Across industries, one theme keeps coming up in my conversations with customers: Global business services (GBS) is no longer a back-office department—it’s a strategic platform for growth.
Today’s enterprises need more than departmental consolidation or a shared services model. They require connected workflows built for global scale and powered by AI at every layer.
Forward-looking GBS leaders are focused on:
- Orchestrating work across fragmented systems
- Designing for global scale with local nuance
- Embedding AI into the core of service delivery, a necessity to scale
Let’s take a closer look at what this means.
According to EY, a lot of GBS models are stuck in integration mode, meaning they’re linking systems but leaving work fragmented. Employees and vendors are navigating multiple portals, entering the same data multiples times, and finding themselves stuck in a never-ending bottlenecked cycle.
Leaders want to improve their processes. A GBS survey by Deloitte found that 35% of respondents are intent on enhancing GBS customer experience over the next three years.
This new frontier is all about orchestration—streamlining workflows across the business and scaling tools and global locations with a single platform that enables automation, visibility, and consistency.
The ServiceNow AI Platform is helping customers accelerate time to value by automating handoffs, creating consumer-grade experiences, and giving leaders real-time insights into workflow performance. It’s not just a better experience; it’s better governance and measurable efficiency.
GBS organizations are growing at a rapid pace in India, the U.S., and Poland, and emerging in Mexico and Portugal for continued development, according to Deloitte.
As enterprises expand globally, workflows and processes need to scale to match the needs of their growing organizations. But it’s not just about scaling. It’s about scaling smart. Processes and workflows must be streamlined and standardized—and have enough flexibility to support regional and cultural nuances, such as hiring laws and compliance needs.
The strongest GBS models are flexible and adaptable to meet localization in areas such as onboarding, procurement, payroll, and HR compliance, streamlining experiences for both employees and teams behind the scenes.
There’s no question that AI is changing the game, but only when it’s implemented thoughtfully.
According to Deloitte, 50% of organizations plan to prioritize next-generation capabilities, such as generative AI (GenAI) and intelligent automation.
True value comes when AI is built into workflows, not bolted on after the fact. That’s why we focus on AI by design at ServiceNow, embedding both deterministic workflows (those that need a more predictable outcome, such as onboarding) and agentic AI (a more flexible output) into the service model itself.
Examples include:
- Using GenAI to draft knowledge base articles or policies
- Employing intelligent agents to route or resolve cases based on real-time signals
- Providing predictive insights on where friction can be eliminated or resolution can be accelerated
This is what enables transformation and moves GBS from reactive to proactive.
The business case for GBS is evolving. What was once thought of as a centralizing function to lower costs is now about driving better, faster, smarter outcomes across the enterprise.
When orchestrated effectively, GBS becomes a platform that:
- Connects fragmented systems into unified experiences
- Scales globally with built-in flexibility
- Uses AI to increase productivity, accuracy, and satisfaction
This is the transformation we’re helping our customers lead, and it’s what we’re designing our product strategy around.
Find out how ServiceNow can help centralize your organization and streamline service delivery.
