Advisory

Global Capability Center Advisory

Establishing, modernizing and reinventing your GCC

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GCCs Are on the Rise

Global capability centers (GCCs) have evolved from supporting standardization and efficient delivery of corporate operations to becoming centers of excellence that provide significantly enhanced value to enterprises. They provide access to top talent, build differentiating business capabilities, and drive transformation, innovation, scalability and business growth. Modern GCCs must consider:

How can organizations effectively access, develop and leverage the necessary talent at scale?
What is the optimal sourcing model by creating an ideal ecosystem by blending in-house capabilities with outsourced resources?
How can we harness the power of AI to drive transformative impact?
How to continuously enhance cost optimization, excellence, and value creation for significant top-line impact?

75 %

of large enterprises with existing GCCs have expanded or expect to expand.

By leveraging our extensive market data on IT and business services, along with our substantial experience in transformation, sourcing, and GCC establishment, ISG helps organizations improve service delivery strategies and reinvent their GCCs, regardless of maturity level.

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Our Global Capability Center Solutions

End-to-end advisory support.

Evaluation

What does your current model deliver?

Most enterprises know their delivery model is not working before they can say why.

ISG helps you assess your business needs, evaluate your current service delivery model and design your future state.

Complexity is the concern enterprises rank highest when they look at a capability center, ahead of cost and talent.
Strategy

Where should the work sit?

A location decision is quick to make but long to live with, so it needs to be made with confidence.

ISG helps you analyze candidate locations, assess cost, capability and capacity, and weigh your partnering options. We shape the AI strategy for your GCC, build the business case and plan the roadmap that gets you to your future state.

A capability center carries a competitive premium of 20% to 40% over the same work delivered under contract.
Design

Who owns the result once the work is split?

This is where a GCC stops being a business case and becomes an organization with a site, a headcount and reporting lines.

ISG works with you on site evaluation and selection, functional requirements and capacity, the organization and operational processes that will run the center, your strategic partnerships and the design of an agentic center of excellence.

Running your own center alongside contracted teams takes a level of governance most enterprises are still building.
Execute

What does it take to get your GCC set up?

Everything agreed on paper now has to work with real people, real volume and real dates.

ISG helps you enable your strategic partnerships, develop functional training, manage the organizational change, establish your agentic CoE and run the program end to end.

Enterprises building global capability centers rank retention as their biggest worry, ahead of recruitment.
Realize

Is the value still showing up?

The value a center delivers changes as it matures, and the way you measure it should too.

ISG measures what your center delivers against the case that funded it, then works with you on performance and cost management from there. We support your commercial and vendor management, your procurement, and the ongoing operation of your automation CoE.

Enterprises are moving to outcome-based agreements, so what they pay tracks what the center actually delivers.

Most enterprises know their delivery model is not working before they can say why.

ISG helps you assess your business needs, evaluate your current service delivery model and design your future state.

Complexity is the concern enterprises rank highest when they look at a capability center, ahead of cost and talent.

A location decision is quick to make but long to live with, so it needs to be made with confidence.

ISG helps you analyze candidate locations, assess cost, capability and capacity, and weigh your partnering options. We shape the AI strategy for your GCC, build the business case and plan the roadmap that gets you to your future state.

A capability center carries a competitive premium of 20% to 40% over the same work delivered under contract.

This is where a GCC stops being a business case and becomes an organization with a site, a headcount and reporting lines.

ISG works with you on site evaluation and selection, functional requirements and capacity, the organization and operational processes that will run the center, your strategic partnerships and the design of an agentic center of excellence.

Running your own center alongside contracted teams takes a level of governance most enterprises are still building.

Everything agreed on paper now has to work with real people, real volume and real dates.

ISG helps you enable your strategic partnerships, develop functional training, manage the organizational change, establish your agentic CoE and run the program end to end.

Enterprises building global capability centers rank retention as their biggest worry, ahead of recruitment.

The value a center delivers changes as it matures, and the way you measure it should too.

ISG measures what your center delivers against the case that funded it, then works with you on performance and cost management from there. We support your commercial and vendor management, your procurement, and the ongoing operation of your automation CoE.

Enterprises are moving to outcome-based agreements, so what they pay tracks what the center actually delivers.

Comparing Common GCC Set-up Models

Models	Description	Pros	Cons
Captive Centers	A facility that is fully owned and managed by the parent company.	Offers complete control over all processes, operations and quality standards. Ensures strict alignment with the company’s objectives and internal protocols.	High operational costs and significant investment required. Can lack flexibility and may take longer to adapt to market changes or scale quickly.
Hybrid	A blend of captive center operations with outsourcing to third-party vendors.	Combines flexibility with cost efficiency, allowing businesses to scale as needed. Provides external expertise while keeping key functions under the company’s control.	Managing third-party vendors alongside in-house operations can lead to complexity. Possible issues with quality control and accountability.
Joint Ventures	A collaboration between the parent company and local entities or international partners.	Allows for shared investment and risk while providing access to local expertise and market resources. Fosters innovation and growth through collective knowledge.	Potential for conflict or misalignment between partners. Divided control and profits. Slower decision-making processes due to the need for consensus.
Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT)	A third party establishes and runs the operation, later transferring ownership to the parent firm.	Reduces initial investment and operational risk. Enables a smooth transition to full ownership. Speeds up operational setup while requiring a lower upfront financial commitment.	Transitioning ownership may result in integration challenges. Less control during the initial phase and performance may depend on the third party’s management.