Agentic AI
Global Business Services
Employee Journey
Why User Experience Is the Secret Weapon of High-Performing GBS Teams
Discover why user experience is critical to GBS success and how empowering every team member to shape daily interactions can drive better operations and strategic impact.
In most Global Business Services conversations, the headline topics are cost reduction, automation, and standardization. User experience rarely makes the agenda. But according to Jan Nikus, Vice President of KONE Business Services, that's exactly the problem, and fixing it has become central to how KONE's GBS operates.
"We have been investing heavily for the past three years in UX," Jan shared on the GBS Rewired podcast. The investment wasn't driven by a trend or a top-down mandate. It was driven by a frustration that many GBS leaders will recognise: the strategic case for expanding GBS scope was clear, the senior leadership alignment was there, and yet momentum stalled. Why?
The answer, Jan concluded, was friction. Not strategic friction — operational friction. The day-to-day noise created by processes that were difficult to use, results that business users couldn't trust, and interactions that simply made people's working lives harder.
What makes KONE's approach distinctive is how deeply UX has been tied to business strategy, not just operational improvement. When KONE launched its corporate strategy called "Rise," one of its central commitments was to become the company that is easiest to work for. GBS was immediately implicated.
"We want to make sure that our people in our country units have the time and the ability to drive profitable growth," Jan explained. When business users across 60,000 employees and 50 countries are spending mental energy navigating clunky processes, that's capacity taken away from what matters most.
Framing UX this way changes the internal conversation entirely. It's no longer a service delivery metric; it's a competitive enabler.
One of the most important distinctions Jan draws is between process efficiency and user experience. GBS teams have historically been optimised for the former: speed, accuracy, cost. But a process can be technically efficient while still being deeply frustrating for the person on the other end of it.
True UX improvement, in Jan's framework, comes down to three things:
These principles don't require complex technology to implement. They require a mindset shift across the entire team.
Perhaps the most honest insight Jan shares is this: top-down strategy alone won't move the needle. With nearly 10 million business transactions processed annually, the UX a business user actually experiences is shaped by thousands of individual interactions — not by strategic documents or platform investments.
"It's UX everywhere, UX everybody, and UX every day," he said. That's a fundamentally different ask than rolling out a new tool or publishing a service catalogue. It means every person in the GBS team becomes a conscious contributor to the experience they deliver.
For GBS leaders looking to expand their influence and prove their value, that's both the challenge and the opportunity. The organisations getting this right aren't just running smoother operations, they're building the kind of internal reputation that earns them a seat at the table when strategic decisions are made.
To listen to our full conversation, check out the GBS Rewired podcast here, and listen to Jan’s episode on Why User Experience is Critical to the Success of GBS.
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