Deloitte has officially published the results from its biennial “Global Business Services (GBS) Survey,” which educates readers on continued impact, inputs, and investment trends stemming from Global Business Service delivery models on organizations worldwide.
Going by the available details, this particular exercise treads up a long distance to reveal that GBS continue to prioritize next gen capability development and customer experience, with Generative AI (GenAI) serving as a crucial change agent.
“The 2025 survey confirms a sustained shift, or better said augmentation, in the principal motivations and purpose of shared services,” said Kort Syverson, principal at Deloitte. ”While access to scalable, lower cost labor pools continues to be a core value proposition, GBS leaders are actively augmenting this value proposition to sincerely focus on experience and transformation. What has become clear is that cost is a deteriorating value proposition.”
Talk about the whole study on a slightly deeper level, we begin from how an estimated 50% of responding organizations achieved over 20% savings from their GBS. As for the driving factor behind that, effective governance and digital technologies were named as key elements in realizing such substantial value realization.
Next up, we must expand upon how another 50% of the responding GBS organizations consider next gen capability development and customer experience as top priorities. We get to say so because a large chunk of respondents would go onto indicate that GenAI, intelligent automation, analytics dashboards and other next gen tech offerings hold the greatest potential when it comes to enhancing efficiency, improving scalability, and reducing costs.
Looking past that, brand durability also emerged as a critical factor for delivering differentiated outcomes. This conclusion was reached upon after the said factor became evident as the biggest driver of an exceptional customer experience.
Moving on, Deloitte’s report also uncovered an interesting pattern, which claims that GenAI is actually playing a role in the context of transitioning the GBS landscape. As a result, among 66% of organizations planning to invest in GenAI over the next three years, the top expectations for business impact were deemed to be improved employee performance and productivity, reduced manual work, as well as increased innovation.
Hold on, we still have a few bits left to unpack, considering we haven’t yet touched upon the fact that 55% of organizations, with a Global GBS leader role, have achieved more than 20% average savings from their GBS operations. This particular reality treads up a long distance to stress the importance of having dedicated global personnel for unifying strategy and business outcomes.
We also haven’t yet touched upon a sharp growth in global movers, as Mexico and Portugal were found to be the most rapidly emerging areas for GBS. In fact, Mexico now sits rather comfortably among the top 3, with Portugal breaching the top 10 during 2025.
Beyond these nations, India and the U.S. continue to be key leaders on the global front.
Rounding up highlights would be a piece of data claiming that talent pressures remain a universal problem. This translates to how demand for skilled talent and hybrid working models is as consistently strong in GBS as in businesses worldwide.
Among other things, it ought to be acknowledged Deloitte how has been conducting, since 1999, these biennial Global Business Services surveys to understand the ways in which organizations are leveraging shared services and outsourcing service delivery models to address their business challenges and better meet customer needs. The company’s latest report markedly had responses from over 30 countries.
Delivering further weightage across the published results happens to be Deloitte’s wider stature. To put that into context, the company currently provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax, and advisory services to many of the world’s most admired brands, including nearly 90% of the Fortune 500® and more than 8,500 U.S.-based private companies.
“Deloitte’s Global Business Services surveys have long illustrated the impact of the GBS model to demonstrate tangible business value,” said Diane Ma, principal, Deloitte. “Our 2025 report highlights GBS models are becoming more agile, digital, and cost-efficient, driving better customer and employee experiences and positioning themselves at the forefront of business transformation. The latest trend in Global Capability Centers also show the critical role they play in terms of sourcing specialized talent needs.”
