5 minute read 6 Apr 2020
GCCs – Responding to the COVID-19 outbreak

How GCCs can effectively respond to the COVID-19 outbreak

By EY India

Multidisciplinary professional services organization

5 minute read 6 Apr 2020

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  • How GCCs can effectively respond to the COVID-19 outbreak

The challenges are far from over, but the response is a clear combination of resolve, will and commitment on part of organizations, their employees and the Government alike.

The Coronavirus outbreak is deepening into several countries around the world and the situation is unfolding each day with a newer dimension. Countries are now trying their best to control the spread of virus and cure those that are already infected. Partial or full lockdown is one of the prime quarantine strategies being adopted by countries to control the exploding infection.

A lockdown is an emergency protocol implemented by government authorities that prevents people from leaving a predefined area (usually their homes). India ordered a full lockdown at midnight on 24 March 2020 for a period of 21 days in an unprecedented measure to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Some have engaged in large scale movement of desktops from offices to employee homes. A few have expanded virtual machines with corporate IT security policies applied to personal computing devices. Local authorities have lent their hand of co-operation to these organizations in the times of crisis by providing necessary approvals to keep mission critical processes running.

The challenges are far from over, but the response is a clear combination of resolve, will and commitment on part of organizations, their employees and the Government alike.

We assess the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on GCCs in the Financial Services (FS) sector, mitigation steps that are being taken and share strategies adopted by industry players to meet this crisis.

Global Capability Centres (GCCs in India)

India is home to a vast number of global capability centres and with a large workforce exceeding a million skilled employees, it accounts for nearly 50% of the global back office workforce. These centres include shared services, engineering and design centres, centres of excellence and digital enablement centres amongst others. Many of them are engaged in business-critical operations that are dependent on uninterrupted business services.

The lockdown and the run up to the lockdown have posed several direct and imminent challenges to the GCCs and their ecosystem. The implications of meeting service level commitments have potentially posed compulsions on the headquarters and parent entities of these centres to consider  alternate, hitherto never considered.

Global capability centres are facing the crisis with a comparable set of challenges and grappling with similar mitigation options. Ranging from keeping the lights on, to enabling work from home for a large employee population, the challenges and implications have both been far-reaching. Shortages on mobile computing equipment such as laptops and high compute capacity tablets have been addressed by these organizations in a variety of ways.

Some have engaged in large scale movement of desktops from offices to employee homes. A few have expanded virtual machines with corporate IT security policies applied to personal computing devices. Local authorities have lent their hand of co-operation to these organizations in the times of crisis by providing necessary approvals to keep mission critical processes running.

The challenges are far from over, but the response is a clear combination of resolve, will and commitment on part of organizations, their employees and the Government alike.

We assess the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on GCCs in the Financial Services (FS) sector, mitigation steps that are being taken and share strategies adopted by industry players to meet this crisis.

1. Tech/IT support

Overall, relatively smooth work from home operations given that majority of the resources have laptops:

  • Technology projects and transformation initiatives: idle capacity seen across due to delivery timelines being pushed out.
  • Sporadic issues witnessed across production, IT Infrastructure and cyber monitoring.

2. Enabling ops/global functions

  • Smooth work from home operations for functions like Finance, Risk, Sales Support, Procurement, and HR, which have traditionally been enabled for remote operations with laptops. Challenges seen in the below pockets:
  • Finance: Function is stressed and requires support due to the 31st March quarter-end requirements. For example, a large international bank has requested workforce augmentation with an ask for 10- 20 resources.
  • Procurement: Surge in accounts payable due to early submission of invoices from vendors.
  • Payroll: Challenges faced given its sensitive nature as the function was being serviced out of secure rooms and employees were not provided laptops.

3. Core operations

  • In-house consumer contact areas: Limited presence of these functions within the Indian FS GCC industry to certain banks and financial institutions. Pronounced issues being faced by call centres due to:
  • Call centres were never enabled for WFH due to infrastructure limitations.
  • 40-60% resources in these processes are idle given that all desktops cannot be moved from workplaces due to the lockdown.
  • Impact on call volumes: Demand reduction in several pockets and a surge in other areas. Overall volumes have shot up 2x while ~40% of the staff is functional. Organizations are trying to cross-train people but face an uphill struggle. For example, a multinational financial services corporation has requested resources with dispute processing skills.
  • Spike seen across credit balance refunds, card disputes collections, and direct debit.
  • Decreased volumes for new business requests.

Third party contact centres:

Some FS GCCs use third party BPOs for customer facing processes wherein the struggle has been two-fold:

  • Ensuring all third party BPO employees have laptops issued.
  • Remote access: Giving remote access is proving troublesome as vendor employees were never equipped access client servers from home. For example, 25% employees of a global business process management company are functional and 40-50% of an American business services company.

Work has stopped where global clients have expressed issues with data security and are not comfortable with work from home for third party vendors employees.

Mitigation measures: GCCs can take some of the following measures to ensure an improvement in service levels.

  • Rapid shift towards digital channels.
  • Only servicing critical call types call, such as lost cards.
  • Securing approval for critical employees to work from office from a sanitized floor.

Purchasing emergency laptops and working with local authorities (such as, district magistrate) to distribute laptops/desktop stuck in office to employees.

  • Extended shifts (12-14 hours, 7 days a week) with overtime payments for employees with working laptops while the remaining are given have system access.
  • Looking at temp support across Big 4 and similar organizations.
  • Restoring work to originating regions.
  • Providing dongles/data cards along with lump sum allowances to employees for seamless broadband connection to work from home.
  • Cross skilling of teams to use spare capacity available as demand has gone down in some areas.

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Summary

In current circumstances, global capability centres can play a crucial role in enabling enterprise stability and smooth functioning of its parent organization’s business continuity plan.

About this article

By EY India

Multidisciplinary professional services organization