From Doing to Deciding: The Strategic Evolution of GCCs in India

Introduction

If you walked into a Fortune 500 boardroom in 2010 and asked, “Where does the real thinking happen in your company?”, most leaders would point to headquarters: strategy teams in New York, innovation labs in London, or product offices in San Francisco. The job of Global Capability Centres (GCCs) was execution: delivery, operations, compliance – not strategic decision-making.

Fast forward to today, and that division of labour looks outdated. The most consequential decisions in global companies are increasingly shaped far from the executive suite. GCCs, once seen as back-office engines, are quietly becoming enterprise thinking hubs: interpreting complexity, connecting dots across geographies, and turning raw data into actionable insight.

This is not incremental change. It is a structural evolution in how enterprises reason, decide, and act at scale. Companies that recognise this shift early are no longer just optimising delivery; they are designing centres of cognition that think as the company thinks.

Why GCCs Are Evolving from Execution to Thinking

Global Capability Centres were never designed for thinking. Their original mandate was straightforward: absorb repetitive work, reduce costs, and scale operational capacity. Over time, however, three factors nudged GCCs into a more strategic role.

1.Complexity at Scale

Enterprises have grown more interconnected than ever. Supply chains span continents, platforms integrate multiple systems, and customer behaviour varies by region. Decisions made centrally often lack local context, while teams on the ground see signals that headquarters may never encounter.

Take a global automotive company with an engineering GCC in Pune. The centre doesn’t just process defect reports; it connects supplier data, climate conditions, and past design tweaks to identify recurring patterns. Headquarters sees only aggregated quarterly numbers. The Pune GCC recommends precise corrective action.

This transforms a GCC from a “delivery centre” into a thinking hub: it interprets data, spots patterns, and informs decisions that HQ alone could not make.

2.Proximity to Data and Operations

GCCs often sit closer to the operational heartbeat of the company than HQ. Whether it’s transaction systems, real-time analytics, or platform performance metrics, GCCs are immersed in the data that drives decisions.

The EY 2025 GCC Pulse Survey found that over 50% of GCCs in India now own end-to-end processes, including analytics, automation, and AI-enabled platforms, up from less than 20% a decade ago. By controlling the systems that generate insight, GCCs are uniquely positioned to interpret patterns, detect anomalies, and advise on next steps.

3.The Need for Faster, Smarter Decision-Making

Execution can be outsourced. Judgement cannot. As enterprises accelerate their digital and global ambitions, decision volume and complexity have grown exponentially. Centralised leadership cannot scale cognitive capacity linearly.

GCCs, when empowered to interpret and act on data, reduce decision latency and ensure decisions reflect both global strategy and operational reality. They become distributed nodes of enterprise cognition.

How GCCs Function as Thinking Hubs

A GCC that thinks does more than execute. It interprets complexity, contextualises data, retains enterprise logic, and accelerates decision‑making. Let’s unpack how that works in practice, backed by real signals from the global GCC ecosystem.

1.Interpretation of Data and Systems, Turning Signals into Decisions

A true thinking hub doesn’t just generate reports; it explains them. According to the EY GCC Pulse Report 2025, about 86% of GCCs are operationalising business intelligence and formalising data strategies, while many have dedicated innovation teams focused on analytics and high‑value use cases. Roughly, genAI is being applied to functions such as customer service (65%) and finance (53%), showing that GCCs are already interpreting complex patterns, not just automating tasks.

This matters because interpretation is where value begins. A GCC may receive thousands of data points on customer behaviour, system performance, or product usage. A centre that thinks will translate this noise into patterns that inform strategy, not just clean dashboards.

Real‑World Signal: GCCs are increasingly owning analytics and data strategy rather than just producing data for headquarters to review. According to EY, 87% of GCCs now take ownership of end‑to‑end global processes, including interpretation of insights that feed back into enterprise decision cycles.

2.Retention and Codification of Institutional Knowledge, Making Reasoning Durable

Knowledge loss is one of the hidden costs of growth. When senior teams rotate or leave, enterprises often lose why decisions were made, not just what was executed.

EY’s research notes that leading GCCs are building transformation offices that go beyond automation and standardisation. These offices jointly work with headquarters to identify improvement opportunities and codify decision logic into reusable models.

Decisions about risk, product strategy, or customer segmentation are retained in formal frameworks and reusable artefacts, not individual memory. Over time, this becomes an institutional asset – an enterprise memory bank that preserves corporate reasoning at scale. GCCs that codify this logic ensure decisions remain consistent, auditable, and improvable over time.

3.Reducing Decision Latency, Acting Fast with Contextual Judgement

Decision latency, the time between insight and action, is a strategic risk in global enterprises. A GCC that thinks reduces that latency by empowering teams to act with context, not wait for HQ sign‑off on every nuance.

BCG’s research points out that top‑performing GCCs are already reshaping how enterprises make decisions by embedding AI and autonomous models into their operating fabric. These leaders are investing in AI‑led Centres of Excellence and giving GCCs stronger governance and autonomy to act.

Though the BCG data spans global organisations, it demonstrates a clear trend: high‑maturity GCCs are ones where decision-making is distributed and context‑rich, not purely centralised. And GCCs in India are frequently cited as among the most advanced, due to the volume of operational and strategic work they host.

Why this matters: The rise of GCCs with transformation mandates means that teams can implement iterative product changes and platform improvements without waiting for global strategy cycles to complete. Their proximity to operational systems and business impact datasets gives them the context needed to make faster, better‑informed decisions.

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