Global Capability Centers – Future Reimagined

Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have demonstrated their resiliency and ability to meet client expectations on time, cost-effectively, and at scale.

Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have demonstrated their resiliency and ability to meet client expectations on time, cost-effectively, and at scale. Driven by a strong desire to develop a solid technological foundation for transformation and long-term success, GCCs are fast becoming centers of innovation, driving talent strategies for their parent organizations writes Gopakumar Subramonian, Senior Vice President, Global Services, Fiserv.

As they revaluate variables for their future growth, GCCs are sourcing key subject matter experts to drive digital development. They are broadening capabilities through specialized skills and strong engineering teams. Additionally, capability centers are driving sustained expansion by building a futuristic digitized roadmap that is enabled by skilled talent, investment in emerging technologies, robust operational excellence, and an experimentation-led mindset.

Capability Building for Futureproofing

Today, centers have geared up to develop the capabilities needed to build end-to-end digital platforms, implementing multiple transformation initiatives such as migrating from monolith to microservices architecture, embracing cloud-native apps, pursuing greenfield development for new digital products, and more. As a result, engineering teams with specialized roles such as full-stack engineers, user design experts, software development engineers in test (SDETs), DevOps engineers, and product owners are working with autonomy. Niche technologies such as Big Data, IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and business process automation (BPA) are also fast becoming commonplace. Moving ahead, GCCs will benefit from greater digitization and the adoption of operational automation, especially for technologies that drive employee productivity.

Building an Engineering and Innovation Mindset

Creating an environment of innovation and continuous growth can elevate the value of work. India, with its growing capability center ecosystem, already projects a strong innovation mindset, dedicated to sharpening and strengthening expertise around cutting-edge expertise, experimentation, and niche technologies. Creating opportunities for engineers to experiment while still fulfilling business commitments is critical. As a top priority, organizations looking to transform their cultures must establish clear goals and maintain a laser-sharp focus on what outcomes they want to drive. Next, they must look to bring together the right people with the right skills – to ideate, experiment, and build disruptive solutions.  Finally, it is imperative to incubate collaborative programs within the ecosystem, aligned with business and industry priorities. Our flagship innovation program, Business Innovation Group, has been successful in bringing together innovators to create market-viable products that validate integration, intelligence, and user experience.

Investing In New-Age Technologies

A focus on data management and the availability of an abundance of automation tools are pushing centers to the forefront, building them into the premier destination for automation, analytics operations, and acceleration of innovation. The fintech and payments industry depends on digital enablement, process automation, and people to leverage the right skills and knowledge of global digital technologies to drive innovation charters. It is imperative that organizations fully harness the power of emerging tech such as AI, ML, and hyper-personalization in digital banking to elevate the customer experience. Newer techniques such as building a real-time CDP (customer data platform) or customer analytics hub are quite effective while measuring engagement, customer experience, and profitability.

The ability to deliver real-time solutions to clients and sustain service momentum is critical. That makes it all the more important to invest in techs such as Infrastructure-as-a-Code service for platform engineering capabilities on the cloud, or digital transformation platforms such as API management, or robotic process automation (RPA).

Elevating Workforce Skills

With the growing demand for digital capabilities, recruitment and talent management trends have undergone a tremendous shift. GCCs are building a culture of learning, upskilling, and internal mobility, and incentivizing associates to leverage growth opportunities. The key is to quickly adopt strategies that will equip their talent pool with the right skills and learning platforms, strengthen institutional capabilities, and support business objectives to boost digitization.

As fast-emerging hubs of niche competencies, GCCs are incubating engineering excellence and strategic capabilities. To broaden their talent pool, the time is right for raising investments for attracting top talent, growing them through internal opportunities, and upskilling with training in emerging tech such as AI, ML, blockchain, data analytics, and NLP, among others. Hackathons and innovation platforms are prime opportunities for curating ideas from the ground up and identifying the next revenue-generating opportunity. Sustained efforts to seed critical leadership roles from India with complete technological, business, and legal accountability led from a capability center can further endorse the strategic roles of capability centers.

Talent, tech, and a future-forward outlook are what GCCs need to keep at the center while building their roadmaps for digital transformation. To achieve sustainable growth, capability centers must proactively seek change that will bolster their people and skill capabilities, be agile to assimilate new tech trends, and foster non-linear thinking to become high-value, high-growth centers delivering success for clients and customers alike.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ET Edge Insights, its management, or its members

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