AI in GBS: The Gap Between Ambition and Execution
Most organizations are still early in their AI journey, with nearly half in pilot phase and only around 10% live in production. Expectations around productivity, workforce impact, and transformation continue to outpace measurable results. Drawing on SSON Research & Analytics' latest benchmarks and market research, this session establishes the baseline across adoption, investment, priorities, and outcomes to help leaders calibrate where the market stands and what matters next.
The discussion will focus on where scaling breaks down in practice across process design, ownership, governance, and integration into day-to-day operations. While many organizations have launched AI initiatives, far fewer have embedded them into core workflows at enterprise scale. The session will explore the operational, data, and organizational barriers slowing progress, what leaders underestimated, and what has made the difference in moving beyond isolated use cases into measurable execution impact.
AI is forcing organizations to rethink how work gets done across GBS, but technology is often moving faster than workforce structures, job design, and organizational readiness. Many leaders are discovering that transforming workflows is easier than redefining roles, career paths, governance models, and workforce expectations at enterprise scale. As AI adoption accelerates, organizations are confronting difficult questions around work redesign, capability shifts, workforce resistance, and institutional barriers to change. This session will explore how leaders are navigating the future of work in practice, what is slowing transformation efforts, and where organizations are getting stuck as GBS operating models continue to evolve.
SSON Research & Analytics data shows that 85% of organizations are already committed to the GBS model, yet many are reassessing how the model should operate in an AI-enabled enterprise. As organizations modernize ERP environments, expand scope, and push for faster enterprise execution, leaders are confronting practical questions around governance, process ownership, standardization, and decision-making. Some are redesigning structures to improve agility and orchestration, while others are doubling down on centralized control and operational discipline. This panel will focus on the real operating model decisions leaders are making today, including what should remain standardized, where flexibility is needed, how ownership models are evolving, and what changes are actually helping GBS operate more effectively at enterprise scale.
What does it take to move beyond experimentation. This session walks through how one organization structured governance, aligned stakeholders, and embedded AI into existing processes rather than layering it on top. The focus is on decisions made, trade-offs considered, and what changed along the way.
Many organizations are still struggling with operational bottlenecks, inconsistent processes, and limited visibility across workflows despite years of transformation investment. As expectations around speed, efficiency, and enterprise execution increase, leaders need a clearer understanding of where work is slowing down and why. This session will explore how organizations are using process intelligence to identify inefficiencies, improve coordination across operations, and support more scalable execution across GBS.
The expectations placed on GBS by finance leadership are changing rapidly. Cost and efficiency still matter, but CFOs are increasingly looking to GBS to improve execution speed, strengthen control, and deliver greater business value. SSON Research & Analytics data shows that value creation is now considered nearly three times more important to customers than cost reduction alone. At the same time, many organizations are still struggling with fragmented processes, slow decision-making, and operational complexity despite years of transformation investment. This session will focus on the practical changes finance and GBS leaders are making to improve agility, standardize operations, support enterprise priorities, and deliver more measurable business impact.
Most AI conversations focus on isolated use cases, but the real value sits across end-to-end workflows. This session will show how AI agents are being applied across processes, where they are driving measurable improvements, and where they are falling short. The focus is on real integration, real constraints, and what it takes to move from automation to true end-to-end orchestration.