Phil Fersht
CEO and Chief Analyst

Phil Fersht is widely recognized as the world’s leading industry analyst focused on the reinvention of business operations due to technological innovations and the globalization of talent.

He identifies change agents enabling organizations to streamline digital operations, access rapid and critical data to base decisions, and exploit the increasingly available global talent base. He coined the term Generative Enterprise™ in 2023 to articulate the pursuit of AI technologies based on large language models (LLMs) and ChatGPT to reap huge business benefits to organizations in terms of continuously generating new ideas, redefining how work gets done, and disrupting business models steeped in decades of antiquated processes and technology.

With more than two decades of experience, he has a global reputation for calling out the big trends, being unafraid to share his honest views, and driving a narrative on the technology and business services industries that shape many leadership decisions. His reputation drove him to establish HFS Research in 2010. It has become a leading industry analyst and advisory firm and is the undisputed leader in IT business services and process technologies research.

In 2012, he authored the first analyst report on robotic process automation (RPA), introducing this topic to the industry. He is widely recognized as the pioneering analyst voice that created and inspired today’s RPA and process AI industry.

Fersht coined the term OneOffice™ in 2016 to describe HFS Research’s vision for future business operations amidst the impact of cloud, automation, AI, and disruptive digital business models. OneOffice is the foundation of the hybrid (virtual-physical) workforce, where automation and AI tools augment the employee’s digital capabilities, and the workplace becomes a plug-and-play, work-from-anywhere scenario. Silos between front, middle, and back offices are collapsed into a single office, where all employees are empowered and motivated by common outcomes and common values. In 2022, he coined the term OneEcosystem™, which extends the principles of OneOffice beyond the walls of the enterprise, and collaboration and connections between organizations across the customer life cycle drive innovation.

Before founding HFS in 2010, Phil held various analyst roles for Gartner (AMR) and IDC and was BPO Marketplace leader for Deloitte Consulting across the United States. Over the past 20 years, Fersht has lived and worked in Europe, North America, and Asia, advising on hundreds of operations strategy, outsourcing, and global business services engagements.

He is also the author and creator of the most widely read and acclaimed blog in the global services industry, Horses for Sources, now entering its fourteenth year of publication. He regularly contributes to key media publications and is frequently a keynote speaker at major industry events, such as NASSCOM, ANDI, ABSL, Sourcing Interests Group, and HFS Research FORA Summits. He has been named Analyst of the Year on three occasions by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations, which voted on 170 other leading IT industry analysts.

He received a Bachelor of Science, with Honors, in European Business and Technology from Coventry University, UK, and a Diplôme Universitaire de Technologie in Business and Technology from the University of Grenoble, France. He also has a diploma from the Market Research Society in the UK and is an expert in quantitative and qualitative research techniques. He also trains analysts on how to write in a succinct, high-impact style, applying his Five Rules of Writing, which differentiates the HFS analyst voice.

  • During Part I, we talked about social media and marketing, a little bit about outsourcing, and touched upon the late-night cannoli...Read More

  • Wang / Fersht uncut. Part I

    August 02, 2010 |

    Analysts Phil Fersht and Ray Wang air some recent discussions on the world of social media and the convergence of software delivery and outsourcing... here's part IRead More

  • Herding primadonnas… Welcome to Wendy’s world

    July 29, 2010 |

    Imagine a job where good work is rarely praised and people can only complain that you somehow messed up?Read More

  • New HfS Report – Desperately Seeking Innovation in BPO: Enterprises Speak Out

    July 24, 2010 |

    Innovation is now the critical ingredient for most buyers of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services –unequivocally proven by a new HfS Research study of 588 shared services and outsourcing executives. This report dives into the experiences and expectations of today’s enterprise BPO buyers when it comes to achieving innovation, and offers actionable recommendations for devising a strategy to improve their innovation agenda with their BPO endeavor. Read More

  • HfS Research shows some analyst horsepower

    July 19, 2010 |

    HfS Research ranks 15th in the latest analyst "power rankings" by ARInsights, a dynamic content rich database that contains comprehensive information on 5,511 analysts from 694 different firms.Read More

  • A Cloudy Future for Microsoft?

    July 18, 2010 |

    Microsoft urgently needs to address its approach to Cloud Computing, together with the closely related tablet and smart phone markets, if it wants to avoid falling further behind the likes of Google and Apple in these interrelated markets.Read More

  • A mad, rad day for HR technology and outsourcing

    July 16, 2010 |

    Anyone in the HR industry knows the best show of the year - and always the most entertaining - is the HR Technology conference in Chicago each September. And this year's effort promises to be the best so far.Read More

  • The rumors are true – we’re actually doing some research

    July 15, 2010 |

    We're developing a fully-fledged research agenda which we will be excited to announce in September, when we will also be annoucing the arrival of some new analysts. So feel free to visit our new RESEARCH LIBRARY and check out what we're writing about.Read More

  • Hewitt into AON: a sad, bad day for HR Outsourcing?

    July 12, 2010 |

    Waking up this morning to hear the news of Hewitt's acquisition by AON signalled a sad, bad day for HR Outsourcing. The HRO industry is now consolidating faster than any of us imagined... forget ADP/Workscape, this is BIG - and leaves the global HRO market with three major global HRO enterprise-level providers - IBM, NGA and Xerox (ACS) Read More

  • Service providers siloed by vertical industry are stifling innovation with clients

    July 08, 2010 |

    To win more business, outsourcing service providers must innovate by creating and unleashing a multi-client collaborative model that isn’t restricting their clients to their industry vertical silos. HfS research reveals clients’ desire to collaborate with non-competitive firms in other industries is much more powerful; they are reticent to collaborate with firms within their own industry sector. New service delivery models must emerge between collaborating partners that will help them innovate. Read More