Beyond Cost: How the World’s Best GBS Are Redefining Value and Impact

Global Business Services (GBS) organizations today are doing far more than delivering back-office efficiency. The best are demonstrating how GBS can drive growth, resilience, and enterprise transformation at scale. Drawing on SSON Research & Analytics’ World’s Best GBS 2025 study, this article explores the strategies that set top performers apart — and what practical lessons GBS leaders can apply today.

The Four Cs of GBS Value

Top GBS organizations don’t define value by cost savings alone. Instead, they focus on four dimensions — what the study calls the Four Cs of Value Creation:

• Cost savings — Delivering financial efficiencies and business impact
• Capability building — Leveraging GBS scale to invest in capabilities that wouldn’t otherwise be possible
• Capacity creation — Creating economies of scale to free up functions for core strategic priorities
• Control & compliance — Providing greater visibility, standardization, and risk mitigation across the enterprise
   

The World’s Best GBS organizations define value more broadly — placing greater emphasis on margin improvement, growth in volume and new markets, revenue impact, and brand improvement. While cost savings remains part of their value equation, they are less likely than others to focus on cost optimization as the primary measure of success.

From Cost to Growth: How GBS Drives Business Impact

What sets high performers apart is their shift from labor arbitrage and cost focus to driving productivity, intelligent process transformation, and business insights that fuel top and bottom line impact.

The World's Best GBS Report highlights that world-class GBS organizations create the majority of their value (60-80%) through business insights that help drive regional and global performance — not just cost efficiencies.

• Category #1 represents the point of entry, where labor cost arbitrage and basic work absorption provide initial value — but this layer isn’t repeatable without continually adding new work.
• Category #2 kicks in once work is migrated, as GBS applies its expertise to perform tasks better, faster, and cheaper than before.
• Category #3 takes value creation further by leveraging GBS’s unique access to data and processes. A top GBS organization recently identified over 150 ways it positively impacted both the top and bottom line — demonstrating how this layer unlocks more value than Categories 1 and 2 combined.
   

🔗 Take the GBS Value Check to see how far along your organization is on the evolution to “value-add” 

Innovation, Data, and AI: The New GBS Advantage 

Leading GBS teams are claiming clear ownership of innovation. They integrate AI, data hubs, and automation to transform processes end to end — far beyond simple tech deployment.

While most GBS organizations have broadly adopted core technologies like analytics, RPA, and workflow automation, the World’s Best GBS are distinguished by their leadership in advanced digital areas. Top performers are significantly ahead in areas like data marketplace integration, data mining, data connectivity, and specialist technologies.

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AI in Action

Beyond leadership in areas like data marketplaces, mining, and connectivity, top GBS teams are applying AI to enhance existing capabilities. Examples include:

- Faster contract renewals — using GenAI to replace manual reviews with precise comparisons for quicker approvals

- Reusable GenAI building blocks — creating small AI tools (like drafting, summarizing, or analyzing) that can be combined in different ways to tackle specific business tasks

- Sentiment-driven SKU decisions — analyzing product reviews to guide store-level and seasonal assortments

Stakeholder Partnership: Building Business Trust 

High-performing GBS teams now measure their success by stakeholder engagement and partnership — not just efficiency. One top GBS organization’s stakeholder strategy highlights three key practices:

Winning With Talent 

Excellence here comes from investing in talent that aligns to growth, innovation, and cross-functional impact. Notable practices include:

• Embedding business acumen and project management training so teams can act as true business partners
• Designing structured career paths that align to innovation and digital priorities
• Building purpose-driven cultures that support cross-functional collaboration

Top 5 GBS: Leaders Raising the Bar

This year’s Top 5 — Tesco, Siemens, Mars, DHL, and Bosch — stood out across the core 4 dimensions measured in our World’s Best GBS study. Each demonstrates how excellence across these areas translates to enterprise value well beyond cost savings.

Take advantage of our new GBS+ Benchmarks suite to see how your organization compares on these critical dimensions.

Conclusion: GBS as the Partner for Sustainable Business Success

The world’s best GBS organizations have redefined what great looks like — proving that GBS can be a true partner in driving enterprise value across cost, innovation, data, and talent.

The opportunity now: benchmark your GBS, learn from leaders, and chart a path toward sustainable impact.

📣 Benchmark Your GBS Performance Against the Best! Sign up for a Performance Deep Dive Assessment today!

Until next time! 

Naomi Secor, Global MD, SSON Research & Analytics