Posted in : Cognitive Computing

While we were discussing the confusing realities of the RPA hype at the HfS FORA Summit, we got a sneak preview of the interim data from the 2018 State of Operations and Outsourcing Study, conducted in conjunction with KPMG, where 250 interviews with Global 2000 operations leaders have now been completed. 

We asked them where their investment priorities were currently lying when it comes to 2018 cost reduction:

Click to Enlarge

So it’s abundantly clear all the hype about rampant adoption has been warranted, and we can hang our hats on our recent enterprise robotics software and services forecast, which now appears conservative, increasing with 47% growth to $1.46bn this year (click here for full forecast):

The Bottom-line: RPA has succeeded in being positioned as the “easiest silver bullet to target that next wave of cost take-out”.  Now let the real fun and games begin…

We have discussed, argued and deliberated the true value, impact and effective ways to run RPA software for many, many hours here on HfS… for over five and a half years.  And you only need to read our recent work to conclude that “RPA often starts out like a teenage romance, with a lot of enthusiastic fumbling around that ends quickly, frequently leading to disappointment“.  And you can also read the RPA Bible, which preaches best and worst RPA practices to such an extent, you’ll need to visit your local RPA Rabbi, Bhikkhu, Priest or Mullah to find your soul again.

The real issue, here, is that the majority of enterprises are taking the plunge and investing the dollars, with 81% actually taking RPA seriously, and 53% very seriously.  So what’s going to happen in a few months when those ambitious CIOs and CFOs ask to see real, tangible demonstrations of the resultant cost takeout?  Can C-Suite leaders quickly learn to love metrics that are tied to growth, value and effectiveness, as opposed to a simple reduction in operating expenses to feel rewarded for those expensive bot licenses? Are operations leaders generally going to be ready to quantify the value effectively?  Can they really convince their superiors that there is true value impact beyond merely offering up headcount elimination? 

What’s more, what if headcount reductions were promised to offset investments, and adopters have failed to free up the workload that can enable them?  And can they reward the staff, who cooperated in the automation work, by getting them “retrained”?  Is there really a plan?  While the “one human to oversee every 10 bots” is becoming the latest robo-governance rule-of-thumb, how real is this?  Or are we just all bull*****g ourselves about the future, and merely circling the hype to stay relevant today?  Do we really care about our companies anymore, or are we more obsessed with adding big sexy initiatives to our CVs?  Is this really anything different to yesteryear, where you needed to have an SAP rollout on your CV to be a credible CIO, or oversaw a 1000 FTE outsourcing deal to prove you were worth that $1.2m/ year GBS salary (yes, that’s what some get…).  In this world of #fakenews, does anything really matter anymore, when we can spin our realities into whatever shiny new thing is out there?  

One thing is clear is that the back office needs to be submerged into the value end of the organization.  There is little more headcount elimination to be had for most companies – sure, there are still many areas that have too many people working on too few valuable tasks, and technologies like RPA are terrific tools for breathing new life into legacy systems and creating digital process flows, where before there was only spaghetti code, manual workarounds and swamps of data polluting the corporate underbelly.

One thing is clear, it’s very murky out there, and all we can really do is hatch a semi-realistic plan and try and stay on top of it as the future unravels in front of us…

Posted in : Robotic Process Automation

So here’s the biggest issue facing enterprise operations in the next couple of years:  what to do with staff impacted by automation.  Our brand new 2018 State of Operations study, conducted with KPMG, over half the Global 2000 firms surveyed believe transactional roles will be significantly impacted by automation within just a two-year timeframe:

So we thought we’d poll the 120 buyers at the new York FORA summit this morning as we asked them what they intended to do with their impacted staff:

While a good portion are already thinking about “retraining” their impacted staff to take on analytics work (21%) and help manage new tech such as RPA and ML (16%), the vast majority (40%) are just honest and reveal they just don’t know.  

Bottom-line:  We have to plan for automation better

As automation fever takes over business operations (and we’ll reveal that data next), my one plea to industry is to plan this better.  CFOs and CIOs investing $ millions in bot licenses and consultants to implement them will be expecting a return on their investment, and if operations leaders do not have a concerted plan to use the freed up man hours, you can be sure there will be intense pressure to reduce even more heads than may have been in the initial plan.

Posted in : Robotic Process Automation

Have you ever mixed business with romance?  Oh dear, that could be taken the wrong way, but our keynote speaker next week at the HfS FORA summit New York, Tim Leberecht, has literally written the book on the subject.  Tim’s session next week is one that will breathe new energy into our narrative, and the title “How to Thrive in the Robotic Age Without Losing Your Humanity” just about says it all!

So let’s hear a bit more from Tim about why he’s such a sought-after speaker and visionary on the future of work and the impact of AI…

Phil Fersht (CEO, HfS): Tim, we’re very excited to have you as one of our keynotes in New York.  So maybe you can give us some insight into how you have become a “Business Romantic.”

Tim Leberecht (Founder of The Business Romantic Society): Education-wise, my background is in the humanities and professionally, in marketing. Initially, I set out to write a book about meaning, and specifically the power of brands to serve as one of the few remaining arbiters of meaning in our societies. As I was looking into the principles of meaning-making, I realized that they were all, in effect, romantic principles: keep the mystique, foster intimacy, embrace solitude, seek adventure, suffer (a little), and so on. I had this epiphany: “Wow, I am a romantic!” In fact, I realized that romance had been the defining quality of my career—I just hadn’t been able to articulate it. The term “Business Romantic” nailed the tension I had felt all my professional life, and since the book came out in 2015, it has proven to be provocative and fruitful. Opposites attract, or as one of the interviewees for my book said: juxtaposing opposite poles make each of the poles more attractive. I haven’t met anybody yet who hasn’t had a strong reaction to the word “romance:” people either oppose it or aspire to it.

Phil: So the theme of the conference is “Learning to Change in the robotic era”… what’s your view on how we humans must adapt with all the technological change occurring? Is it more about attitudes that skillsets?  

Tim: It’s both, Phil. There are some grim reports out there, such as Bain’s recent study that predicts 30 percent of all US jobs will be automated by 2030, with the rewards of automation going mostly to the top 20 percent of earners or savvy AI investors. McKinsey estimates that 30 percent of 60 percent of all tasks in existing jobs can already be automated. Futurist Gerd Leonhard proclaims that “if you can describe your job in one sentence, chances are you might get automated,” referring to the high likelihood of process-oriented, linear, routine-based work being automated.

Entire professions will feel the consequences: not only factory workers or call-center agents but also legal research assistants, accountants, notaries, investment managers, or management consultants. While exact estimates are still disputed, clearly, massive changes to work and society are underway, and we are just beginning to grasp them. AI will dramatically alter both process and offerings in almost every industry. Every profession will have to evolve and embed AI and robotics in their processes.  AI and co-bots will become our new co-workers, and those parts of our work that can be done more efficiently will be taken over by them. Many of us will lose traditional employment, the rest of us will have to get used to hybrid work environments and collaborating with AI (and perhaps even having AI’s as bosses).

We’re definitely in a race with the machines, and it’s not one we can win unless we remind ourselves of our inherently human qualities that AI isn’t able to emulate yet: vulnerability, imagination, and character. We are elusive, inconsistent, elastic, and often erratic beings—we remain unpredictable and can change our beliefs and emotions. That makes us hard to deal with but also constitutes the very engine of progress. It’s not technology, it is our changing hearts and minds, our ever-evolving values, that is the source of innovation.

We will need to acquire not only new technical skills, but also new emotional ones, as we’ll be facing an increasing loss of control, of agency in the traditional sense. Deloitte says that 63 percent of businesses need leadership skill development for the digital future, and that many of these skills are “soft skills.” Our identities and interactions will become more fluid, as boundaries between man and machine, internal and external reality, digital and physical world continue to blur. To thrive in this age of machines, we will have to learn (again) to appreciate beautiful work and how to our work beautifully—with heart, character, and intuition. This what romanticism can teach us.

Phil: And what’s your view of this “singularity”?  Is it real, Tim, or just hype?  What is the real pace of change and disruption, as you see it?

Tim: Let’s say it is a real possibility Phil. AI is already capable of solving complex problems or performing analytical knowledge work such as legal research or content analysis. It can now learn on its own (e.g. Baidu’s Deep Speech technology can acquire a new language in a couple of hours virtually without any human oversight) and even be creative. For example, AI can compose and perform entire symphonies based on musical patterns it has studied. Or take the phenomenon of fake video created by deep learning algorithms that superimpose faces and audio on real recordings—with disturbing use cases in porn as well as politics. In architecture and design, too, it is becoming harder, if not impossible, to distinguish man-made from machine-made creations, whether it is the kind of computational design used for buildings like Amazon’s new HQ or the Shanghai Tower, or Airbnb developing an AI-based product design service that converts design sketches into prototypes without any human oversight. Amazon has even developed an AI-based fashion designer. Plus, AI can now create and train its own AI, as Google recently announced.

Just last week, a collective of leading AI researchers and civil society organizations sounded alarm about the accelerated development of AI and urged human regulation and common standards. Much of the immediate doomsday scenarios may be overstated, but AI is certainly on a fast track to morphing into Artificial General Intelligence that could potentially overpower humans—not because it outperforms us in every single dimension of our intelligence, but because it may disrupt enough of our social fabric and humanity to throw us into catastrophic turmoil.

We will need to find a way to redistribute wealth to avoid growing social divides and unrest, as well as the phenomenon of a new class of dispensable workers (many of them, as recent study by the World Economic Forum has shown, will be female workers) – a new “useless class,” as Yuval Noah Harari calls them. Universal Basic Income is a promising policy idea to allow for the decoupling of income from prosperity and wellbeing and to reduce economic anxiety.

Phil: So what can we expect you to talk about in Manhattan next week?  What do you hope enterprise operations leaders can take away from your session?

Tim: With transaction costs lowered by digital technology, and technologies like AI and Blockchain democratizing and virtualizing transactions, the role of the traditional corporation will diminish. We’ll witness the continued rise of the freelance/gig economy (the fastest growing part of the labor market in the US and Europe), with ever more flexible work structures, alternative currencies (cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but also an appreciation of intangible assets such as identity, reputation, personal brand, relationships, etc.), as well as growing volatility and fragmentation of work. There will be more project-based work or so-called “flash organizations” that assemble ad-hoc and only for a specific, temporary purpose.

I am a romantic and remain optimistic about the future, but I want business leaders to realize what’s at stake: not just our jobs, our very humanity. Now is the time to explore new paradigms and tools of value creation, to (re)define success on human terms. Operations leaders, in particular, bear an enormous power and responsibility: many of the jobs that will be automated are in their domain, and they need to find ways to reskill workers and help them prepare them for the new world of work—technically, intellectually, and emotionally. They will have a lot of big decisions to make in the next few years, and I hope that they will make them not only with an eye on the bottom line but on the prolonged health of their businesses and our societies.

Phil: Terrific discussion, Tim.  Can’t wait to hear you next week at the big summit!

Posted in : Cognitive Computing, smac-and-big-data

Lee Coulter: One big automation fish…

One character who will light up our New York HfS FORA Summit next week (and not just with a cigar) is the irrepressible Lee Coulter.  While Lee could have hung his hat on leadership roles at GE, Kraft and Ascension Health (where he still oversees their shared services as his day job), he has taken it upon himself to become one of the leading voices behind the Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) movement, as Chair of the IEEE’s working standards group on IPA and Founder of Agilify, a newly launched automation services business, already boasting 32 clients. 

With so much going on in Lee’s world, I thought it high time to catch up with him before we hear his dulcet tones next week… 

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research: You’ve been the self-styled Godfather of Intelligent Process Automation, brandishing a cigar, as opposed to a Kalashnikov… why did you take on this mantel, how did this evolve during your recent years with Ascension into this new firm, “Agilify”?

Lee Coulter,  CEO, Ascension: That’s quite an image. I think my role chairing the IEEE Working Group on Standards in Intelligent Process Automation was probably what did it. We started over five years ago on our automation journey. The hype and confusion was literally driving me batty. So instead of getting into a war of words, I decided the best answer was to get the competitors to not want to be left out of a standards effort. It was in everyone’s best interest to work together. That first standard (IEEE 2755-2017) was really a hallmark and the next one (P2755.1), coming this year, will have a far greater impact. That work has created great relationships across the continuum that have been helpful in bringing automation to Ascension.

The idea for Agilify came about during a conversation with a GBS colleague when he wanted to bring his team on site for a third full day to meet with my team. I told him, “Hey, I think you’ve gotten automation help about as much from us as can be had from long top-to-top meetings and if you really want some help, let me send a couple of my people on site for a few days and really give you some help.” He said that would be awesome.  I said, however, I can’t do that for free and asked if he would be willing to pay for it. Without hesitation, he said yes! At that moment I knew we could help other folks. Word spread and this turned out to be the first in a long line people just asking for help. We had no sales people, no marketing, nothing. As more walk up business arrived, I knew it was time to give it a life of its own.

Phil: Lee what is your role with Agilify and how will this dovetail with your role at Ascension?   And your role with IEEE?  Are you going to be working harder than ever, or taking a deserved break from life and confusing the hell out of people what you actually do?

Lee: I guess the best answer would be board chair and strategic advisor for Agilify. My role at Ascension continues being a digital disrupter As the largest customer of Agilify’s, we have a significant interest in their future. The demand pipeline Ascension has assembled for Agilify really helps drive their capability development and delivery. We are now doing some really clever stuff mixing different Intelligent Process Automation stuff with ML.

My work with IEEE is going forward uninterrupted. Actually very excited about progress there. The current standard under development P2755.1 is the Taxonomy for Intelligent Process Automation Products and it is coming along very well. It will be a game changer and I am excited to still have the support of the working group to continue as Chair.

As to taking a break, heck no! There are a ton of exciting things going on.

Phil: So why launch a firm, and what’s its purpose in life?  And why is it called “Agilify”?

Lee: Agilify has a lot to offer. They have some of the deepest capabilities technically across multiple technologies and what most others are not really offering, which is how to embrace enterprise adoption. The training and consulting spans far more than just building bots, but addresses strategy, risk and control, business analysis, change management, and operations resilience. The experience Agilify has gained comes from building an Automation Practice from the ground up and having to live with the outcomes.  It really is a journey, and it turns out that Agilify is very good at meeting people where they are and helping them along their journey. All of the engagements are tuned to deliver what’s needed rather than a canned set of fixed-price consulting packages.

So Agilify’s purpose is helping others. Some customers are just starting out, and some are three years down the road. Our slogan is unleashing human potential through automation (http://agilifyautomation.com/about.php) and it is not just for marketing. We work with others to hit what I call the four “Es” of automation. We provide technology agnostic automation platforms and services driving the “4 Es” of automation:  Efficiency (cost), Effectiveness (business result), Experience (customer) and Engagement (associate). What’s more is this journey extends far beyond RPA into RDA, and ML and advanced analytics.

Agilify is a great name that brings to mind agility, life, and technology and this is at the heart of it.

Phil: Which type of firms do you see Agilify partnering and competing with as you build up your business focus?

Lee: I see Agilify working across the spectrum. They are one of just a handful of pure-plays out there and it is a remarkably respectful community. It is quite conceivable, that we might see some cooperation within the competition. The Agilify differentiator is truly being a full spectrum provider focusing on successful enterprise adoption of automation. So in addition to the panel of technology partners, there are a number of other partnerships in place and more under development that will expand their reach and capability. Due to the strength of the Agilify Automation Academy, there are some surprising customers in the pipeline. More to come on that as these deals conclude and can be shared.

Phil: So what’s the direction of travel for the Intelligent Process Automation industry?  Is this truly sustainable?

Lee: First of all, it makes me really happy to hear Intelligent Process Automation as the term. We worked really hard to get folks to understand that there is more in the automation field than RPA and we are seeing that play out. I think it’s conceivable in the future that the separation between RPA and RDA and ML will disappear and Intelligent Process Automation will be used. I say that because as we are seeing, the products are rapidly evolving to embrace features and functions that cover the spectrum. Whether it’s ML embedded in a server-based runtime environment or desktop automation now including ML and server-based features, the trend is all heading toward the Intelligent Process Automation moniker.

I think it is sustainable for the foreseeable future. It is unrealistic to think that large companies are going to abandon their very expensive systems-of-record. So how can we treat multi-system processes and present them as if they were a single system with a single interface? That is where Intelligent Process Automation comes in. I do think we will see a broadening of native automation capabilities like this coming from the new breed of heavy IT systems. However Chrome still doesn’t play well with java and that isn’t likely to change any time soon and crossing 10 or 15 apps with low-code-no-code automation is going to be around for as far out as my crystal ball can see.

Phil: And what’s the winning strategy for the tools providers – is it direct selling to the clients, or through smart partnerships?  We keep hearing that having a strong consulting partner is the way to go versus trying to establish your own CoE – what’s your take on that?

Lee: For the makers, it’s all about the partners. Likewise, finding a consulting partner that can take you from where you are to three years from now is critical. In a recent paper (https://www.ssonetwork.com/reports/global-intelligent-automation-market-report-h2), I talk a lot about COE structure and governance. I think the future will see COEs pretty much everywhere, particularly as folks move from RPA to IPA.

Phil: And what’s the future of BPO and shared services in this automation age?  Is this a gradual evolution towards more touchless environments, or are we truly in for some “shock and awe”.  What’s your advice to process and operations leaders scratching their heads trying to figure out where their careers are heading?

Lee: Shared services will continue to be a place that businesses send any operation that exists at scale with reasonably standard processes. The tools, the mix of digital and human labor, the complexity of the work and the performance expectations are changing and in large part increasing. GBS and hence BPO are still going to be looked to drive improvements year over year. Like we are seeing elsewhere, the pace of change and the pace of disruption are likewise increasing. I can conceive of a day in the future where by and large, ML enabled Intelligent Process Automation manages multi-system processing. I think GBS will need to get comfortable with a bigger “more for less” expectation. My advice to service operators is lead these transformations, don’t wait to be told or it might already be too late. Your company and your career may depend on it.

Phil: And finally, what are your realistic expectations for Agilify over the next two years?  What does success look like?

Lee: Agilify is now one of a small handful of Intelligent Process Automation pure-plays out there. I think the best work is coming from the pure plays so I expect Agilify to grow quickly. There is a lot to do with RPA still, but the larger opportunity is with Intelligent Process Automation and that is where Agilify has some distinct advantages. There are also some offerings that are a bit under the tent still that will be a game changer. More on that next time. 

Lee will be taking part in the The Great Intelligent Automation Debate and the Family Feud Face-Off next week at HfS’ flagship FORA Summit, Times Square Manhattan.

Posted in : Robotic Process Automation

Stability and modest growth should be the best thing that has happened to this industry:  companies can plan for the future with greater predictability and make smarter investment decisions.  Instead, we’re suffering from a culture of endless hype, copycat marketing and an addiction to hypergrowth. 

NASSCOM’s annual India Leadership Forum is always a good bellwether for testing the temperature of the global services industry – and the 2018 rendition this week in Hyderabad served up some real pearls of wisdom (yes, Hyderabad is the world’s leading refiner of pearls).

Getting to the point, the services industry has never found itself in a worse state of bewilderment and confusion.  After last year’s sense of looming disaster with President Trump’s proposed Visa reforms, at least the industry has something collective to hang onto – a common fear of being politicked out of business.  However, with that panic pretty much diluted, what has been left is a conflicting range of moods, ranging from confusion to depression to uncomfortable modest growth, alarmingly untrue #fakenews, and a never-ending plethora of meaningless buzz words, which have become so deepset in the fabric of our industry, most of us are resigned to using them, as it’s the only language left to communicate basic sentences to each other.

So let’s try and shed some light on the confusion, based on some of the terrific conversations we had this week:

The Indian IT industry is struggling to cope with “modest growth”.  With NASSCOM bravely predicting something in the 7-9% range, most credible analysts are predicting 4-5% for the short, medium and long-term.  The reality is, the whole DNA of Indian IT has been borne out of hyper-growth, offering genuine riches to ambitious executives who could project-manage their way to a very nice condo in Bangalore or Gurgaon.  The gravy train has now firmly ground to a halt, and most of the lovely folks remaining are still coming to terms with their salary increases slowing down, or disappearing altogether.  And many are just pleased to cling to their jobs. The level-headed executives have accepted they are now looking at a more modest outlook for their firms and their own futures, and are making some adjustments, while others are still clambering around trying to find the next hype bandwagon to hitch to their next career move (and payrise).  Did I hear the words AI, Blockchain, or RPA anyone?

“Digital” provides a sugar frosting for restating revenues as something that is not traditional IT.  While we managed to have about 30 structured meetings with service providers, GICs and tech firms, the term “digital” has become so meaningless, it now ceases to be used in any coherent sentence. It seems to be purely a term now for convincing investors and Wall St analysts that, somehow, traditional services revenues have become something mysterious and new that will set services firms on a new pathway to returning to hypergrowth… and very soon. In reality, “digital” is all about designing new revenue channels for customers using emerging interactive technologies.  It’s all about collapsing internal silos within business operations to service customers’ emerging digital needs.  If you’re telling me that 50-75% of IT services revenues are now “digital”, then please tell me where all the billions of dollars of app testing, app management and IT infra revenues mysteriously disappeared? 

Services has fallen hook, line and sinker for its own #fakenews.  Suddenly, every services provider has developed the industry’s leading competency for delivering automation, artificial intelligence and blockchain… overnight.  While, barely a year ago, exactly the same firms were the industry’s leading maestros at serving up “digital transformation”.  Amazing how they could source thousands of experts, and convince so many clients to make this all possible in barely a few months.  Until recently, most providers declared they were adopting a “wait and see” attitude to approaching some of these areas, but now are in there fully-fledged and firing on all their lovely blockchain cylinders.  Puhlease ladies and gents!  At least, in days gone by, most providers would be relatively honest about their core areas of focus and expertise.  Now it seems perfectly acceptable for many just to stare you in the eyes and just lie… what on earth has driven us to this place?

DXC continues to baffle everyone.  Can someone please explain what DXC is supposed to be doing?  I love the Accenture-esque TV ads, but I am still clueless as to what this firm is actually doing to be the next big thing in the industry.  While I was very happy with the DXC branded gifts for writing notes and charging my phones, I would rather just get a little postcard explaining what on earth this new-fangled services business is supposed to be doing that is so special…

Sourcing advisors have just fallen off a cliff.  Yeah – they just weren’t present.  Barely a couple of years ago they still trawled these halls with their promises of big deals (or would try and sell you some “research” to make a few bucks).  Now they have all but disappeared from the equation.  Maybe their absence is the most notable sign that the good ol’ days are firmly gone forever, and it’s high-time to wake up to something approaching a normal, stable industry?

The Bottom-line: There are some seriously cool things going in in the world of technology services; we just need to unearth them and change the narrative

There is a lot of goodness this industry is capable of achieving if we can just get out of our own way.

For starters, we’re seeing the fastest revenue growth from several middle-tier providers who are big enough to go after some large complex deals, small enough to work on new concepts with clients and lack the legacy business to focus on going after greenfield disruptive opportunities that the big guys cannot consider.  We are seeing some of the major providers unearth new gold by taking ambitious clients to new places of business value, with a high-risk / high value mindset, using technology that is here today and working with them as a trusted long-term partner.  We’re seeing real advances in automation, machine learning and digital enablement that are here today – they are now a reality, not some future innovation that is still some years away.  We are also seeing a feverish desire from many clients to experiment with blockchain, despite the fact it’s still a long way from providing many meaningful business applications today. 

The present is now the future and this should be the most exciting time ever to be innovative, courageous and entrepreneurial.  So let’s stop trying to pretend to be something we’re not and focus on the real potential that is staring us in the face.  Everyone’s tired of the #fakenews… it’s time to change the channel!

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

The good old customer BPO business has taken quite a battering in recent years, where the same old usual suspects have embarked on selling predominantly the same old voice services, with most choosing to compete with ever-cheaper global locations to prop up their fragile profit margins. While many of the services majors have chosen to steer clear (or quietly exit the market), the importance of creating an amazing customer experience has never been so critical to customer-facing businesses.  Something has gone sorely wrong here…

In an era where every firm aims to be “digital” (and has a Chief Digital Officer to boot), the focus on engaging customers with both digital and voice communications has taken center stage… yet, these legacy call center practices continue to hound the services industry as most of the call center firms continue to fight it out to the lowest common denominator: who can delivery average customer service as cheaply as possible?  But you can’t just blame the service providers alone for this behaviour:  many of the FORTUNE 500 propagate this behaviour by playing everyone off to squeeze every last drop of cost (and subsequently value) out of their delivery capability… preferring to talk a big digital customer experience game than truly investing in one.  

One leader in the space who has taken it upon himself to declare war on these legacy practices is Concentrix President Chris Caldwell, who has masterminded the impressive growth of the firm over the last 12 years, which has included some major acquisitions, notably, the IBM contact center business, BPO firm Minacs and the Australian digital outfit, Tigerspike.  The company today boasts annual revenues greater than $2bn with over 100,000 employees globally.  Having observed this rapid rise, I thought it high time to invite Chris on here to share a bit more about his story and his views on why this industry needn’t be an FTE hell any longer…

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research: Good morning Chris. It’s great to finally get you here on HfS. I would love to hear about your journey on how you wound up running the Concentrix business.

Chris Caldwell, President, Concentrix Corporation: Of course, Phil, It’s bit of an interesting story. I’m not sure if anyone starts out saying that they are going into a career to beat your business, or a call center business. But I worked for a parent company, SYNNEX where I was looking after M&A and the diversification of their business model from the core distribution business. One of the businesses that we bought, very small at the time, was a BPO business, about 30 people which was barely doing over $1m a year and had begun to lose money after some time. And my boss who was the CEO of the other company, said to me, ‘you bought it, you fix it.’ That was the start of the BPO business and that’s when I took over Concentrix at the time. I then had to learn the call center business very quickly; figure out how to grow it and do something with it, which happened in approximately 2005.

Phil: Chris, you then went through this much, much larger acquisition of the IBM call center business in 2013. Can you talk a bit about how Concentrix got to that point, the relationship with SYNNEX, and how things have really progressed since you made that major acquisition?

Chris: Sure, It’s interesting. When we originally invested in Concentrix it was to provide additional services to SYNNEX vendors. SYNNEX is an IT distributor and I can still remember our first services for lead generation for some of the IT vendors, which were very basic offerings.

What became clear very quickly was that the vendors of SYNNEX alone weren’t going to be able to grow us. And so, we had to develop a service offering for new clients and discover something that was compelling for the marketplace.

At the time we looked at doing renewals for vendors, technical support and various other things. We developed this philosophy around how to drive lifecycle management for our end customers and our clients, which was successful. This enabled us to expand in the Philippines and in Latin America. We bought some software technology that covered renewals to drive our value and we grew the business up to about $200 million over several years. Just before the acquisition, we reviewed the marketplace, where we felt that ‘we are too small to be big, and too big to be small. And we either need to double down in this business, or we frankly need to get out.”

We therefore looked at a lot of different companies, and one of the businesses that was coming in the market was the IBM CRM and BPO business. It was a massive undertaking. But when we looked at, it was clear that it would allow us to get into verticals that we would have a very hard time to break into just by ourselves. It had a lot of capabilities that we thought we could exploit. It had a blue-chip client base that would have taken us years to develop. So, we decided that this was the way to go and really grow the business and we went ahead with the IBM acquisition.

It was a huge task. We went from having a business of approx. 12,000 people to bringing on board an extra 35,000 overnight. The business changed from covering 10-11 countries up to 24 countries at the same time. Suddenly we went from primarily servicing smaller banking, consumer electronics and IT types of clients to significant banks and insurance companies around the world This really changed the dynamic of our business, which gave us a launching pad to grow from approx. $1bn dollars 4 years ago, to $2bn this year.

The acquisition clearly allowed us not only to grow our existing client base but also expand into new verticals. It really was a big change for us, but it was a part of this strategy of ‘how do we become a significant player in the BPO business’. Where we see the market going, it was certainly something we had to do to stay relevant in the market. 

Phil:  That’s a good background, Chris and it’s great to see the effort, and the impact that has gone into this. When we look at where the industry is going, there’s been a lot of sort of noise in the market, in the last couple of years. Firstly, we had the ‘Digital’ bandwagon. Now it’s evolving more around Automation, and AI. How would you say this is impacting the contact center business, in terms of the way the clients are behaving, the way that you are behaving? 

Chris: So, I think that there are few things here. For example, we were primarily voice 5-6 years ago. We now are almost 50-50 between voice and non-voice. And our belief is that, and we talk about this a lot in one-office, the reality is that you no longer can segregate voice and non-voice. It requires them to come together, and I see that happening increasingly, where our clients are asking us to take over an entire process or solution, which requires you to pull bits and pieces together to make that happen.

While that’s happening, the reality is that, you’ve got these change elements saying, okay, now that you are doing both voice and non-voice, how can we digitize some of this; now let’s figure out how to put RPA on that.  When you look at AI, it has got a lot of sex appeal to it, I am not sure if it has got a lot of meat to it yet. But driving a better process, better efficiencies, and really taking the cost out of the equation for our clients, I just see that continuing. I see the development of tools and technology continuing to try and work out the process to enhance the customer experience – that’s clearly key. I think the brands that will survive will create a much more engaged and personalized customer experience regardless of what they do. And that’s really where we want to see our market growing, where we want to be present.

Phil: Chris, we are seeing a convergence of the traditional and the emerging businesses, in terms of business models and technologies. And I’ve noticed you’ve made acquisitions that seem to approach both markets. You bought Minacs a couple of years ago, and then Tigerspike more recently. Can you sort of expand a little bit on where you are doubling down?

Chris: We will never be an Information Technology Outsourcing player. However, our belief is that we need to have technology integrated into our solutions, some of which will be proprietary technology that we will develop ourselves by our large development team. Then a part of that will be an ‘off-the-shelf’ customization that we will add to finish off the solution. I think just going to the market with a labour solution or a cost solution is irrelevant now. There’s still some business for it, but over the coming months and years, it is likely to diminish.

So, the investments we’ve made in Minacs were about Internet of Things (IoT), Connected Car and Automotive. Our investments in Tigerspike are about driving a superior UX and UI design, as well executional mobile enterprise and mobile applications. We see the needs from our client base and then we also see where the market is going and needing more of these types of services. We really want to be a leader around how to deliver this and frankly disrupt our competitor’s businesses by going to their client’s and saying, ‘not only can we take up this work, we can develop a much better customer experience. We can measure that customer experience differently. We are going to create a very flexible workforce model that allows you to really manage your peaks and valleys at a much more variable cost solution versus a conventional FTE type of solution,  which historically has been sort of where a lot of our competitors continue to focus.

Phil:  Right, and do you see more opportunity going after tired competitive deals and trying to offer something more disruptive, or by targeting green-field clients which might be in the emerging markets and needing a contact center solution? Where do you see the bigger growth opportunity in the short to medium term?

Chris: So, it’s interesting. We have two very focused directions for these types of clients. One is the larger clients that are in our vertical industry that we are focussed on, where we are coming together with a complete solution. We also invest in the ‘unicorns’, the ‘up and comers’ where we know that out of five or six, a few will perish, but one or two might become the ‘next best thing’. That’s been a very successful model for us for several years. We don’t basically go to market via the contact center. In fact, we are almost 50-50 in terms of voice / non-voice. It’s more about what type of solution that the client is trying to drive; what customer engagement are they trying to achieve? And then building a solution around that wholesome technology, as well as services, and a global footprint, and then everything else that goes along with it. That’s a more compelling thing.

We stay away from industries that are just body shop industries. We tend to stay away from clients who are “most common denominator” procurers and really focus on the people who are trying to differentiate their brand in the marketplace.

Phil: Okay. You mentioned at our Chicago conference a few months ago that you are very tired of these buying practices where many clients are still trying to buy in the old-fashioned procurement way, where the focus remains purely on cost and labor. You made it very clear you wanted to see a shift in how these services are positioned, delivered and managed, where the onus switches to value metrics and business outcomes. I don’t think it’s just the fault of the buyers, as most of the contact center service providers propagate that model… simply because they are comfortable with it as well. What do you think really needs to happen to change this attitude and approach and get some real shifts in a different direction?

Chris: That’s an interesting question, Phil. I see the shift coming when consumers procure services in a different manner. And that tends to kind of permeate all the way through the organization or the company providing those services. ‘We can’t do it in the same old way. We need new innovations. We need to change that up.’ They go back to their vendor partners, and the vendor partners go, ‘we are not going to work with you to procure or deliver these services in the old methodology.’ And we are seeing a bit of that.

I think it’s also particular in our industry, where we see new arrivals taking share from the incumbents by being a very disruptive force in the marketplace. And then they come back to us, and say, ‘we need something different.’ And we say, ‘well, you are not going to be able to procure it the way we normally procured it.’

I think that’s what’s really going to be a driver for change. There’ll still be some companies who want to do everything through procurement, and that’s fine. But I see it as a very big competitive disadvantage to what more nimble companies are doing. And we are seeing very large companies who are incredibly successful in the States now totally change how they are procuring services. Because you are having an end-to end business conversation where you are talking about the solution, the end-customer goal, different types of deliverables and then you are talking about the total cost of delivery execution around these solutions by ending with focusing on how is that better than what their current cost structure is. That’s a different conversation.

Then what tends to happen is procurement comes in, and handles the contract administration, and compliance, which are very important things. However, the difference is that they do not get into how much you are going to charge for this transaction, or how much your FTE rate is etc. and that’s where we see real changes happening in the industry.

Phil:  Okay. So, if I could anoint you as the Emperor of Contact Centers for the next year and you could have one wish to change this industry, what would that wish be?

Chris: Ah! Umm. People stop making claims about AI that are completely wrong, irrelevant, and lies! 

In all seriousness, I think from my standpoint it’s about having real business discussions around the solutions they need versus trying to procure these types of services through a lowest cost RFP discussion. That I think would up-the-game and would make a healthier business because you find some providers couldn’t compete anymore, and would just fall off the radar, which would then enable the others to drive more innovative solutions. So, a lot of things that people talk about would then start to get baked into these solutions rather than just talked about, which seems to happen a lot in our industry.

Phil: Yes, the blurring lines between hype and what’s actually possible, right? And I agree with you on the AI stuff, we need to have a more realistic conversation about the business. And I like some of the things you’ve been saying around this shift towards an outcome type conversation and less of the administration stuff. This has been really refreshing. Hopefully, we’ll get to see you soon in one of our summits and engage again. It’s been great catching up. 

Chris: Yes, for sure. It’s funny, I’m used to saying it a few times over the last week. I love your line about ‘AI is like your first teenage experience where there is a lot of excitement; It happens very quickly, and then a lot of disappointment, and missed expectations’. And I’ve used that a lot to describe the hype in this business. I keep attributing it to you, so you might get a few emails about it. I thought it was brilliant.

Phil:  Yes. I seem to have got away with that one! I really enjoyed this and thanks again for your time today.

Posted in : Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), CRM and Marketing, Digital Transformation

Yes, people, as we inch towards the dreaded singularity, we will continue to be bored silly with arrogant diatribes describing how “humans can stay relevant”.

Do we really need to hear this daily splurge of pontifications from business leaders in Davos about reskilling the workforce, without any real practical advice on what that reskilling is?  I would argue this is more about culture and attitude, than training students to learn new programming languages and data analyst skills. The latter will come naturally as the needs of the workplace change, my view is that it’s the former which poses the real challenge: how can we enlighten people to change their working attitudes to make them much more valuable and irreplaceable to their employers?  Anyone can fix a line of code within hours, or slam in some new software, it’s what you actually do with the tech that really counts. 

It’s what you do when your boss isn’t looking, that makes you less predictable and more valuable 

It’s not just about performing predictable tasks, it’s also about helping your firm devise new ways of doing things – that is the magic that makes staff valued.  The truth is the singularity is a gimmick to jazz up advances with intelligent computing capability; the reality is the present and the future of the workplace are converging before our very eyes, and the survival of the digital worker depends on our ability to be looking constantly at where our firms are going, and being part of that journey.

The future of every type of ambitious commercial business, whether it’s a factory making products, a bank loaning money, an IT support shop helping users, a grocery store selling goods, a law firm prepping available information for its client cases, an analyst firm producing insight… is to perform its business operations with the optimum balance of talent, so it can maximise its immediate profits, with an eye on the future to stay ahead of the competition. As soon as someone’s output is predictable, taking inputs from various sources to produce outputs, you can start to figure out how to program software and machines to perform said tasks – and computers will always be cheaper than humans, once they are functional and can do the job.  So our goal has to be about furthering our abilities, not only to get the basics of our jobs done, but to immerse ourselves into helping our colleagues and bosses figure out the what next.  Because if we only focus on the now, we are eventually going to render ourselves predictable and replaceable.

Xerox and Zume: Two ends of the comfort/innovation spectrum

However, not all businesses are ambitious – some just want to milk what they have, squeeze as much as they can out of their current product and then exit.  Just look at Xerox – the firm developed a tremendous product for many years (and was the most patented and innovative workplace technology alongside the emergence of the IBM computer back in Don Draper time), which literally dominated a market in such a way that their brand became a verb.  However, Xerox just couldn’t find a way to become something else as copying documents became a commodity practise, and recently took its final payday before becoming part of Fujifilm. 

Maybe some firms and some boards just aren’t destined to do anything else, and those who made millions and retired off their stock can sip their martinis and congratulate themselves on their success (and luck).  However, for every millionaire, there will be a thousand mid-career folks rendered practically unemployable with a legacy skillset servicing a legacy product. So often we see people clinging onto the past with their careers, when it’s abundantly clear their train has left the station. Good money today doesn’t always mean a healthy long-term decision, and there are so many people facing that predicament. What of the bank teller facing branch closures and their role being BPO-ed?  Or the insurance inspector being replaced by flying drones with webcams?  Or the call center agent being phased out for an intelligent chatbot?  Or the investment analyst being replaced by smart algorithms?  We can just go on and on and on… and there are so many more examples, such as the case of Zume pizza.

Zume, a typical Californian disruptive business, makes its pizzas with robots, and can deliver up to 200 at a time thanks to remotely controlled ovens inside their delivery trucks, their patented “Cooking en Route” system. It’s secret sauce is literally automation (not tomato purée) which speeds pizzas to market more cheaply, efficiently and at scale (and delivered freshly cooked ant hot).  Instead, it can invest its profits in hiring creative people to think of clever occasions with which to personalize and sell pizzas (i.e. during The Superbowl and Game of Thrones).  In short, tasks that are automatable such as rolling out the dough, adding on the sauce and toppings and placing the pizzas into and out of ovens are much more cost effective to use machine labor.  And when predictable intelligence is needed, such as forecasting weather conditions and popular events can benefit from a machine learning algorithm, the supply chain mechanism can be astutely optimized to get products to hungry customers quickly and profitably as possible.  Hence, the human skills are being pushed further and further up the creative value chain, such as designing a Philly cheese steak pizza for Eagles fans, or a lobster roll pizza for new England fans (OK I just made those up, but you get the picture). 

If you are an employer looking for creative talent, would you rather hire a successful Xerox executive who’s kept that beast trundling along for the last couple of decades, or someone who’s been immersed in the exciting growth of Zume over the past 18 months?  Hmmm…

The secret sauce to an ambitious business lies in energizing its culture and mindset to focus on the now and the next

As we have discussed, predictable is not the secret sauce – the secret sauce is what you do when no one is looking, the less obvious tasks that make you irreplaceable.  The key is to immerse yourself into the personable side of the business to become part of how the company drives value.  This means making your value less simple to put on a spreadsheet  – successful companies are those that create a culture that is unique to them, where its people are engaging in an enthusiastic way to find new sources of value for their firm, while enjoying being part of that journey.  People who love what they do and energize those around them are rarely fired.

In the case of Zume, once you have your intelligent pizza supply chain perfected, the human differentiator lies in marketing the product to drive the customer experience, which means having teams of smart people who love the product and work enthusiastically to come up with ideas to win in their marketplace.  It’s the same analogy with many insurance firms, where the whole process of managing an insurance process and developing smart algorithms to predict risk are increasingly digitizing (with the help of outsourced support), and the human edge lies with insurance firms out-marketing and out-thinking each other to offer the customer something that is more appealing to them?  Do we really care whether Geiko or Progressive insures our cars?  Probably not, but we will buy with whoever targeted us most effectively and made it easiest to get the transaction done.  Or it may be as simple as which TV commercial appealed to us to the most – the frog with the British cockney access or the friendly Flo who just seems to trustworthy and nice.  The simple reality here is as routine tasks become automated and the data becomes increasingly predictable with the use of advanced analytics and machine learning, the human skill lies in establishing the culture of a firm and the creativity in connecting and engaging as impactfully as possible with a customer base which just wants to be served as quickly and touchlessly as possible.  Do we really care about talking to a pizza order-taker or an insurance customer rep on the phone, when we can just order something on an iphone app?  I bet we’d hardly care if a drone rang our doorbell with a piping hot pizza at out front door, as long as it tasted great and was delivered quickly.  And you wouldn’t have to tip either =)

The Bottom-line: Future workplace success is as much about  attitude as it is skillset, where we need to focus on this convergance of the present and the future

If I have to hear yet another “we need to fix the skills gap” diatribe from some plastic HR analyst I am going to become a Belgian trappist monk and brew very strong beer all day.  But I think you already knew that… so hear are some takeaways:

Get out of your silo. Get to know your colleagues and get them excited about what you do.  Even if your work areas don’t converge that much, how hard is it to give up some time to get to know who you’re working with, and exploring how you can help each other.  While we are all becoming digitally lazy with our social interactions (and many other activities) we need to focus harder on our people relationships to energize those around us.  So get back to having lunch with colleagues… call them up to air ideas.  Don’t be unafraid to get people to explain what the hell it is they actually do (because they are likely clueless whay you do also…). 

Get to know some useful tech.  Whatever you do, where are cool apps to enhance your job, whether its collaborative apps and social software, graphics and content packages, data visualization and analytics tools, CRM tools, RPA/RDA/BPM and easy-to-use process configuration software… you don’t need a computer science degree anymore to use this stuff. If you mastered that beast called PowerPoint, you can certainly use some of the sexier tools in the market and… and evaluating them is almost always free.  If you’re not using some form of new tech in your job, then something is going amiss… or you’re just too busy selling your next photocoper to care.

Get to know your firm’s business better.  Your bosses should be driving themselves nuts trying to get one over the competition and come up with new ideas for disrupting your market.  Insert yourself in that conversation… everyone has a few good ideas in them somewhere.  By showing you care about the business adds to your value and inclusion… and you’ll learn more about the business model and help people think through some clever options.  If you just don’t care about the business your work in and really can’t be bothered to support your firm with its future, your current career track may be getting very limited…

Include others in what you do, even if it’s boring.  Everyone loves being included in what others are doing… inclusion far out-trumps boredom.  If someone enthusiastically shows you how he RPA-ed some workflows together, you’d just be happy he showed you how he did it, even though he may be dis-invited to your next pool party.  

Being smart about data is no longer geeky, its career-critical. If you can’t automate and digitize your rudimentary processes, you will quickly run out of value to any organization. Plus, every siloed dataset restricts the analytics insight that makes you a strategic contributor to your business. You really can’t create value or transform a business operation without converged, real-time data.  You don’t need to have a mathematics masters to understand your customers and the markets in which your operate – you just need to explain to your colleagues what you need and make sure it gets done.  

Tune up your cross-cultural intelligence.  We need to do a lot more than merely understand cultural differences – we need to adapt and modify our behaviors as the situation dictates as our workplaces and business environment continues to globalize. That means we need to get smarter about different senses of humor (and different sensitivities), widely differings levels of political correctness, different styles of engagement (most Americans tend to like to talk a lot more than most Europeans, for example and their meetings often last longer).  Also be sensitive to time zones – the days of expecting people to take 4.00am calls are pretty much over.  And be prepared to talk more about geopolitics – many people just want to talk about the big issues more openly these days (even Americans where political discourse has been taboo in days gone by).  My only advice here is to try to listen, even if you are in violent disagreement with someone… 

Posted in : Design Thinking, Digital Transformation, sourcing-change

A lot has changed in the last year… especially when it comes to automation: it has now become the broadly-accepted efficiency tool for cost leverage with operations.

Every customer has RPA project managers and automation leads hungry for data, advice, and ideas. Every service provider has RPA embedded into their service delivery models, and every credible advisor has a practice that is working with multiple clients to make this happen. The Armageddon days of talking about robots taking our jobs are over – these are now the reality days where we can see exactly what’s going on with automation and AI, and accurately estimate how it’s going to impact the services industry in the next few years.

There will be impact, but it’s manageable provided we focus on new skills and value.  

In short, the global IT and BPO services industry employs 16 million workers today.  By 2022, our industry will employ 14.8 million – a likely decrease of 7.5%* in total workers (see our research methodology below).  This isn’t devastating news – we’ll lose this many people through natural attrition, but what this data signifies is this industry is now delivering more for less because of advantages in automation and artificial intelligence.  The new data also shows how job roles are evolving from low skilled workers conducting simple entry level, process driven tasks that require little abstract thinking or autonomy, to medium and high skilled workers undertaking more complicated tasks that require experience, expertise, abstract thinking, ability to manage machine-learning tools and autonomy.

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The low skill routine jobs are getting increasingly impacted, and our new demand data shows an acceleration in RPA tools (a 60% increase over the next year) where service providers are the largest adopters into their own service delivery organizations.  We expect to see a more rapid impact on routine job roles which is most notable in 2022 as companies take time to build the impact of RPA into service contracts and figure out how to turn work elimination into hard savings than merely soft efficiency savings.  With barely a 50% satisfaction level, this will take 4-5 years to see the real cost benefits in terms of job elimination.  Most of the short-medium term benefits are being seen in increased efficiencies and more digital process workflows.  All major service delivery locations are expected to be impacted at the low-end, but the higher the wage costs, the higher the expected role elimination (750,000 roles in India and a similar number in the US):

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Medium skilled roles are picking up across the board, especially in roles that are customer/employee facing with the need for more customized support, the ability to handle basic customer and data queries, and more customized service work with virtual agent models in 2nd / 3rd tier escalations:

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When we look into the high-end, this is where we see most positive impact, in terms of job creation:

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As this data illustrates, the more we automate and digitize, and the more we adopt human + machine technologies, such as machine learning and cognitive solutions, the more we need people to developing skills in managing automated workflows, machine learning mechanisms, being able to interpret data, and service increasingly complex customer and employee needs. So when we take into account the total impact of automation and AI on services jobs, the impact is not nearly as severe as so many of the hypesters and fear-mongerers are prophesizing:

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Philippines should actually increase its service delivery population due to its dominance in voice and capabilities to support increasingly complex and personalized customer models, the UK should be flat, especially with the challenges of Brexit and the slowdown in low cost worker immigration, while both India and the US will see a total worker reduction estimated at the 10% level between by 2022.  You can view the total impact on the global services industry – a worker population decline of 7.5% here:

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The Bottom-line: The rote jobs are going to be eroded, but there is time on our side to develop the new skills we need

The big narrative here isn’t about what’s going away, but more about what is emerging in its place. The next fives years we can manage, it’s the five after that when the impact on labor becomes much more challenging.  Transaction roles at the bottom of the value chain have been under threat for many years now – with the impact of low cost location delivery and better technology.  Now the emergence of RPA is eventually going to sound the death knell for most high-throughput, high-intensity jobs, as both service providers and enterprises master the ability to apply these technologies effectively.  The good news is this takes time and there is no huge burning platform to do this overnight from most enterprises. 

So our message to all stakeholders on operations and services is simply to get out of your comfort zones, accept that new skills are replacing old ones, and it’s critical we have a plan to train, develop and invest in changing what we have.  I will leave you with six things to think about as you ponder your own value to this industry and your firm:

1. Which customers have you delighted recently?
2. What new relationships have you made that add value to our business?
3. What work have you done that excited people inside and outside of the business?
4. How are you helping energize your colleagues and exciting them with new ideas?
5. How have you helped add value to new business wins?
6. How have you contributed to new initiatives that improve productivity and effectiveness?

HfS subscribers can access the full report by clicking here

*Research Methodology

HfS has taken the following assumptions to form this size and forecast for the services industry:

A more aggressive uptake of RPA and Autonomic plus adoption of Cognitive in second half 2017
Leading stakeholders start to educate the market more realistically
The adoption of RPA, RDA, Cognitive Computing and AI reaches exponential growth
Visibility on impact through details in financial earnings calls and beyond
Stronger impact on supply-side, more marginal on buy-side
30% Reskilling to medium and high skilled jobs, with 2/3rd to medium and 1/3 to high

HfS bases its data findings on the following sources:

• HfS State of Automation survey (June 2017) covering the dynamics of 400 business operations and IT executives leading automation initiatives;
• Market expertise of the HfS analysts across RPA, AI, BPO, IT Services and key industries;
• Service provider interviews to understand their automation adoption across global delivery centers and emerging skills competencies with automation and AI solutions;
• Government data and data published by industry associations, such as NASSCOM, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, IBAP, OECD Employment and Labour Market Statistics and Office of National Statistics, which provide data on IT industries and education – including specific information about job creation and the impact of automation;
• HfS services contracts database, which provides analysis of service providers contracting activity;
• Qualitative interviews with service buyers across different industries and company sizes;
• Executive-level interviews with key independent advisors in the automation arena, such as KPMG, EY, Deloitte and Symphony Ventures to understand rate of adoption and other core issues related to automation and AI.

Posted in : Cognitive Computing, Robotic Process Automation

Having spent the last 15 years of my life in the US before recently returning to my British homeland to focus on the global expansion of HfS, I think I have earned the right to offer a view on how global innovation will evolve in the coming years. So let’s have a real State of the Union look into global battle for economic and digital supremacy.

For decades now, Silicon Valley has driven technology innovation, US corporates dominated business innovation, and US healthcare was the paragon of high-quality patient care. Everyone looked to the US for innovation, leadership and entrepreneurship.  Hell, there was nowhere else in the world I could have founded and made HfS a success eight years’ ago… people in the UK used to sneer at new brands, ideas and anything that cut against the legacy business establishment. But Americans liked shiny new things, they embraced entrepreneurship and new ideas, and welcomed foreign talent.  The US was the world’s innovator, the world’s entrepreneur… it was the place where ambitious people aspired to flourish.  All good things happened in America – it’s where dreams were hatched and made real.

Fast-forward to present day and all this is changing before our eyes

Tech innovation is no longer confined to a politically exhausted, entitled and overpriced Silicon Valley.  Israel is becoming a leading hub for security, blockchain and AI start-ups and talent.  India’s startup scene is especially vibrant as ambitious IT talent grows frustrated with the monolithic outsourcers and seeks to join emerging tech firms and get involved with AI development environments such as Python, R, Caffe, Google TensorFlow, the Azure ML Workbench, Amazon’s Sagemaker etc. In China, real cooperation between the government and its tech giants is significantly positioning the country’s advancements as an AI leader.  Meanwhile, Estonia is already putting its entire population database on a blockchain platform as part of its plans to build a digital nation, and even Dubai is declaring it will be a Blockchain city run by smart contracts by 2020.

The abhorrent cost of talent in Silicon Valley, coupled with the extremely negative politics asphyxiating their once-dynamic firms is driving investors and valley firms to globalize their approach to talent access and their partnership ecospheres. US Patent and Trademark Office data shows that the number of patents granted to foreign countries (outside US) is now greater than US itself.  Moreover, as tech power increasingly shifts to true global players such as Amazon, Alibaba and Google, and the establishment tech giants servicing legacy enterprises, such as Workday, Salesforce, SAP and Oracle become increasingly confined to a shrinking global 2000 (while ignoring the burgeoning small/mid-sized enterprise sector), the whole tech innovation industry will become increasingly globally distributed, as opposed to controlled from the entitled Californian epicentre.

The crypto technologies and AI ecosystems will really start to blend, creating a whole new global tech economy.  Use-cases around traceability through provenance and asset tracking, digitization of contracts leading to faster settlements, management of private data and digital identity will drive significant effectiveness gains in existing business models. Blockchain can also become a source of competitive differentiation in the medium term by re-imagining IT infrastructure that is shared and decentralized, re-defining transaction management that is transparent and immutable and driving additional trust in multi-party collaboration. Consequently, we’ll see AI developers increasingly involve themselves with this exciting combination of AI and blockchain. These areas include how to build together common collaborative data hubs to z the sharing of data, allow the sharing of emerging blockchain models, using distributed ledgers, blockchains and smart contracts for individual AIs to mediate their machine-to-machine interactions.  As the stranglehold of the legacy US banks policing the world’s financial markets starts to loosen, we’ll see the global development communities come together to develop the new phase of crypto-intelligent tech for the AI economy. You only need to look at the spread of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) to see that the US only accounts for a fifth of global cryptocurrency projects:

Brexit is forcing new thinking and new ways of enterprise collaboration.  While I have been honest about my views towards the negative aspects of Brexit, it has forced new thinking as Britain goes down it’s own path of looking within itself, not dissimilar to what Trump is doing in the US. The difference with Brexit is it’s highlighting the desire of British businesses and academia to embrace global talent and collaboration with other nations.  The threat of losing its openness may have the longer term impact of driving British firms to work more closely with emerging nations, such as China and India, and not rely so much on its legacy business partners.  It will be the same for the likes of economic powerhouses such as Germany and France, who are also being forced to look beyond the EU for their future commercial alliances.  In short, outside of the US, most of the major economies are looking outward to grow, while the US is too busy navel-gazing and trying to figure out how to embrace its past, as opposed to the unraveling future.

The global giants stash their cash offshore these days, creating a corporate versus government sovereignty war.  While the massive US corporate tax cuts will bring some businesses back to the States, it’s pretty alarming when you look at how much money today is residing (and flowing) outside of the country, from the leading global enterprises.  The global wealth is being truly spread around these days as the digital economy takes over and spreads across borders.  This corporate-versus-government sovereignty war is well and truly in play, and it impacts every nation – and every business:

Digital means global, and there’s not much governments can do about it but become AI powerhouses, thus leveling the playing field. As the major corporates become increasingly global this is increasingly conflicting with governments’ desire to maintain control over their businesses to hire locally and maximize their tax revenue.  A consumer in Bangalore is just as important as a consumer in Omaha to Jeff Bezos these days.  It’s all one big global digital economy these days. In order for governments to stay ahead, they need to become fluent in AI to keep tabs on these data flows and maintain some sort of control over what is going on… from cyber-security, massive analytics to legislation and regulation.  National AI policy and strategy will take center stage creating vastly different types of cooperation deals between governments and continual debate over data privacy and business licenses for firms where data crosses borders.  Net-net, there is a new playing field being leveled for the next creation of wealth where data and AI is at the core.

US no longer runs the global tech services game like it used to.  The emergence of India as a technology services brand has been stellar over the past two decades, and even most US corporates prefer to work with a portfolio of Indian heritage firms, because of their quality and affordability – and flexibility.  This is why “traditional” technology firms, such as DXC (HPE+CSC), Capgemini and Atos are finding it harder than ever to compete with the Indian heritage ower houses, who have all withstood the Trump anti-immigration policies impressively.  Plus, America’s two tech powerhouses, IBM and Accenture are not really that “American” anymore – they have globalized themselves along with the digital economy – just look at the distribution of managed IBM laptops in 2016, as revealed by IBM’s CIO Fletcher Previn:

The Bottom-Line:  There was only one bailout – and we’ve had that already.  The new global economic war is being fought in data and AI

There is less tax revenue for the US government to boost its economy and reduce its massive $20 trillion debt. There won’t be a government bailout the next time the economy crashes – there is no more debt to be secured.  Do we really think Amazon, Apple and Google will bail out governments? President Trump hopes corporate tax cuts will stimulate a massive reinvestment in the country, but the creation of new wealth goes a lot deeper, where access to talent with innovative and entrepreneurial mindsets is no longer confined to the blessed US of A.

Outside of the US, the recession of 2008 cut deep, and people know they cannot afford that happening again. Inside of the US, that massive Bandaid is still masking the inherent demise of the country’s core issues, as the rest of the world catches up. The next phase will not be about artificially propping up legacy banking systems and pumping borrowed money into infrastructure projects… it’s about taking the lead in a global digital economy by embracing, educating and possessing the best talent, the best homegrown companies to house that talent … and having the smartest leaders who understand the power data and AI.

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