Insights

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  • COVID-19
  • Automation
  • Global business services
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  • Shared services and business process outsourcing

  • Deloitte Shared Services Conference 2023 Post-Conference Insights Paper

    Key themes from the 2023 conference

  • 2023 Global Shared Services and Outsourcing Survey

    Discover the best practices and emerging trends adopted by global business services organisations in Deloitte’s shared services and outsourcing survey.

  • The GBS-Commercial Partnership

    The Global Business Services-Commercial partnership as the engine room for driving growth

  • A partner for the sustainability challenge of our time: How GBS can support your business

  • Global Outsourcing Survey 2022

    Explore the Global outsourcing survey to learn how forward-thinking organisations are finding ways to boost innovation and competitiveness.

  • Deloitte Shared Services Conference 2022 Insight Paper

    Key statistics and themes of the 2022 Shared Services Conference.

  • 2021 Global Shared Services and Outsourcing Report

    How are global business services (GBS) organisations addressing today’s business challenges? Explore the survey results that reveal shared services centres are investing in strategic capabilities to create more value for the business and customers.

  • Shared Services Conference 2021 Post-conference Insights Paper

    A reflection of last year’s conference including content from the plenaries and breakouts plus highlights from the inaugural Shared Services Conference awards.

  • Future of Work

    As the ‘future of work’ evolves rapidly around us, companies must respond now to harness new technologies and effectively lead and engage the new workforce.

  • Hybrid working - Green Room podcast with Jackie Henry

    How do we create work that’s good for our wellbeing?

  • People & Purpose - Deloitte Annual Report 2021

    Being people centred and purpose driven has never been more important to our firm

  • Tech Trends 2021

    Deloitte’s 12th annual Tech Trends report captures the intersection of emerging technologies, human experiences, and business strategy in the modern enterprise, offering key insights and actionable advice for leaders.

  • Digital twins - Tech Trends 2020

    Digital twins are multiplying as their capabilities and sophistication grow. But realising their full promise may require integrating systems and data across entire organisational ecosystems.

  • Impact of COVID-19 on shared services and GBS

    We conducted more than 40 in-depth interviews with global business services (GBS), shared services, and business process outsourcing (BPO) organisations to understand their challenges and responses to COVID-19, as well as plans for the future.

  • Danish GBS response to the pandemic

    Response and recovery actions taken by Danish GBS and their plans to thrive in the new normal.

  • Reopening the workplace: The resilient leader's guide

    As the COVID-19 pandemic radically disrupted work environments, the first priority has been crisis response: emphasising health and safety, essential services, and the virtualisation of work and education. Business leaders are now focusing on reopening the workplace effectively, efficiently and especially safely.

  • Workforce strategies for post-COVID-19 recovery

    The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled governments and business leaders around the world into unprecedented lockdowns and stay-at-home measures, in an effort to curb the spread and enormous health impacts arising from this virus. Workforce strategies in the recovery phase will be best orchestrated through five critical actions: reflect, recommit, re-engage, rethink, and reboot.

  • Looking to a world beyond the crisis

    Deloitte UK CEO, Richard Houston, discusses the importance of decision making in his blog post.

  • Climate change - still on the banking agenda

    With the postponement of COP 26 and the current regulatory and banking sector focus on managing the fall-out from COVID-19, there has been much speculation about the resulting impact on the climate change regulatory agenda.

  • Shaping the future through digital business

    The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed organisations and those that lead them into uncharted waters. Technology leaders are no exception. If anything, the challenges they have been forced to face are among the most multi-dimensional in which organisations have had to grapple.

  • Retail Industry Sentiment Survey

    As the retail industry works to overcome the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, our weekly survey aims to unearth retailers’ priorities during this time of uncertainty. In this, our fourth week, we asked retailers what they think the impact will be on trading in the lead up to Christmas. The survey is issued each Tuesday with the results available to view on Friday.

  • GBS: Leading through a time of uncertainty

    As a result of COVID-19 Global Business Services (GBS) organisations face unprecedented challenges and GBS leaders have had to adapt quickly to make sure their organisations respond to the new normal.

  • Combatting COVID-19 with resilience

    Leaders like you are responding to one of the most sweeping crises in recent memory, calling for both empathy and action to guide your people and businesses through uncertain times

  • Non-commercial funding

    Opportunity to create and develop Shared Service Centres in Poland.

  • Cognitive collaboration

    Some have voiced fears that artificial intelligence could replace humans altogether. But that isn’t likely. A more valuable approach may be to view machine and human intelligence as complementary, with each bringing its own strengths to the table.

  • Smarter together: Why artificial intelligence needs human-centred design

    Artificial intelligence technology can result in artificial stupidity if it's poorly designed, implemented, or adapted. What's crucial? Ensuring it's designed to help humans think better

  • Superminds: How humans and machines can work together

    MIT professor Thomas Malone on human-computer collective intelligence and the future of work

  • 2019 global shared services survey

    Results from the 11th biennial global shared services survey indicate that shared services centres (SSCs) are, in fact, shifting from being a “provider of what they ask for” to a generator of tangible business value - especially as SSCs are witnessing an increased penetration in strategic and interaction-heavy functions like customer, sales and marketing support, and procurement.

  • Can cross-functional, cross-regional models such as Global Business Services (GBS) be catalysts for enterprise-wide Digital Transformation?

    Before we answer this question, it’s important to answer the first few and define “digital.” Business leaders are grappling with these questions in the face of unprecedented change - growing connectivity, competition, and consumer power. It means new methods of engagement, new products, new operating models, new organisations, and new ecosystems…and becoming digital is at the heart of it all. Yet, most often the first thing that comes to our minds is tools and devices.

  • 2018 Global Robotics Report: The robots are waiting

    Despite evidence to suggest the conditions for automating at scale are in place, it is equally clear that organisations are struggling to scale in the way we might have anticipated only a year ago. Only four per cent of respondents to our survey are operating more than 50 robots, a one per cent increase on last year.

    Building on our findings from previous years, the fourth edition of Deloitte’s Global Robotics Report, will explore why we believe organisations are still not managing to scale, and provide insights on how we believe organisations can overcome the common barrier to scale.

  • Finance 2025: Digital transformation in finance

    We look towards the future with eight predictions for the finance function of 2025. The technologies needed to reimagine finance are here and they will only get better. It’s crunch time.

  • The Deloitte consumer review - Digital predictions 2018

    In this edition of The Deloitte Consumer Review, we explore the latest developments in technology and how this is predicted to shake up the consumer market, drive innovation and create opportunities for both growth and greater efficiency.

  • 2018 Global Human Capital Trends

    Our global survey of more than 11,000 business and HR leaders across 140 countries, reveals 10 areas for businesses to focus on to better organise, manage, develop and align people at work. So what are the 2018 human capital trends?

  • 2018 Tech Trends

    Deloitte's ninth annual Technology Trends report analyses the trends that could disrupt businesses in the next 18-24 months. CIOs who can harness the possibilities of these technologies will be better positioned to shape the future of their business.

  • 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends - Rewriting the rules for the digital age

    With more than 10,000 HR and business leaders in 140 countries weighing in, our 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report reveals that business and HR teams must adapt their organisation structures to withstand the pace of the digital revolution.

  • 2017 Tech Trends - The kinetic enterprise

    Technology has moved far beyond desktop devices and software upgrades: to data analysis, augmented reality, and reimagining products as services. In fact, the range of recent advances - from nanotech to robotic process automation - can seem overwhelming. But CIOs can look ahead to help shape their company’s future.

  • Analytics trends 2017

    Deloitte has identified five key analytics trends organisations should track - and consider applying - in the year ahead.

  • Global CPO Survey 2017 - Growth: the cost and digital imperative

    Growth ambitions are high in an uncertain market, the pace of change and increased uncertainty requires superior levels of funding. Defensive strategies being implemented by Chief Financial Officers are demanding rapid, sustained cost reduction in parallel to a greater focus on risk from procurement. We are now sure that the traditional procurement operating model has to change. This has been driven by a lack of talent and an increase in digital innovation.

  • Hungarian Shared Services Survey 2017 - Trends and Predictions

    Hungary is the second largest market for shares services in the Central Eastern Europe region. Business centers employ more than 40 000 employees and are present in 90+ companies on 100+ SSC sites in the country.

    Considering the size of the market and remaining open to Hungarian shared service leaders' interests, during our survey we focused on insights and trends related to the growth and evolution of the Hungarian shared services industry.

  • The 3rd Annual Global Robotics Survey

    The 2017 Deloitte RPA survey, which attracted well over 400 responses from around the world, shows that awareness of robotics remains high.

  • Global CIO Survey 2016-2017 - Navigating legacy: Charting the course to business value

    Deloitte’s 2016–2017 global survey of CIOs takes us a step forward in gaining a deeper understanding of how CIOs create legacy - the value and impact technology leaders deliver to their organisations. Through in-depth interviews and online surveys, the opinions and insights were collected of more than 1,200 CIOs across 23 industry segments in 48 countries.

  • 2016 Global Outsourcing Survey

    The results of the 2016 Global Outsourcing Survey have been compiled from over 280 responses representing organisations from across the globe. Participants spanned 25 sectors with over 50% of participants from organisations generating between $1 billion to $15 billion in annual revenues. This is Deloitte’s third biennial survey, collecting data, insights and trends on the growth and evolution of outsourcing since 2012.

  • 2016 MIT Deloitte Aligning Digital Future

    Digitally savvy executives are already aligning their people, processes and culture to achieve their organisation's long-term digital success. Read more about the survey conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte.

  • AI - Next "bold play"

    How are cognitive technologies being used in organisations today? Organisations across industries of the economy are already using cognitive technologies in diverse business functions. Read Deloitte India's report to find out whether artificial intelligence will be the next "bold play".

  • Aligning the organisation for its digital future

    Digitally savvy executives are already aligning their people, processes, and culture to achieve their organisation's long-term digital success.

  • Analytics in Shared Services and GBS

    What do changes in the way that business operate and interact mean for shared and global business services?

  • Analytics in shared services and GBS

    Analytics is permeating all areas of business and it is now well understood that collecting, storing, analysing, and driving insights from data should be a company-wide endeavour.

  • Automate this - A guide to robotic process automation

    Robotic Process Automation has been maturing quietly over the last decade and is now used for enterprise-scale deployments. Intelligent Automation, while still nascent, promises hugely transformative potential in the near future. To maximise the impact of robot-led automation, business leaders need to have a solid understanding of the available tools and a clearly defined strategy for automating their enterprises.

  • Blockchain. Engima. Paradox. Opportunity

    Who can benefit from a blockchain? How does it generate value? And, perhaps more importantly, how can the technology be applied to existing organisations and their current business models?

    This paper aims to address these questions and help leaders in different sectors navigate the emerging opportunities offered by blockchain technology.

  • CFO Survey

    The CFO Survey is released quarterly and is an authoritative barometer of UK corporates’ sentiment and strategies. It is the only survey of major UK corporate users of capital that gauges attitudes to valuations, risk and financing.

  • Characteristics of GRID operating model

    - Global centres with “global” talent pools, global process ownership, and financials that are competitive around the world
    - Responsiveness via adoption of enabling technologies and application of predictive analytics
    - Integration into a global delivery network based on collaboration and interaction with other “nodes”
    - Dynamic through on-demand service delivery, value-linked measurement systems, and faster, empowered decision-making.

  • Connectors: Robotic process automation

    A quick-reference guide to how robotic process automation plays out in global business services, shared services, and outsourcing.

  • Crunch time: Finance in a digital world

    From cloud computing and robotics to analytics, artificial intelligence and automation, a new class of digital disruptors is transforming how business gets done. Expect these disruptors to have a big impact on the future of finance organisations. But what exactly will their impact be? What is the future of finance in the face of these developments?

  • Crunch time too: CFOs talk off the record about Finance in a digital world

    When our organisation does research with CFOs, we often uncover gold mines of insights. That happened recently when we interviewed 30 finance executives about digital finance transformation in theor global businesses. Our initial analysis of those conversations focused on specific digital technologies, as reported in 'Crunch time: Finance in a digital world.'

    This follow-up report provides another glimpse of what these finance executives had to say, this time focused on a broader discussion of finance and what it means to make the digital journey.

  • Crunch time IV: Blockchain for Finance

    Explore Blockchain for Finance , the latest installment in our Crunch time series, where we dive deep into business blockchains and how they’re transforming the work of finance organisations around the world.

  • Customer experience strategy for shared services

    Businesses today are embracing "customer experience" as one of the most important ways to drive sales, customer loyalty, and competitive differentiation. And while shared services users might not be customers in the traditional sense, providing them with a superior experience can yield significant benefits for the business, including: lower costs; improved self-service; and higher employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

  • Customer experience: the new differential

    As the customer experience discipline has grown in maturity over the past decade, customer experience measurement has not evolved at the same rate. Many customer experience measurement solutions do not take into account the most recent CX best practices

  • Digital Disruption Index

    The pace of technological change is accelerating. In less than 12 months since we published the last Digital Disruption Index, we have witnessed significant shifts in investment in new technologies, with the likes of artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and blockchain gathering momentum. However, in the rush to keep up, our findings reveal many organisations are yet to develop a coherent strategy for investing in these digital technologies.

    Building on our initial findings published in 2017, as well as our long-standing research into innovation and the future of work, the second edition of the Digital Disruption Index explores six key themes around investment in digital technologies and ways of working.

  • Digital enablement - Turning your transformation into a successful journey

    Digital transformation is the use of technology to radically improve the performance or reach of an organisation. In a digitally transformed business, digital technologies enable improved processes, engaged talent, and new business models.

  • Embracing a digital future - How manufacturers can unlock the transformative benefits of digital supply networks

    Manufacturers slow to implement digital supply networks may risk being left behind. But how can company leaders know which digital technologies will yield the most business value, or whether the time is right to invest in making a change?

  • Forces of change: the future of work

    Two powerful forces are shaping our workforces and workplaces: the growing adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace and the expansion of the workforce to include both on- and off-balance-sheet talent. What does the future of work look like, and what are the implications for individuals, organisation leaders, and public institutions?

  • Global business services for analytics

    Leading organisations are recognising the opportunities for Global Business Services (GBS) to deliver business value beyond cost and operational efficiencies. The point-of-view examines why business leaders are now looking too use a GBS model to manage their data capabilities and provide significantly improved access to enterprise-wide reporting and analytics.

  • Global business services: better together

    Our latest publication explores the benefits of Global Business Services beyond the traditional cost and operational benefits of shared services, such as alignment with growth, risk and talent strategies. It explores the essential characteristics and behaviours necessary to drive a performance-improving Global Business Services organisation, as well as providing practical tips on implementation.

  • Guiding the rise of digital global business services - Increased efficiencies from the digital workforce

    Just when you thought your global business services (GBS) strategy couldn’t deliver more value, digital enters the picture. This is good news for companies that are looking for possible advantages in becoming more efficient. But it also is likely to introduce a significant amount of change in a short amount of time. Service delivery transformation will likely play a big role in the move from traditional GBS to digital GBS. And the journey is just beginning.

  • Harness the power - How advances analytics in valuation is driving value

    What are the opportunities for using analytics in financial reporting and fair value estimates, and what are the risks in ignoring their potential?

  • Integrating automation into global business services

    From robotics to cognitive computing, current trends in automation are reshaping global business services (GBS). While new technology, such as robotic process automation (RPA), can enable the “holy grail” of analytics and other higher level services, it may not be a quick fix. In order to reap the potential benefits, organisations must first understand the disruptive aspects of automation, along with the pre-requisites for integrating it into their GBS models.

  • Is our approach to GBS enough?

    Early leaders in GBS are far enough along to make a clear-eyed assessment of what they’ve achieved with GBS, where they may be at risk of falling short, and why. In this report, we explore why the growth of GBS has slowed and delve into lessons learned from individuals who have trodden this path.

  • Performance improvement

    For more than two decades, organisations around the world have been using shared services and outsourcing to improve service delivery and reduce costs in defined parts of their businesses. Leading organisations are now taking the next steps.

  • Rethinkng the customer experience to win

    Consumers now expect a bespoke, fluid experience when shopping. This experience is defining successful business models, but how can businesses predict what consumers want?

  • Shared services, outsourcing, global business services and the cloud - Improved agility, resiliency, and flexibility

    There are big changes afoot in shared services, outsourcing, and global business services. It is difficult to imagine these changes taking place without cloud-based capabilities playing a growing role. In fact, there’s already plenty of evidence that cloud is already changing things, as new cloud-based services have experienced widespread adoption over the past couple of years. There is no more time to wait and see how this all plays out.

  • Tax compliance outsourcing and shared services - The future of your tax department

    With tax departments facing big changes on the regulatory front, not to mention within the business itself, it’s difficult to imagine them being successful over the long run without making fundamental changes to their operating models. Outsourcing and global business services will likely play a big role in those changes.

  • The GBS lab

    Find out how Deloitte's Global Business Services (GBS) Lab can help align leadership understanding of GBS and accelerate the planning of a GBS programme within your organistion. Our one-day session helps executives to assess their organisation, articulate the vision and mobilise GBS change.

  • The robots are coming: Moving beyond traditional methods of automation

    For many, robotics is an innovation that is poised to transform the landscape of transaction processing. For others it is just another way of automating processes that long ago should have been eliminated or simplified. We believe it is a technology worth investigating because of its ability to improve efficiency and reliability.

  • The robots are here

    Our recent online survey found there has been a sharp increase in the number of organisations that have investigated Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and that a significant number of organisations have already implemented or piloted RPA.

  • The role of Shared Services and GBS in delivering Finance Analytics

    Finding a home for Finance Analytics in a GBS or Shared Services organisation provides many benefits.

  • The true value of customer experience

    We help companies understand the importance of customer experience value and how to maximise that value through dynamic, personalised treatment.

  • The value of global process owners in global business services - Part 2

    In this report we explain what the leadership at global business services can do to support and enable GPOs to create value for the enterprise.

  • The value of global process owners in global business services - Part 1

    In this report we outline five specific and significant ways a GPO can create enterprise-wide value.

  • The value proposition of global business services

    For more than two decades, organisations around the world have used shared services and outsourcing to improve controls and reduce costs. Those tried and true benefits are still relevant, but the expectations placed upon leading global business services (GBS) organisations are now much higher. Mature GBS organisations now deliver value in such strategic areas as transformation, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and innovation in addition to traditional cost and operational efficiency benefits.

  • TMT predictions

    The TMT Predictions are Deloitte’s annual view on the key trends set to shake up the companies in Tech, Media & Telecoms, alongside other industries.

  • Transformers: How machines are changing every sector of the UK economy

    Our latest report re-examines the impact of automation and robotic on work and employment. This time it shifts focus from the future of occupations to the outlook for industry sectors.

  • Transitioning the future of work and the workplace

    A Deloitte survey (sponsored by Facebook) asked C-suite executives for their perspectives on the future of work. Their responses reveal six themes about the future workplace—and six lessons to help leaders ease the transition.

  • Travel in style - your own style

    How can companies raise their back office functions to the next level through the establishment of Global Business Services?

  • What’s next in shared services location strategy?

    In today’s shared services and global business services (GBS) environment, the dynamics are ever-changing. Historically, cost has been the primary measure of value in location decisions. But cost-based decisions can be short-sighted in an increasingly complex shared services landscape affected by the evolving global political scene and impending tax regulations. In fact, a location strategy of calculated coexistence within markets can deliver better results than out-spending the competition. Crafting such a strategy requires the appropriate level of due diligence to determine if a location is a competitive, environmental, cultural, and operating cost fit for the company.