2025 Deloitte’s Global Business Services (GBS) Survey
Discover how organisations today are positioning themselves at the forefront of business transformation. Our latest survey highlights five powerful trends toward more agile, digital, and cost-efficient global business services (GBS) organisations.
Surveying the modern GBS landscape
In today’s dynamic business environment, leading companies are evolving their service delivery models with global and multifunctional approaches. These organisations are strategically prioritising AI/Generative AI (GenAI) and digital initiatives for process efficiency, cost reduction, and enhanced GBS customer experiences. Global capability centers are taking an increasingly prominent role with organisations, leveraging global talents to advance their GBS capability portfolio. As such, GBS organisations are continuing to expand beyond traditional functional scopes and accelerate digital capabilities.
The 14th installment of our Global Business Services Survey (formerly known as the Global Shared Services and Outsourcing Survey) explores five important trends. Conducted from Q3 2024 to Q4 2024, the survey offers insights from:
- Leader responses in more than 30 countries.
- Data collected over the past eight years from more than 2,000 respondents across industries.
Five key survey findings
- Over the next three years, organisations are looking to increasingly focus on developing next-gen capabilities and accelerating digital initiatives.
- Among organisations prioritising next-gen capability development, approximately 50% have GBS centers in India, where there is significant deployment of digital and data capabilities.
- Enhancing customer experience is becoming a top priority for GBS organisations to drive customer loyalty and differentiate themselves in a competitive market.
- GBS leader responsibilities differ. Global GBS leaders are setting strategic direction, while functional and regional leaders are focusing on operational excellence and enhancing the customer experience.
- Approximately 55% of organisations with a global GBS leader role have achieved over 20% average savings, highlighting the value of strong leadership, governance, and effective decision-making.
- Global business services organisations are prioritising investments in process improvement and technology—such as GenAI, automation, and analytics dashboards—to achieve key objectives. These include process standardization and efficiency, cost reduction, and improved end-to-end ownership.
- Approximately 58% of respondents have already begun (or are planning to begin) their GenAI journey. Finance and information technology were the top functions where use cases such as chatbot/AI tools, invoice management, and analytics have been implemented.
- India, the United States, and Poland are the top three GBS locations and have consistently remained on top over the years. India continues to be the preferred location across all major functions.
- Portugal has emerged as a location for global business services delivery and has entered the top 10 preferred countries in the latest survey.
- Mexico has risen to be among the top three preferred locations due to technology and talent availability, scalability, and competitive cost.
- 50% of global business services organisations are planning to increase their footprint, driven by new functions and market needs.
- GBS organisations continue to face talent challenges such as skill set gaps, high turnover, and increased labour costs.
- Some initiatives led by GBS organisations to attract and retain talent include developing a strong culture, adjusting compensation to market benchmarks, and increasing well-being opportunities (for example, a hybrid working model).
Key trends: Customer-centric digital capabilities with an ESG focus
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