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All About Global Capability Centers
Growth Beyond Borders
3000+
Global Capability Centers globally
50%
Of the world’s GCCs are based in India making it the GCC capital of the world
55%
Of enterprise tech products developed in GCCs
70%
Of GCCs integrate tech & business functions, driving cohesive global strategies
The Evolution of
Global Capabilty Centers
In today’s dynamic business environment, enterprises that successfully adapt to evolving customer expectations and technological advancements are poised for success. Global Capability Centers (GCCs) have emerged as a pivotal strategic asset, enabling organizations to drive innovation, enhance operational efficiency, and maintain a competitive edge.
What is a global capability center?
GCCs, also referred to as captive centers, shared service centers, or global in-house centers, are wholly-owned, integrated facilities strategically located in talent-rich regions. These centers are designed to create substantial value and develop proprietary intellectual property through collaborative, distributed teams.
By leveraging a combination of highly skilled talent, cutting-edge technology, and a robust ecosystem, GCCs deliver critical strategic and operational capabilities to their parent organizations. They play a crucial role in:
- Accelerating digital transformation initiatives
- Developing new and advanced product features
- Driving innovation across the enterprise
- Optimizing operational processes
- Increasing cost efficiency and resource utilization
GCCs are increasingly powering core business functionalities, enabling enterprises to adapt swiftly to market changes and capitalize on emerging opportunities. For business leaders today, GCCs represent a powerful strategy to achieve organizational agility, foster innovation, and drive sustainable growth in an increasingly complex and competitive global landscape.
Navigating Global Markets: The Global Capability Center Advantage
As businesses expand their horizons in pursuit of growth, they encounter a myriad of complex challenges inherent in navigating international markets.
Setting up a global capability center in the right country gives companies a local foothold, a critical advantage when expanding into new geographical markets. These centers enable businesses to gain deep insights into local market dynamics, consumer behaviors, and complex regulatory environments. Delivering access to high-caliber talent and strategic, cross-functional capabilities, global capability centers often serve as centers of technological excellence and innovation for the enterprise.
The world's best companies are leveraging global capability centers to access top talent and accelerate growth
Key Insights
Key Considerations
How is GCC different from Outsourcing?
GCCs differ significantly from traditional outsourcing models in several key ways.
One of the biggest advantages that a GCC has over outsourcing is the unhindered access and control that it provides to the enterprise. GCCs are fully owned and operated by the parent company. This ownership provides greater control over operations, ensuring alignment with corporate strategies and maintenance of quality standards.
Acting as a seamless extension of the parent company, a GCC also ensures the company’s culture and values remain intact.
By building specific capabilities and subject matter expertise in-house, a GCC often acts as a catalyst in driving innovation and change within the entire organization, simultaneously reducing dependence on outside resources.
What roles and functions are typically housed in GCCs?
Depending on the short-term and long-term goals of the enterprise, a GCC can be leveraged for a wide range of roles & functions:
- Technology Center of Excellence: Software Development, Data Analytics, Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, etc.
- Research & Development: Product innovation, AI/ML, Research & Prototyping, and more
- Business Shared Services: Finance, Marketing, HR, IT, Customer Support, etc.
For instance, companies within the Retail/CPG industry often choose to establish GCCs as a means to achieve digital transformation and finance and merchandising expertise. They typically focus on:
In the banking, finance services, and insurance (BFSI) industry, leaders use GCCs to fortify cybersecurity and augment their core business functions like risk management, capital analysis, review, etc.
Is my Enterprise GCC ready?
GCCs are size-agnostic and benefit companies of all sizes and across industries, with negligible size restrictions. To begin with, an enterprise can start operations with an agile team of 20 members, with the ability to scale it up to a thousand, depending on the requirements of the business. With the GCC model, companies can choose between prioritizing a single function, like technology or finance, or expanding multiple functions simultaneously, delivering tech and non-tech capabilities.
ANSR’s experts can assess your specific needs and determine if a GCC aligns with your strategic vision.
What are the best locations for building a GCC?
Identifying the location for the GCC is driven by a variety of strategic considerations, like the availability of skilled talent, a robust digital infrastructure, and a favorable regulatory environment. As of 2024, the top 5 locations for setting up GCCs are India, Poland, UAE, Vietnam, and Mexico. Apart from these, Argentina, Romania, Brazil, and the Czech Republic are also highly preferred destinations.
Ranking at the top as the GCC capital of the world, India’s vast talent pool, robust technology ecosystem, and thriving startup culture make it the prime GCC destination to drive business growth and innovation. With several world-class peer GCCs, India offers a compelling combination of scalability, a skilled workforce, and cost-effectiveness.
What factors should be considered when selecting a location for a GCC?
When selecting a location for setting up a GCC, leaders should evaluate for access to a highly skilled and diverse talent pool, a supportive digital infrastructure, and factors such as the presence of a large ecosystem of service providers, product companies, peer company presence, startups, etc. Enterprises should also consider a region’s stability, government support for multinational companies, regulatory environment, and potential for scalability. These factors ensure your GCC can operate efficiently, adapt to changing demands, and drive sustained growth.
At ANSR, our specialized framework for location strategy meticulously charts every relevant factor – from the availability of talent and robust digital infrastructure to the government policies and regulatory requirements in play at the target location.
What are the benefits of partnering with GCC provider over setting up a GCC independently?
Partnering with provider to establish your GCC offers significant advantages in terms of efficiency, speed, and cost savings. Typically, setting up a legal entity in a new country can take up to 180 days. With an experienced partner, this process is often expedited by 60%, reducing setup time to just 14-90 days.
Typically, the average capital investment for setting up an entity is $6 million, with a payback period stretching up to 32 months. However, working with a partner’s established infrastructure, companies can eliminate upfront capital investment entirely. enterprises can often optimise operating costs by 15% when working with the provider.
ANSR is a leading global teams builder with a ~20 year legacy of providing GCC solutions to the world’s top companies across industries. Our comprehensive, end to end solution streamlines the entire GCC setup process, removing the need to engage with over 60 vendors, which can increase operational efficiency by up to 90%.
What are the key criteria for evaluating a GCC provider?
Your GCC provider plays a crucial role in guaranteeing its success. Here are a few things to keep in mind ~
- Access to talent pool: Talent is often the primary driver for setting up GCCs. Assess the provider’s access to a GCC-ready talent pool and the ability to recruit the right talent for your needs rapidly. Additionally, consider how efficiently they can scale your GCC as your operations grow.
- Relevant experience and expertise: Check if this entity has successfully set up and managed GCCs within your industry. Prior experience within your industry will enable them to anticipate the various challenges and bottlenecks that can occur in the setup of your GCC.
- Service offerings: Dive deeper to carefully understand the entire suite of their offerings, from strategy development and workspace setup to talent acquisition and ongoing operations.
- Technology infrastructure: Collaborating with the HQ and other locations will provide seamless communication tools and technology infrastructure, so ensure the presence of these tools for seamless operations.
- Client references: Testimonials and references from past clients are a good way to understand the scope of the partner’s deliverables and its adeptness at setting up a GCC.
What costs are associated with establishing and maintaining a GCC?
The costs associated with establishing a GCC include initial setup expenses such as facility acquisition, infrastructure development, and talent recruitment. Ongoing maintenance costs encompass salaries, technology upgrades, and operational expenses. ANSR’s end-to-end offering includes a no-Capex, pay-as-you-grow model that significantly enhances ‘time to value’ and neutralizes the risks associated with setting up globally distributed teams.
What are the typical timelines and steps involved in setting up a GCC?
Generally, setting up a GCC can take 6-8 months from the initial date, depending on various factors such as location selection, regulatory approvals, infrastructure setup, talent acquisition, and technology deployment. However, with ANSR’s team of in-house experts, the end-to-end setup of your GCC is completed within 4-6 weeks.
How does ANSR assist in the setup and management of a GCC?
ANSR provides an end-to-end solution for GCC setup
Step 1- GCC Model and Design: Intake, talent intelligence, and strategic consulting for every aspect of setting up the GCC, ultimately culminating into the GCC Operations Playbook.
Step 2 – GCC Solutions and Setup: Setting up and registering a legal entity, talent acquisition, workspace design & setup, and systems configuration to streamline your global operations.
Step 3 – GCC Operations: Complete talent lifecycle management, building the EVP(employee value proposition) and employer branding, onsite IT support, workspace management and finance, and tax & regulatory compliance.
Explore ANSR’s Offerings / Discover our Full Range of Services
How can I scale my GCC and ensure continued success?
A GCC can be scaled in alignment with the business goals, from expanding into new talent-rich regions through a multi-city approach (establishing independent operations across multiple cities), or a hub-and-spoke approach, which involves setting up a central hub (main office or headquarters) and several smaller satellite offices (spokes). Many companies also explore a combination of metro and non-metro, or tier 1, 2, and 3 cities to extract optimal cost, talent, and infrastructure advantages.
What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) for a successful GCC?
Put simply, the objective of a GCC is to build all the capabilities that an organization requires to power its business objectives – from delivering a hyper-personalized customer experience to building and scaling up its digital capabilities, or any other functionalities. Thus, the KPIs for measuring the success of a GCC would be determined by the purpose of its establishment. In a majority of cases, these KPIs would include operational efficiency, cost savings, talent acquisition and retention, innovation contribution, service quality, and alignment with corporate goals.
Everest Group Names ANSR a Leader in GCC Setup
ANSR was recently recognized within the Everest Group’s Global In-house Center (GIC) Setup Capabilities in India – Provider PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2024 as a leader within the GCC space. This highlights ANSR’s expertise in providing comprehensive setup, design, and administrative support services that empower global enterprises to establish successful GICs/GCCs in India.
Everest Group With a proven track record of supporting over 135 global brands in establishing and expanding operations in India, we lead GCC transformation worldwide. Collaborating with your internal team, our experts align our solutions with your business objectives, from designing the GCC value proposition to its establishment and operational launch.
Everest Group With a proven track record of supporting over 135 global brands in establishing and expanding operations in India, we lead GCC transformation worldwide. Collaborating with your internal team, our experts align our solutions with your business objectives, from designing the GCC value proposition to its establishment and operational launch.
From entity setup and talent acquisition to people consulting, HR services, payroll, infrastructure management, and legal compliance, we ensure the seamless alignment of GCC operations with broader business objectives.
“With its core focus on GIC setups, standardized offerings, and investments from strategic partners, ANSR has positioned itself as a key player in the GIC setups space.”
How Visa’s India GCC Fuels 4.3 Billion Cards Worldwide
A global payments technology company and a household name in over 200 countries, Visa operates over 14,500 financial institutions, has issued over 4.3 billion cards, and is present across 130 million merchant locations worldwide. In a constantly evolving payments landscape, Visa aimed to enhance its digital capabilities by establishing a Bengaluru-based Technology Center of Excellence but faced challenges in attracting top tech talent, extended hiring processes, high drop-off rates, and increased costs of recruitment.
Dive deeper into this case study to know how ANSR leveraged its professional network of 1.6 million skilled tech professionals and end-to-end GCC setup solution to build Visa’s GCC and scale it to 1000+ in less than 2 years.
Case Studies
- India GCC makes up 40% headcount outside HQs
- Powering 12 critical business functions
- Ramped up from 50-member team to 4300
- Powering core business functions & innovation
- More than 200 countries and territories to fast
- Visa operates over 14,500 financial institutions
- Company boasting over 32,000 outlets worldwide
- Journey to establish a Center of Innovation in India
More Insights
India’s GCCs: The Rising Force in Global Finance
India has evolved into an epicenter of innovation and transformation, where the world’s financial giants converge to shape the future of their industries on a global scale.
Drawing Parallels: Principles of Distributed Agile Teams and Global Capability Centers (GCCs)
Drawing parallels between distributed agile teams and GCCs, we found several similarities between them. They have both have continued to perform well during the pandemic but what does the next normal look like for them, especially when organizations are focused on building a people-centric culture?
GCCs Then and Now: Tracing the Evolution from IT Support to Tech Innovation Hubs
Once regarded as a support function, technology has evolved rapidly in recent years and is now integral to the core of every business as companies embrace digital innovation to meet new consumer expectations.