How GCCs are paving the way for rapid AI innovation and adoption

Envision entering a home improvement store where you can immerse yourself in a multitude of room designs and layouts, brought to life by the synergy of AI, Spatial Computing, and Augmented Reality. This transformative experience, enabled by the Global Capability Center (GCC) of a Fortune 50 company, has redefined customer journey engagement within the industry.

GCCs are rapidly evolving into AI innovation hubs, offering comprehensive ecosystems that foster the development, testing, and implementation of groundbreaking ideas. A key aspect of their effectiveness is providing enterprises access to the three Ts: Talent, Technology, and Tools.

Access to exceptional talent across a wide array of both mainstream and specialized skills—including scrum masters, product managers, DevOps engineers, front and back-end developers, and UX/UI designers—is the paramount reason for the success of GCCs as hubs for AI-led innovation. The availability of this diverse skill set is what drives the development and refinement of AI models at every stage, from the initial proof of concept to final product testing, positioning GCCs at the forefront of AI innovation.

GCCs also serve as strategic conduits to emerging startups and research institutions. By cultivating robust partnerships, GCCs gain access to innovative applications of emerging new technologies. Moreover, partnerships with startups and educational institutions empower GCCs to tap into a diverse pool of specialized technical talent, driving expertise across critical subject areas. This collaborative model has proven highly effective, as evidenced by the numerous Indian GCCs that have successfully incubated startups and developed disruptive products and services.

Enhancing this powerful synergy of talent and technology, GCCs enable enterprises to fully leverage AI through a robust development ecosystem. Offering an extensive suite of advanced development environments, rigorous testing frameworks, and industry-leading project management solutions, GCCs streamline the entire AI development lifecycle. In fact, many GCCs go a step further by establishing dedicated incubation spaces or innovation labs, where teams can swiftly prototype and iterate on disruptive AI concepts and accelerate the time-to-market.

Powering Innovation Across the Entire Product Lifecycle

From the initial proof of concept, to building and deploying the final product, here’s how GCCs create the optimal environment to catalyze AI-led innovation across every stage of the product development lifecycle:  

Idea Incubation and PoC: During the ideation stage, GCCs cultivate an environment optimized for exploring cutting-edge technologies like Generative AI, machine learning (ML), and data analytics. Partnering with disruptive tech startups and research institutions facilitates knowledge exchange and state-of-the-art research. Skilled developers are instrumental in the development of the PoC and analyzing its technical feasibility, whereas data scientists enable the development of sophisticated algorithms and model building. 

Prototyping and Refinement: The iterative nature of product development requires the presence of swift feedback loops, enabling rapid adjustments and fine-tuning of features on the basis of feedback. The ability to quickly understand how users interact with the prototype enables developers to rapidly adjust and fine-tune the product, ensuring it aligns with the needs of the user base. UX and UI designers help optimize wireframing and visual design, while quality assurance engineers ensure that feedback is accurately interpreted and integrated into subsequent iterations, enhancing the quality and functionality of the final product. This proficiency in advanced development techniques enabled by the GCC allows for quicker turnaround times and higher precision in refining AI solutions.

Alignment with Company Objectives: GCCs are dedicated innovation hubs where ideas are systematically conceived, rigorously evaluated, and effectively integrated into the broader strategic vision of the enterprise. After AI tools and systems have been thoroughly tested and optimized, GCCs help in scaling these solutions in a manner that is aligned with the company’s overarching goals and operational frameworks, facilitating a cohesive and efficient adoption process. Not just that, as a fully functioning prototype of the enterprise, GCCs enable the testing of new products and features within a controlled subset before it is applied to the entire organization. 

The Real World Impact: Leveraging AI to Enable Critical Business Goals 

If results are the true test of success, then GCCs have undoubtedly proven their worth. Here’s how three India-based GCCs are actively harnessing Gen AI and ML algorithms to reduce turnaround times, personalize customer experiences, and drive eCommerce transformation.

95% Faster Turnaround for a US Retailer

The Bengaluru-based GCC of a prominent U.S. apparel retailer plays a pivotal role across its technology, analytics, merchandising, finance, marketing, and digital operations. Leveraging Gen AI tools such as Adobe Firefly and Jasper.ai, its marketing team achieved remarkable efficiencies, producing diverse graphic and content assets with a 95% faster turnaround and significantly reduced costs. Furthermore, the merchandising team optimized website operations through intelligent product categorization and tagging, obviating the necessity for additional hiring.

Patient-Centric Care with GenAI

The Indian GCC of a German healthcare provider developed an "AI Pathway Companion," a GenAI-powered tool integrating longitudinal patient data. This tool correlates insights from various sources into a unified data model, enabling the company to provide more personalized care. The GCC has also developed over 40 products and solutions with GenAI as its core technology.

A Data-Driven E-commerce Transformation

A Chilean multinational retailer's Bangalore GCC implemented GenAI enhancements on their e-commerce platform, significantly improving the customer experience. The click-through rate increased by 5% due to improved search relevance, while product recommendations boosted revenue by 20%. Data engineering saw a significant transformation: from weeks to just a day and a half, thanks to GenAI, marking a substantial leap in efficiency.

Gen AI and GCCs - a Cycle of Enablement

As many as 90% of GCCs plan to explore the diverse use cases of Gen AI in 2025, enabling a wide range of critical business goals in their roles as centers of excellence by leveraging generative AI, machine learning, data analytics, augmented reality, robotic process automation, and many other such disruptive technologies. 

From creating diverse datasets for training and validating machine learning models, to analyzing vast amounts of textual data to identify market trends and consumer sentiments, innovative GCCs will work towards delivering a “superapp” experience to the enterprise, one that is specifically tailored to its business goals, requirements, and technological needs.

As GCCs continue to be the driving force behind AI innovation, the question for enterprises is no longer about whether to adopt AI, but how quickly they can harness the capabilities of these centers to stay competitive. Is your GCC prepared to leverage AI to not only meet the demands of today but to lead your organization into the future?

Vivek Sharma

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Vivek Sharma is Vice President, Engineering at ANSR.