The more the corporation utilizes the GSC model, the more our ability to perform basic business operations crumbles. Who has GSC horror stories to share?
21 replies (most recent on top)
It will end when Chapter 11 or 13 bankruptcy protection is announced.
soon the GSC nightmare will end, Genpact will fix everything! XD
I met with newly hired management from Costa Rica before the GSC was built. They were hired and beginning to build teams, but the GSC was not constructed. At that time, many in Corporate were taking on tasks and roles to support Canada, and told they would be COE for the Americas........only to find out later their jobs would go to Costa Rica GSC. The management discretely came to HQ and part of their presentation in the meetings they talked about previously being a manufacturing HUB, but not tranisitioning into a services HUB because the US was moving so much manufacturing back at lower wages. This seems part of the larger plan over time to keep wages low until the US is willing to compete and do the jobs for much, much cheaper.
Let's not forget Roman's townhall where he shared race metrics comparing 3M to other top peers. This is only a US metric. By cutting US employees of a certain race and sending that job to the GSCs, it reduces the denominator in the metrics. Example, if you have 5 US employees (4 white and 1 black) that is 20% black. Cutting a white US employee and sending the job to a GSC means you now have 4 US employees (1 black) which is 25% black. That increases a racial metric, but doesn't actually do the thing the metric is truly designed to do, which is help create positions/opportunities for under represented talent of a particular race. 3M is using GSCs to play political number games to appease US government (for contracts) and the media (for better PR). Not that this is their pure motivation for cuts and GSC outsourcing, rather a fringe benefit. Their true motives are to reduce SG&A (sales general and administrative) costs as a % of sales. This is a key metric to investors, and the only other way to improve it would be to increase sales. Hard to increase sales given all the reasons other posters have mentioned in their GSC experiences, as well as the fact 3M has no LEADERSHIP!
SKU setup is still a f'ing nightmare - GSCs take forever to set up SKUs for anything. It was bad before SAP, now with SAP it is literally costing 3M millions of dollars a day.
Six weeks is typical for even simple SKU setups.
I've seen programs grind to a halt for months due to the GSC being unable to get SKUs set up in timely fashion. NPIs programs delayed, even factory lines idled with supplier changes.
Even simple packaging artwork changes take 6 or more weeks to process, then we face the supplier lead-time.
Maybe because plenty of people were laid off in various teams and their tasks were not passed to someone else? Service desk was asked to prepare knowledge transfer for Capgemini, which leaves employees wondering whether to leave before they get a much dreaded invitation to a 10min meeting with HR. Plenty decided to look for opportunities elsewhere instead of accepting the conditions offered by Genpact. Actually, more than the management expected.
No training and no KPIs - the PO and invoicing process in Asia su-ks. They don’t pick up calls or accept meetings just keep sending same emails. Robots are better 😂
Digital services GSC teams are incompetent and have no idea what they are doing - no process flows, SLAs defined and no one asks them what they have achieved.
We’re not saving money we’re throwing it down the drain on dimwits.
Don’t know who is to blame - GSC or the people in 3M tasked to manage them. It’s a shitshow anyway
3M is destroying by incompetent leadership.
there is already a GSC in India, TCOE, absorbed by 3M earlier this month, so just after massive layoffs, 3M got 360+ new employees in India - imagine that!
Disagree with the original poster. The problem is not with gscs. Its with their architecture and poor training. Fix that and they will improve. And don’t be surprised if a new one pops up in India… for obvious reasons…
In digital marketing, we were asked to let go most of the experienced folks and hire new ones in the GSCs. The experienced ones were able to actually improve things and drive growth, the GSC is there to save costs, working on standardised processes only.
We successfully stopped innovation and cut costs. In a time when everyone else innovates in digital.
Is that how we define success?
Organic growth and sales show the result. It’s a shame.
GSCs are being dismantled under SpinCo project as we speak - some people that did some work for HC business groups will be moved to external service provider Genpact (1st wave in August, 2nd sometime in late Q4), Service Desk for Spinco will be transferred to Capgemini, not sure what will happen to ParentCo - you might not like GSC model, but you might miss it if you stick in 3M long enough to see results of what "leadership" is doing ;)
GSC - Global Service Center
3M moved many business functions to a few GSCs instead of having people scattered about the many locations. As an example: A smaller country might have had 10 IT people they would theoretically under GSC have 2 local IT and most IT requests would go the GSC instead.
The GSC are supposed to handle most IT requests, many HR day to day questions, some purchasing, and a few other functions.
The three GSCs are located in Costa Rica, Poland, and Philippines.
uhhhh I r d-mb I guess... what is the GSC model. My area has nothing to do with that.... I think.
It always cracked me up when you dialed 3-1000 and the voice recording had so thick of an accent you couldn’t understand what the heck she was saying. Then someone would pick up the phone and speak perfect English.
It used to be the opposite.
I see they fixed that auto answer script recently.
Want to concur on the point on COE as tax driven initiatives- very well listed by Varys.
COE has created many redundant positions (SVP VP Directors) and made many rich.
The root problem of the GSCs and the COEs comes down to this:
One cannot give a small part of an organization a decision veto when that part's metrics are counter to the whole organization's goals.
To expand on that:
3M's primary business goal should be to grow profit and the firm, emphasis on grow. The GSCs are directly incentivized to shrink the company, and they were given an effective veto on many critical processes to accomplish their goal.
Costa Rica, Philippines, and Poland would not necessarily be huge issues, if the GSCs were actually set up, trained, and staffed to actually service and contribute to 3M's growth. Their charter is to do the bare minimum for as cheap as possible.
I will say it is odd and adds unnecessary challenge to set up GSCs in countries where the main or major language isn't the dominant language of the company. We all know the answer of 'It's cheaper'.
As a counter point: Why not rural USA, rural Canada, or one of the many English-speaking Caribbean nations for the western hemisphere? UK or Ireland for Europe? Australia, New Zealand, Guam, or even India for Asia?
COEs were similarly set up to contribute to 3M's failure. They were also set up with metrics driven to make 3M shrink, not grow, with a side helping of tax evasion.
The GSC has a YOY turnover rate around 30%, depending on the division they support. ECO's team down there is garbage. The BGs and divisions agreed to and ECO group, they never agreed to Costa Rica. They are currently trying to mimic this disaster in the Philippines for Japan.
Many companies 3M’s size already had mature GSC orgs that they’re now dismantling for a tech forward approach focused on self-service. 3M is behind the curve.
Si tiene miedo compre perro 🤙 miauu!!!
I am a director at a fortune 500 company and saw this happen. My CEO and CTO both came from PepsiCo and were hired because they had built them their India GSC. They sold it to our US leaders as this will be an additional hiring option for us and then started cutting US teams and mandating India hiring as the only option. This has greatly slowed down work!! India hires on avg give 90 days notice at their previous company (which they spend negotiating with their previous company to stay or even continue interviewing at other companies only to turn your role down 89 days after they accepted starting your recruiting efforts all over again. Also your US teams will have to adjust to early morning meetings 7am to ensure at least some overlap with the time difference. Also India holidays are also completely different days and many more than US which makes it impossible to keep teams working effectively…like 2 ships passing in the night…