GICs of the future
By Laura Ciavola
At Optum, we want everyone to do their life's best work, and in order to do that you have to be included. I think the companies who get this, study cultural differences and are respectful of the talented diverse global workforce, are going to be winners.
Over the last decade or so, global in-house centres (GICs) in India have metamorphosed from proof-of-concept to strategic centres. They are increasingly focusing on intellectual property (IP) development, automation, analytics, and competency development through co-creation. As per Nasscom, India accounts for over 45% of the global centres outside of home country across the world.
Respect and leverage the time zones
It's high time that global centres move beyond being support units working at odd hours. If you want to develop an application or a complex system, if you could get the teams handing off to each other all round the world clock, you can really accelerate your performance.
From a healthcare company's perspective, India can help in establishing competencies for analytics and automation — especially when it comes to healthcare disease states or digital therapeutics — taking data for medical devices, putting it into a central data structure, and acting upon that and processing data into electronic medical records (EMRs).
Don't be an order taker, be an order maker
As someone who has worked in India for several years and built a business here, I observed people using terms like 'captive' and words like 'what would you like me to do.' This was a difficult mindset to change.
I inspired the team to unleash the 'kraken' in them — the legendary sea creature that takes over the world. The idea is to do whatever needs to be done on the foundation of true equality. So, in a course of 12 months, we reduced our operating expenses by about 30% and got our quality metrics up from 89% to 97%.
GICs of the future must reflect diversity with inclusion, with a work atmosphere where people have fun and feel more empowered and committed. Inclusions can be particularly challenging when there are cultural differences. It's critical to recognize, understand and appreciate the differences, a lack of which will make us judgmental.
India as a strategic location
The skillsets you find in India in operations, math and technology are unparalleled, along with profound creative and critical thinking skills. Studies indicate that India produces 1.5 million engineers every year from 4,000 institutes, more than USA and China combined.
Leading MNCs have more than 35% of the technology workforce operating out of their India centres. GICs in India now number about 1,100, employing more than 800,000 individuals and generating approximately $23 billion in revenue.
The road ahead
Global CXOs expect Indian GICs to play a more active role in driving top-of-mind investment priorities in the coming years.
As per Bain & Company research, approximately 70% of CXOs believe that the Indian GICs will play a more active role, and approximately 50% of enterprises already have, or expect to have, leaders two levels below CEO positions based out of their Indian GICs.
The above article appeared in BW Healthcare.