How Do You Actually Lead Change in GBS?

There’s no magic pill that can solve all your problems. Technology vendors might boast that you can completely automate your invoice processing or eliminate overpayments. Or consultants might claim they can help you build a shared service center in less than a year.

But the truth is that those case studies are cherry-picked. In reality, transformation is difficult. Every business is unique. And it’s not just about rolling out the software or building the infrastructure. It’s about managing the people.

In our P2Podcast, Chris Gunning, the global finance transformation leader at NielsenIQ, gave his advice and experience about what challenges you’ll likely encounter. Let’s look at some of that advice.

Make sure you have a North Star

Before you start any transformation project, set a clear goal. Are you looking to cut down on wasted time, recover lost earnings, or catch fraud? Without that clear goal, it can be easy to get distracted and lost along the way.

This is particularly important the longer a project is likely to take. Chief finance officers can change, strategies can change, and acquisitions can happen. All these can affect your plan and requirements. But if you have that North Star, you can adapt. Maybe you use a stripped-back version of that technology, or maybe you decide to split that shared service centre in two. That’s fine. As long as you’re still achieving your main goal.

Three layers of technology impact change

Transformation is about more than just throwing a new piece of technology into the mix and hoping it works. It’s about behaviour and mindsets. How difficult it’ll be to change those behaviours depends on the level of change you’re hoping to make. According to Chris, there are typically three layers to consider:

1. Enterprise technology: The slow, foundational change

These are the large, costly technologies that drive big transformation across your entire business. This kind of change affects everyone, across departments and regions. It’s your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), your Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), and your Simplified Employee Pension (SEP).

Chris is clear: It’s never about just the systems. You’ll need support from your executives, years of planning, and serious change management. If you ignore your training, adoption, and data quality, it’ll fail. No matter how powerful the system.

2. Enabling technology: The strategic boosters

This is where change gets exciting but risky. It’s the tools that can automate or improve processes like record-to-report or procure-to-pay. Done well, you might increase your productivity by 30 or even 50%. But only if your underlying processes and teams are ready to use them.

Chris has seen this layer fail when companies didn’t understand the need for change management, involve users, or clean their data. His advice? Don’t get dazzled by vendor promises. Ground the project in your real processes and people.

3. Citizen-led technology: The fast, bottom-up innovations

This is Chris’ favorite layer—and the most overlooked. It’s when you give your employees the freedom to own the change themselves. A macro here, a script there. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots that the team builds themselves. Low-code tools that streamline a handover.

Chris calls this citizen-led transformation. And he wants all 400+ people in his shared service organization to engage with it. It doesn’t need a steering committee. Just curiosity, a leader who enables it, and space to experiment.
The higher the layer of change, the harder it’ll be. The more complex it is, the more resistance you’ll encounter. The more training you’ll need. And the more your culture needs to evolve. It’s harder than just mandating that everyone follow the new rules.

With that in mind, what exactly can you do to make sure people actually adopt your vision? What tools are at your disposal?

Tweaking the right levers to keep your project on track

Throughout our conversation with Chris, he shared insights and nuggets of wisdom about which levers you can tweak to make sure your project runs smoothly. Those levers tend to fall under one of four groups.

Policies. Global Process Owners (GPOs) need to think about policy change as part of the transformation. Are there any global process standards or governance rules that you need to adapt? How do you upscale your talent? And what’s the best technology to put in place?

Processes. Little changes can have large effects. What levers can you pull in your procedures that could have the biggest impact. Sometimes it’s adding training, sometimes it’s big-ticket automation. But could a little tweak ultimately make your process incrementally better, and move you from an amber Service Level Agreement (SLA) to a green one?

People. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to point the way, but inspire people to walk the path. You need to inspire your team, through stories and showing them what’s possible. It’s not just about training. How will you get people excited about the change? Foster curiosity? Embrace diversity?

Automation. There’s big, wide-sweeping automation, incremental day-to-day improvements, and citizen-led technologies. Each has their place and can help you reach your goals. Which is best suited for your problem?

By going through these four areas, you’ll make sure that you’re not missing an obvious solution. Not all problems need massive investments.
Head to our podcast for more.

Want to learn about how to manage change in your procurement process?

You can find out the challenges in the purchase-to-pay space on our P2Podcast. Listen to the episode:

Spotify: https://bit.ly/3S2f28W

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3EQ9QCd