Global Capability Centers: Quietly Driving the Enterprise Transformation Agenda

By Prasoon Agrawal, Senior Vice President – and Business Head Americas

Global Capability Centers (GCCs) are mostly considered “backstage enablers”—working behind the curtains. In reality, GCCs are evolving to become frontstage contributing players in enterprise transformation. While there is significant industry chatter around GenAI, cloud migration, and digital innovation, GCCs have been quietly operationalizing these themes into tangible business outcomes.

From Support Function to Strategic Engine

A decade earlier, GCCs were primarily set up to execute repeat tasks: support, finance processing, data capture. Fast-forward to today, many of those centers are providing high-value services across AI, automation, customer experience, and regulatory compliance. They are facilitating global enterprise strategy, product design, and prompting topline growth.

To illustrate this, a recent example from the healthcare industry where a leading pharma company’s GCC located in India is now accountable for end-to-end pharmacovigilance operations. The team uses AI, NLP, and data analytics to process safety reports from across the globe, flag potential adverse events, and support regulatory submissions in real-time. What was once a support function is now mission critical.

The Evolution of the GCC

GCCs today are not just innovating—they are incubating innovation. Using digital labs, product engineering pods, and squads, GCCs are testing, failing, and scaling new innovations through rapid, iterative sprints. In many cases, time-to-market has been reduced by 40-50% thanks to this embedded innovation capability.

Enterprises that are struggling to scale AI/ML pilots in a production mode, like any other centering project, can most often be accomplished through the global delivery center (GCC) route—as these centers provide the key ingredients to build innovation into production—dedicated talent, cloud-based applications and infrastructure, and agile governance.

Operational efficiencies at a Global Level

Cost will always matter—but the metric has evolved from cost-savings to cost-to-outcome ratio. GCCs are enabling global enterprises to optimize complex workflows, deliver last-mile automation for repetitive tasks, and use AI-enabled insights on an everyday operational basis. GCCs are shifting operational efficiencies to include anything from intelligent customer service bots to predictive maintenance in manufacturing.

In addition, modern GCCs are increasingly expected to have P&L responsibilities in addition to operational efficiencies. They do not measure cost avoidance alone but pushing new avenues of value creation through building intellectual property, data products, and new customer experiences.

Enhancing Regulatory Resilience

One of the most underrated roles of GCCs is regulatory compliance and risk mitigation. Because enterprise operations are situated across multiple jurisdictions, regulatory compliance is a complex organizing system. GCCs now incorporate their own GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) functions to help their organizations monitor risks in real time, develop global data privacy frameworks, and assure audit compliance.

Cultural Convergence and Strategy Influence

GCCs today are no longer extensions of an HQ, they are active actors and shapers of (enterprise) culture. Through better alignment, executive sponsorship, and cross-border engagement among others, GCC teams are gaining status as strategy influencers. Supply chain executives are increasingly asking GCCs for advice on scaling innovation, building resilient supply chains, and managing global talent.

GCCs are no longer an auxiliary narrative – they are now a central narrative. Organizations that adapt to this shift are not only finding greater efficiencies and agility, but also gaining innovation, security, and preparedness for the future.

To explore more about the strategic impact of GCCs across sectors and industries, please read our latest whitepaper.