The role of the GPO is all about improving processes across large global organizations. Simple, in theory. But hard in practice. So we spoke with Molly Dausch on our P2Podcast to hear her advice for leaders and how to drive change across the business.

The key is to remember that it’s a role with broad responsibilities. You need to wear a lot of different hats. But there are three main areas you should focus on:

1. Your mindset
2. Your people
3. Your technology

Let’s dive in and discover exactly how to tackle the challenge.

Mindset: Focus on the results

It can feel like failure when a team shrinks. All too often, it’s tempting to measure success in terms of how many people are underneath us. But teams will always fluctuate. Too many leaders fixate on that team size or the amount of hours they’re using, rather than the results themselves.

Instead, it’s better to approach problems from the design perspective: which structure is most efficient for your business? The actual size doesn’t matter.

Don’t ignore the tools that can help

Organizational Change Management (OCM) tools are your best friend. These frameworks and platforms are extremely helpful when you want to drive change across the business. They can help you guide people through the transformation and make sure they’re on board.

People: Find ways to unify people

All roads lead back to the human element. You can have the perfect strategy, the perfect process, and the perfect organizational structure. But at the end of the day, it all hinges on your people. In fact, there are three sides to the equation.

Gather the right people for your team

There’s a very specific personality type that you need to work in GBS or P2P. It’s not enough to be able to pick up new skills quickly and be able to juggle multiple responsibilities. You need to find people who thrive in the environment.

You can teach skills, but you can’t teach attitude. So when a role is constantly evolving, when change is part and parcel of the industry, specific skills are sooner or later going to become obsolete. It’s far better to build a team of curious explorers. People who can be flexible. That way, it doesn’t matter what the future brings; your team will be ready to face the challenges head-on.

Set up avenues to collaborate across departments

Too many companies have a separation between their departments, for example between Accounts Payable (AP) and procurement, or even with the IT department. When you align with other teams, it becomes much easier to drive change across the business.

But creating that bridge doesn’t happen overnight. You need to establish those relationships, build trust, and find common ground. What are your shared goals? You want to start building those pathways and creating visibility between teams as early as possible.

Acknowledge the differences in styles

One key challenge that leaders face is the generational differences in the workforce. Different generations have different perspectives on the working environment.

How do you help these different outlooks work together smoothly? Some might want to work in the office, some might prefer to work remotely. As a leader, it’s essential to understand these differences and how to inspire people who might have quite different approaches.

Technology: Look beyond the obvious

Using tools like AI to automate your processes has clear benefits. But it’s a mistake to focus only on those surface-level improvements. Leaders need to look deeper at how technology can help them.

How can AI actually help your business?

There’s so much potential with AI tools that it’s difficult to see what’s really going to make a difference and what’s just hype. Every business will have its own needs, but there are a few areas to consider.

1. Basic inquiries. With the right training, AI chatbots can deal with simple questions. For example, what’s our procurement process? Feed in the data and let the AI answer it naturally. Once your teams are comfortable with that, you can even move on to policy interpretation. Am I eligible for a home office allowance? Am I allowed to bring on a contractor for three weeks? Do I need a receipt for expenses under $10?
2. Audits. AI can help to spot whether you have duplicate expenses, invoices from unapproved vendors, or patterns of fraudulent behavior. But, while AI can highlight potential problems, you shouldn’t rely on it completely. It can make mistakes.
3. OCR. In the past, the OCR process was quite limited. Invoices needed to be completely standardized. But with AI, you can train the model to scan almost any format and input the data. While it takes a lot of planning and design, it can make your process far more flexible. Though, you need to be prepared for exceptions.
4. Translation. As a global service, it’s inevitable that you’ll need to eventually communicate between languages. And in the last few years, there have been vast strides in AI translation. This can smooth out the friction between teams, by allowing you to translate documents or even just emails almost instantly.

Remember to pull in the customer’s voice

While you can automate a lot of processes, it’s not always just about saving costs. You still need to check whether it’s actually working. This is where it’s important to bring in the customer’s voice, even if that’s an internal customer.

You might find that, while you’re cutting costs, you’re actually making the experience much harder or more frustrating for the customer. On the flip side, you could be making a relatively small saving but making a process much smoother and less frustrating for everybody involved.

🎧 Get the full story on P2Podcast

These are just a few of the insights and snippets of advice that Molly shared with us on our P2Podcast.

We also chatted about data process mining tools, why to set up councils inside your business, and the challenges that businesses will face in the near future. So if you’d like to learn more, tune in on Spotify or YouTube.