INTERVIEW OF THE MONTH
INTERVIEW WITH MR. SUDEEP MOHAN,
Senior Director – GBS (Controllership),
Flipkart
How has COVID-19 impacted the shared service operating model? What changes are you seeing?
Covid has fastened the pace of shared services operations because of the concept of work from anywhere being prevalent during the pandemic. Also, there has been an immense focus on the idea of what are core and non-core processes with respect to any business. Factors such as continuous cost pressure, increasing market volatility, technology-driven disruptions, and globally connected value chains are forcing companies to further professionalize their support functions. We will see that GBS entities have strengthened their role as a key pillar of resilience during the recent COVID crisis.
What are the top 5 factors that enterprises should keep in mind to build as they build and mature their shared services?
In my opinion, the five critical factors to be taken care of for building mature and sustainable shared services are:
- Talent
- Value
- Long term vision
- Technology needs
- Managing Relationships- External & Internal
How do you see the GBS organization of the future look like? What factors will contribute to its changes?
Historically, organizations transferred transactional, repetitive, process-based work to shared service centers, which have evolved into today’s GBS. Their remit has remained as being the backbone of efficiency, driving standardization and cost gains but for many organizations, they are also the engines of transformation for the entire business.
GBS organizations will need to change their operating models to excel for dynamic future environment, and according to me there are 4 key characteristics that will shape its evolution:
- Focus on performance
- Radical shift to digitalization
- Enhanced focus on delivering value
- Efforts to be more customer-centric
What is the role of a GBS leader in building a digitally mature organization?
GBS leader’s role in the digital future will be to work as technology and transformation enablers, they should help business functions in exploring and delivering innovation, automation, advanced services and new ways of working, at the same time it is important for GBS leaders to respond to cost challenges in an innovative way.
How do people within shared services need to be reskilled to get ready for the future? What should enterprises be doing about it?
The pace of technology has created a significant transition in how business is conducted worldwide, and the future of work is hard to predict. The distinctions between technology and the real world are blurring, and this progression has been named the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“What has brought us here will not take us there”, so to be future-ready GBS workforce will need to upskill from a traditional skill set and focus on future-ready skill sets like – Transformation, Business Intelligence, Analytics, etc., anything which improves business decisions and brings value to the table apart from hard skills focuses should also be on softer skills like, Communication, People management, Stakeholder management, and strategic collaboration.
The steps that organizations should take for making their workforce future-ready are:
- Uncover skills gaps
- Organize specific skills trainings and combine various reskilling methods
- On-the-job training
- On-the-job training
- Blended learning
- Peer learning
- Promote job shadowing
- Measure and evaluate success
