Everyone we talk to these days has become a data governance obsessive, regardless of their role.  Whether it’s ensuring data flows are effective across front to back office to align customer engagement with employee effectiveness, or accessing external data up and down our supply chains to stay ahead of our competitors and cement strategic partnerships.Read More

Posted in : Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), IT Outsourcing / IT Services, OneOffice, smac-and-big-data

OneOffice is a mindset where we break down all the silos and barriers that connect customers, employees, and partners. OneOffice is where we have processes that deliver front-to-back dataflows where we can unify our desired outcomes, how we measure success, employee effectiveness, and engage our external partners most effectively. It is how our organizations can function most effectively in today’s virtual environment across borders, business ecosystems and complex supply chains. Read More

Posted in : Artificial Intelligence, Digital Transformation, intelligent-automation, Natural-Language-Processing, OneOffice, Process Discovery, Process Mining, Robotic Process Automation

Almost every business has evolved its business model over the pandemic era as their customers’ needs are changing to remain effective and competitive in this virtual environment.  And it’s been no different for analyst firms like HFS, where enterprises demand immediate help and advice to be delivered remotely and rapidly in an intimate, personal environment.  Analysts must cut through the 3000-foot view and present practical, hype-free advice to customers is they want to be credible.Read More

Posted in : Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), IT Outsourcing / IT Services, Outsourcing Advisors

HFS Sustainability Practice Leader Josh Matthews on stage at COP26 with executives from BMW and Accenture (Click to Enlarge)

 Anyone familiar with our analyst team knows how passionately analyst Josh Matthews has beaten the sustainability drum since he joined us three years ago (when no one cared about sustainability).  So we sent him along to the COP26 world climate change global political summit, not only to wake up Joe Biden,  but also to share some unfiltered and uncomfortable truths among all the corporate fluff… so over to Josh for his takeaways…Read More

Posted in : governance-practices-and-tools, sustainability

One of the most notable turnarounds in recent IT services history has been the remarkable increase in revenue and profit performance of Wipro since Thierry Delaporte took the helm 18 months ago just as the Pandemic was in full throttle.  Over the past few quarters, the firm has posted close to double-digital revenue growth and will surpass the $10 billion revenue level.  Thierry moved swiftly to make restructure the firm around geographic regions while simplifying its management structure, and he also brought in some new faces from the outside to add fresh ideas, energy and focus to implement his plans.Read More

Posted in : IT Outsourcing / IT Services, Outsourcing Heros, sales-and-marketing

One of the most over-criticized service providers of the past couple of years has been Cognizant. The company which rocketed from $1bn-$15bn in 15 years took full advantage of the pre and post-Great Recession offshore boom, the directionless years of Wipro and Infosys, and a lovable arrogance… which even scared the hell out of Accenture.  And all this was achieved with very few changes to its leadership team and an entrepreneurial spirit which was the envy of the IT services industry.Read More

Posted in : Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), IT Outsourcing / IT Services

We’re excited to unveil our eagerly-awaited Top Ten report covering Native Automation Services (click here for your copy).  In short, Native Automation services leverage a range of emerging technologies to create intelligent and automated workflows in the cloud enabling new “native” standards for consistent cross-functional enterprise operations.  Let’s remind ourselves that automation is not your strategy.  It is the necessary native discipline to ensure your processes provide the data – at speed – to achieve your business outcomes. Hence you have to approach all future automation in the cloud if you want your processes to run effectively end-to-end.Read More

Posted in : Artificial Intelligence, intelligent-automation, Robotic Process Automation

Almost two decades after its landmark acquisition of PwC Consulting, IBM Global Business Services (GBS) is now IBM Consulting. Just another industry rebrand, you say? Botox for GBS? Not so fast. .Read More

Posted in : Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Digital Transformation, intelligent-automation, IT Outsourcing / IT Services, OneOffice

“Freedom” appears to be the current central theme of individuals who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19m as one of many reasons for refusing to be protected against the deadliest pandemic in over a hundred years. It is essential to recognize that many reasons for not getting vaccinated can be overcome by the enormous data we now have, with over 45% of the world’s population vaccinated with over 6 billion doses.

The data shows that the vaccine effectively prevents deaths and serious illness, the side effects are marginal compared to the effects of COVID-19, and it is the only way to get back to the normal we are desperately seeking to experience again. That translates into supporting all those on the front lines as well as evangelizing vaccinations.

Healthcare workers and teachers are not the villains here

Healthcare workers have gone from being heroes that we cheered at the Pandemic’s peak to being threatened, ridiculed, and harassed in recent months. A school association (NSBA), representing locally-elected school board officials that oversee more than 50 million US public school students, has requested the FBI and President Biden to provide them with protection due to the increased threat levels to officials and teachers.

These threats are in response to healthcare workers and teachers encouraging vaccination or enforcing mask mandates, both intended to help protect individuals from contracting COVID-19. In a civil society, threats are a non-starter in any facet. To harass those who protect and cure us of diseases, to threaten those that educate our young minds is unacceptable and unfathomable.

Such behaviors could have profound implications when there is already a high turnover of healthcare workers, sometimes 100% attrition in a typical year, which could very quickly translate into a critical shortage. Our kids are performing below average compared to other OECD countries, and lacking teachers will make the US even less competitive than we are already headed.

We must balance vaccine mandates: If those who are providing services are vaccinated, then those receiving those services must also be vaccinated

The federal government has mandated vaccines to all its employees, as have many states and cities. Corporate America has taken its cue from that mandate to issue its corporate mandates for vaccinations. Many enterprises, including hospitals systems, are issuing ultimatums to their employees to be vaccinated or lose their employment.

The holistic effort to vaccinate vast populations either through free access or mandates appears to be effective with about 66% of the US population over the age of 12 being fully vaccinated and the delta variant on the retreat.

Freedom is a fair concept and must be equally dispensed. If those who are providing services are vaccinated, then those getting those services must also be vaccinated. That would be reasonable to ensure that everybody has a level of protection.

Protect our people to return to business as usual

The airline business has been returning to a level of normality given the strict protocols in place for testing and vaccination. Restaurants in certain cities are experiencing some “normal” due to protocols in place for vaccine evidence. Such examples are beginning to expand across the US and globally.

A critical driver of that return to normal has been the vaccine, which has been highly effective and will likely continue to improve on its efficacy with the boosters. This data is important to support the need for a wider proliferation of vaccines.  For example, recent data from the US shows that 50,000 “breakthrough” cases from the delta variant with vaccinated citizens only resulted in 59 actual hospitalizations. 

Consequently, corporations and small businesses must have the freedom to do what they need to protect their people. Keeping their employees safe is paramount, and if that means mandating vaccines or refusing services to those who are not vaccinated, so be it. This is the path to going back to being in business as usual and enjoying the fruits of freedom.

The bottom line: Freedom must be an equal opportunity right; if individuals choose not to get vaccinated or refuse to mask up because they do not want to surrender their freedom to a mandate, then they must accept not getting healthcare or education, or other services from establishments that have a vaccine or mask policy.

Nurses and teachers are two of our most trusted professions. If we vilify and threaten them how will the rest of the society fair? So, we are calling upon corporations, small businesses, and individuals to help enable healthcare workers and teachers to refuse services to individuals who are not vaccinated and refuse to do so. Healthcare workers must be allowed to refuse treatment in non-emergency conditions as should teachers be allowed to refuse to teach kids who will not be vaccinated or wear a mask in a public setting. In these unparalleled times, we must protect each other to return to the lives we cherish. That is the only way forward.

Posted in : governance-practices-and-tools, Healthcare, policy-and-regulations

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The banking and financial services sector remains the largest market for IT and business process services and is generally regarded as one of the most aggressive in terms of emerging tech adoption. However, do not confuse the spend and the adoption with digital transformation. So much of what gets done in established banks and capital markets firms is all about care and feeding of some of the largest and most complex tech stacks and business processes in the world. As with the rest of the planet, the pandemic exposed the lack of digital transformation achieved by established financial services firms.

Many subsegments of the financial services sector were 100% certain they were digitally transformed pre-pandemic. It took a global crisis to lay bare the precise lack of connectivity between glossy front-end customer engagement interfaces and the myriad of aging back-office systems that actually run financial services firms. The post-pandemic imperative is rapid modernization across all BFS subsectors, with implicit cloudification and digital optimization to connect the front to back. This is only achievable with a collaborative ecosystem approach. This is where service provider partners came up big during the pandemic.

Our BFS practice lead, Elena Christopher, weighs in to share the results of our 2021 Banking and Financial Services research on the leading service providers specialized in supporting BFS customers.

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Elena, what did you learn?

Well, aside from a searing validation of the myth of digital transformation in BFS markets, the pandemic served as the ultimate reality check of what happens when digital CX is not linked to the back office and employee and partner enablement. This pursuit of the OneOffice yielded three core study themes around context, collaboration, and creativity.

1. Context. The pandemic ultimately helped BFS firms and their service partners prioritize their transformation needs with leading priorities centering around payments modernization, core banking transformation, and enhanced digital experiences for its customers. In all cases, the cloudification of legacy or migrating applications to platform solutions increasingly offered as managed services enabled the transformation. Digital enablers such as Triple-A Trifecta tech (automation, AI, and analytics) are increasingly embedded in engagements as native enablers rather than as engagements in their own right. This is transformation contextualized for BFS.
2. Collaboration. You can’t achieve contextual transformation alone—at least not at pace or with guaranteed success. IT and business process service providers are critical partners to help BFS firms on their change journeys. Part of their value is their ability to help curate partnerships and form collaborative ecosystems of services expertise, technologies, hyperscale cloud capabilities, and industry expertise. It is this collaboration across partnerships and ecosystems that fosters exponential speed and value.
3. Creativity. Driving differentiation as a provider of IT and business process services to the BFS sector is hard work. It’s a highly competitive, crowded market, often ruled by incumbents. Its strong sourcing culture is perhaps over-focused on the best deal rather than the best outcomes. Aside from table stakes investments in offerings, talent, and tech, providers are getting creative with commercial and engagement models such as modernized managed services offerings. They are also finding digital whitespace in neglected corners of the BFS market, such as wealth management, retirement, commercial banking, and capital market front-office capabilities.

Which service providers are really helping BFS enterprises make an impact?

For the BFS study, we assessed 18 service providers who specialize in industry-specific services across banking and financial services value chain. We opted to break the results into two reports:

• The 2021 HFS Top 10: Banking and Financial Services—The Best of the Best Service Providers report examines the capabilities of the ten largest service providers to BFS clients. These providers have full value chain coverage across banking and capital markets, revenue of $1.5B+ and 20,000+ BFS-dedicated headcount. Enterprises assessing providers should think of this lot as your end-to-end transformation partners.
• The 2021 HFS Market Analysis: Banking and Financial Services Formidable Challengers report features eight IT and business process service providers offering differentiated approaches to meeting the industry-specific needs of banking and financial services clients. They may not be as large as the firms featured in the BFS Top 10, but they routinely punch above their weight delivering contextual transformation enabled by deep subdomain process expertise and enviable applied technology capabilities. Enterprises assessing providers should think of this group as specialists.

For the Top 10, we assessed 10 service providers across execution, innovation, OneOffice alignment, and voice of the customer criteria. The top five leaders are 1. Infosys, 2. TCS, 3. Accenture, 4. Wipro, and 5. HCL. These leaders’ shared characteristics include deep industry expertise across BFS subsegments combined with strong consulting, design, and IT and business process expertise, continued identifiable investments and growth in their BFS businesses, strong cultures of innovation, deep and ever-evolving third-party partnerships, internal OneOffice alignment enabling a comprehensive external approach with clients, the ability to deliver business outcomes, and exceptional customer experience.

Some specific call-outs on the BFS Top 10 leaderboard:

• Infosys secured the #1 position overall, successfully defending its title from 2019. What helped Infosys prevail across our four evaluation pillars was essentially continued investment and refinement of its capabilities leading to notable new client wins, deal expansion, and ultimately customers reaping the benefits of business outcomes. We specifically took note of its growth throughout the pandemic, ongoing investment in onshore and nearshore regional operations, big deal wins – most notable of which is Vanguard retirement, but complemented by wins with regional and mid-tier banks like Indiana-based Old National.
• TCS grabbed the #2 spot overall, driven by a commanding performance in Execution and OneOffice alignment. We took note of its sustained growth during the pandemic, regional investment like its roll-out of Pace Port innovation centers, and its continued focus on selling beyond the CIOs’ office.
• Accenture nabbed the #3 spot overall led by its top innovation performance and top three performance in Execution and OneOffice. What stood out for us was its strong investment in IP, notably its myIndustry offerings for BFS, clear connective tissue between its big investments in cloud and how that helps BFS clients, and one of the best partner ecosystems.
• Wipro’s continued investment in its BFS capabilities, including its recent mega-acquisition of Capco, helped it secure the #1 position in growth, #2 spot in strategy and vision, and the #2 spot in depth and breadth of capabilities.
• Cognizant secured the #5 position in strategy and vision, buoyed by strong investments in leadership and enhanced capabilities. Its customers also came through, recognizing its progress moving from IT provider to strategic partner, scoring it the #4 slot.
• IBM scored the #2 spot for scale, driven by its global footprint and capabilities. Its ongoing investments in innovation helped it score well across the board, ranking it no lower than #4 in any innovation categories and #3 overall. It Banking and Financial Markets group formalized an array of powerful services capabilities around core banking, payments, digital banking transformation, capital markets, intelligent security, risk, and compliance. Oh yeah and cloud.
• HCL secured the #2 position in co-innovation and collaboration, driven by its continued commitment to partnership beyond the contract. The firm also landed the #3 spot in growth.
• EY, a new addition to this year’s study, fared well across the board, securing a top-five position in execution and leading VOC.

For the Formidable Challengers report, we assessed eight service providers across execution, innovation, OneOffice alignment, and voice of the customer criteria. The top three leaders are:

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Details on notable performances from our BFS Formidable Challengers include:

• Genpact was our #1 Formidable Challenger for BFS services. The firm shored up its BFS leadership in its consumer banking segment with strong hires from within the industry. This is driving renewed focus and growth, including geographic expansion with some recent UK and Europe wins under its belt. The acquisition of Rightpoint and consolidation of design and experience assets under the Rightpoint brand are driving effective tip of the spear transformation engagements. HFS notes the continued investment in new and improved CORA for banking assets and its cloud transformation capabilities that contemplate process reinvention. It also has notable strength in financial crimes compliance.
• Mphasis earned the #2 spot for Formidable Challengers driven by its unbroken growth streak despite the pandemic, putting up 13% growth year over year. About 80% of new deals are sourced proactively, and its average big deal size has more than doubled. Its new pandemic-driven offering is NextOps, a framework for reimagining digital operations. Mphasis recently opened a nearshore center in the UK to expand its footprint in the local region for its BFS business.
• Tech Mahindra secured the #3 slot for Formidable Challengers. While TechM is a $5B company, its BFS business is smaller than its TWITCH competitors’, allowing it to retain a certain nimbleness. Strategic M&A has been a strong growth lever for TechM, with several design-focused acquisitions boosting digital CX and design capabilities and a payments business to bolster its platform capabilities. It launched new offerings spurred by the pandemic, such as video-KYC and mobile customer on-boarding. TechM’s BFS growth is largely through expansion within existing accounts, often supported by co-innovation initiatives and funds.
• EXL and Sutherland secured the #1 and #2 spots in Voice of the Customer, underscoring the close ties these BPO-led firms have cultivated with their clients.
• LTI made it into the top three for Execution led by its supercharged growth and strong depth and breadth of capabilities across the BFS value chain.

We always go deep on Voice of the Customer to round out our research. Any notable take-aways here, Elena?

In a nutshell, BFS firms pick their service partners based on execution criteria, not innovation potential. This needs to change.

We did deep-dive interviews with over 50 BFS firms as part of our VOC research for this study. We observed that BFS firms select their providers based on execution-oriented criteria such as delivery quality, array of services, and industry and domain expertise rather than leading with innovation criteria such as advisory, digital expertise, automation, or partnership ecosystem. Downstream in the relationship, when assessing satisfaction, BFS firms have the highest levels of satisfaction with execution, while innovation capabilities leave something to be desired. If BFS firms want to get real about transformation and results, they need to prioritize innovation as part of the perfect partner capabilities mix.

Click here to access the full reports folks:

• The 2021 HFS Top 10: Banking and Financial Services—The Best of the Best Service Providers
• The 2021 HFS Market Analysis: Banking and Financial Services Formidable Challengers

Posted in : Banking, BFSI, Digital Transformation, OneOffice