Industry Report 2026, just released, has some interesting findings and implications.
It shares some great data points from their survey that show;
- 85% are committed to a multi-functional, multi country GBS model
- The top 5 service delivery domains all increased their penetration last year – P2P, R2R, O2C Master Data and H2R
- The scope of services delivered by GBS continues to increase beyond traditional finance, HR and IT
- Talent acquisition remains a high priority and the key “in demand” skill remains “Problem Solving”
- Outsourcing effectiveness is improving but challenges remain, not least in “business understanding”, “true partnership” and “value creation beyond cost arbitrage”.
- Global Process “Owner” roles and model with a focus on Continuous Improvement see 90% support – notably 1 in 3 GPOs now sits outside GBS, which is one way of encouraging an “end to end” process focus.
Interestingly, our own research indicates that where GPOs sit within GBS they need to develop the “dual operating model” to focus on both GBS service delivery AND the end-to-end process beyond the scope of GBS, in order to deliver enterprise value. A “Think like a CFO” mindset.
Which brings us to the KEY QUESTION in “Moving Beyond Efficiency”.
This gets interesting and gnarly . . .
In the answer to “How do you define “Value” in your SSO/GBS?”, 83% state “GBS cost optimization”.
This figure has not changed markedly year-on-year.
Which may reflect the sustained productivity challenge/paradox, despite significant investments in digitization over the years and latterly, in AI. Will Agentic AI come to the rescue? (That’s a story for another day . . . )
More concerning, is that the number those defining “Value” as enterprise margin, revenue or working capital improvement has DROPPED by 35%, 27% and 19% respectively in 12 months, from January 2025.
- Margin Improvement mentioned in definition of “Value” reduced from 32% to 21%
- Revenue Improvement mentioned in definition of “Value” reduced from 26% to 19%
- Working Capital Improvement mentioned in definition of “Value” reduced from 27% to 22%
Is this a defensive strategy in the face of mounting pressure from the hyperbolic expectations on FTE efficiencies promised by AI?
Together with economic uncertainty, there is a potential “Perfect Storm” here.
In a recent Gartner CFO survey 56% ranked “achieving enterprise-wide cost optimization targets” among their top five urgent action items over the next six months. Yet 47% also put “allocating capital to new growth opportunities” in their top five.
The danger for GBS is to confuse the need for “enterprise-wide cost optimization” with the need to focus solely on GBS internal cost optimization.
We can do both!
Maybe it is more urgent. We MUST do both . . . in 100 Day Cycles . . . .
The risk of not doing both is in the evidence of the number of GBS organizations being quietly “deconstructed” and their capabilities being “repatriated” to the markets and business functions of their enterprise.
We should pause for thought.
We are responsible for our own destiny. If we allow myopia to dominate, we engineer our own downfall.
The demand for speed, agility and demonstrable enterprise P&L and Working Capital impact has never been higher.
You can read 2026 Top CFO Priorities from Gartner here . . .
Moving beyond efficiency . . .
Happy New Year – Stay Safe & Deliver P&L Impact . . . Fast 😉
GBS, Shared Services & Outsourcing – Moving Beyond Efficiency in 2026
Thanks for reading . . .