By Sameer Dhanrajani – CEO, AIQRATE & 3AI
AI is a becoming a strategic agenda & a rallying cry amongst corporations and GCC’s are turning into integral & critical components to parent organisation’s business imperatives. GCC’s are at an inflection point as the pace at which AI is changing every aspect is exponential and at high velocity. The rapid transformation and innovation of GCC’s today is driven largely by ability for them to build AI-Native GCCs for their parent organisations. AI-Native GCCs are seen as the Trojan horse to catapult GCC’s to the next level and In recent times; GCC story is in a changing era of value and transformative arbitrage. The excitement around artificial intelligence is for real. It seems that not a day goes by without one of the giants in the industry coming out with a breakthrough application of this technology, or a new nuance is added to the overall body of knowledge. Horizontal and industry-specific use cases of AI abound and there is always something exciting around the corner every single day.
However, with the keen interest from global leaders of multinational corporations, the conversation is shifting towards having a AI-native GCC. Enterprises are less interested in topical experiments and minuscule productivity gains made in the short term. They are more keen to understand the impact of AI in their areas of work from a long-term standpoint. Perhaps the most important question that they want to see answered is – what will my new AI-Native GCC looks like? The question is as strategic as it is pertinent. For business leaders, the most important issues are – improving shareholder returns and ensuring a productive workforce – as part of running a sustainable, future-ready business. Artificial intelligence may be the breakout technology of our time, but enterprises are more occupied with trying to understand just how this technology can usher in a new era of their business, how GCCs are expected to upend existing business value chains, unlock new revenue streams, and deliver improved efficiencies in cost outlays for the parent organisations.
In this article, let us try to understand the building blocks of AI-Native GCCs and how its unleashing a new wave of revolution amongst GCCs :
AI- Native GCCs are triggering AI with a potential to unlock new sources of revenue : Previously , IT function were seen as a cost center. In today’s world, due to the cost and competitive pressure, areas of the business which were traditionally considered to be cost centres are required to reinvent themselves into revenue and profit centres. The expectation from AI is no different. There is a need to justify the investments made in this technology – and find a way for it to unlock new streams of revenue in traditional organisations . AI-native GCCs are working on AI to unlock new revenue streams by embedding AI into traditional business processes with a focus on driving increased revenue. GCCs are building swift recommendation engines to drive incremental revenue through intelligent recommendations and smarter bundling. AI leaders from GCCs are engaging with stakeholders across the enterprise to identify areas where AI can be deeply ingrained within tech properties to drive incremental revenues.
AI- Native GCCs are leveraging AI to deconstruct business value chains : Ever since Michael Porter first expounded on the concept in his best-selling book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, the concept of the value chain has gained great currency in the minds of business leaders globally. The idea behind the value chain was to map out the inter linkages between the primary activities that work together to conceptualise and bring a product, service to market (R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing, etc.), as well as the role played by support activities performed by other internal functions (finance, HR, IT etc.). Strategy leaders globally leverage the concept of value chains to improve business planning, identify new possibilities for improving business efficiency and exploit potential areas for new growth. Now GCCs are leveraging AI to create new vistas in the existing value chains of multinational corporations.
AI-Native GCCs are driving AI to Bring Improved Efficiencies: The third critical intervention for a new AI- powered enterprise is bringing to the fore a more cost-effective business. numerous topical and early-stage experiments with AI have brought interesting success for reducing the total cost of doing business. Now is the time for AI-native GCCs to create a strategic roadmap for these efficiency-led interventions and quantitatively measure their impact to business. For example: Supply Chain Optimisation is an area that is ripe for AI-led disruption. With increasing varieties of products and categories and new virtual retailers arriving on the scene, there is a need for companies to reduce their outlay on the network that procures and delivers goods to consumers.
Human Resources is another area where AI-centric solutions can be extremely valuable to drive down the turnaround time for talent acquisition and reduce the need for HR staff to scan through each job application individually. GCCs need to identify such game-changing solutions that can make their recruitment much more streamlined – especially if they receive a high number of applications. Similarly ,The Customer Experience arena also throws up very exciting AI use cases . GCCs have gone beyond just bots building that answers frequently asked questions. Today, GCCs are working on providing personalised guidance to customers that can help organisations level-up on their customer experience, while maintaining a lower cost of delivering that experience.
The possibilities for building AI-native GCCs are as exciting as they are varied. The ideas shared are by no means exhaustive, but hopefully seed in interesting ideas for the GCC leaders to power improved business performance for the parent organisations. GCC leaders and AI heads need to consider how their AI-Native GCCs can help disrupt parent organisations’ existing value chains for the better, and unlock new ideas for improving bottom-line and top-line performance. This will usher in a New Next in GCCs evolution .