Controller, Chief Accounting Officer & Principal Accounting Officer, Gannett
Search every verified Cindy Gallagher interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Cindy Gallagher, Controller, Chief Accounting Officer & Principal Accounting Officer at Gannett, has shared her perspectives on the future of global business services (GBS) in several podcast appearances. In a 2022 interview, Gallagher stated that robotic process automation (RPA) in its current form "will be dead" within ten years, predicting it will become a commodity similar to a Microsoft Office product. She also said that physical service centers will be "more dead than alive" but that a hybrid model will persist, and she expressed the view that artificial intelligence has not yet proven to be all it was hyped to be but has not been given a long enough runway. Gallagher emphasized that GBS leaders must challenge their teams to explore new service offerings and adapt delivery models to keep the centralized model alive as the "backbone of the organization." In earlier appearances, Gallagher discussed the importance of upskilling and reskilling the workforce for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, arguing that traditional learning and development platforms are necessary but insufficient. She advocated for C-level leadership dedicated to learning and development separate from traditional HR. Gallagher also described her approach at Discovery Communications, where she said the organization needed to listen more to customers and stakeholders, and she changed recruiting practices to seek people with a mindset of change and transformation rather than purely transactional skills. She noted that humans remain essential for cultural empathy, problem solving, and decision making, even as automation advances.
“I think they'll be alive but I think they'll look very different. The BPO model has shifted a lot as you know over the last 30 years. There's the model where captive centers try to transform the work and send it to the BPO. As we've learned that model results in slow transition of work and takes a lot of time to reach...”
“They will be more dead than alive but we're going to find ourselves living in a hybrid model probably for my entire lifetime. In that we began shifting 485 roles to our provider in December of 2020. So far all of this has been accomplished without a single foot in a physical center for either the BPO provider or us.”
“Current form it'll be dead. RPA will be a commodity to me, it'll be much like a Microsoft Office product. New joiners into our organization will probably start to list RPA skills and tools and things they have experience with on their resume just like they do their other credentials.”
“I think it'll be alive. I think there's a lot of return on investment with AI when it's implemented and managed correctly and AI so far hasn't proven to be all that it's been hyped up to be but I don't think we've given it a long enough runway and I don't think enough in the GBS field have harnessed the power of AI to...”
About Season 2 In this engaging conversation, GBS leaders answer the DEAD or ALIVE Questions related to the ...
The key to a smooth transition into the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the ability to seamlessly upskill and reskill the workforce.
Since shared services were established back in the 80s, technology has rocketed forward in sophistication and digitally capable ...
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