You must read my LinkedIn post and join in the discussion. Click here to access… go on, you know you want to =) 

Posted in : policy-and-regulations

I recently caught up with Wendy Shlensky of HGS to talk about customer service trends on her blog. Here’s what we talked about:

Today’s companies are challenged to meet everyday customer service pressures while also building for the future. They must provide optimized customer service across various digital channels while also using new tools to better understand customer demographics and preferences, to deliver more personalized service.  The ability to simultaneously achieve these goals is really a differentiator in a world where many products and services are commoditized.

Wendy: Can you share the trends you’ve seen in customer service?

Melissa: Today’s customer service trends are being driven by customer expectations for really simple and straightforward communication. In many cases, this means self-service tools, although customers also sometimes need to pick up the phone and speak with a person.  Depending on objectives and available channels, customers will use various ways to communicate with companies to ask a question or give feedback. 

Balancing self-service and digital—including human assistance, when needed—is a significant customer service focus area. Customer service solutions that pre-empt and solve customer inquiries—before requiring agent assistance—are driving self-service as a solution to decrease customer effort.  Improving self-service is frequently put forward as a cost savings mechanism, but often has the most immediate impact on service quality and consistency. Most importantly, weaving all of the potential touchpoints to support an omnichannel customer experience is a design challenge for most organizations to undertake. 

Wendy: How essential are digital CX tools in today’s marketplace?

Melissa: These digital tools are critical. At HfS, we have been working on the concept of a digitally enabled contact center. We have produced a competitive assessment of service providers in this space.  Essentially, this means that a contact center is equipped to service today’s digital customer, who, as we all know, has increasing expectations in terms of communication channels.  At the most basic level, the start of the digitally enabled contact center means embracing “digital” channels: social media; web self-service, including mobile apps and visual IVR; video kiosks; and chat.  Also important is seeking to use automation to create efficiencies and the really smart contact center operators are trying to figure out how to involve increasingly intelligent automation into the mix.

However, it’s more than just implementing these channels, it’s the design of how each channel fits into the overall customer journey, and the understanding of how talent fits into the equation. This talent should not only be able to handle communication on varied channels that demand different styles (yet be consistent), but can also take contextual information from multiple sources and use that in a way that benefits the customer. From an analytics perspective, it’s all about using the data to better understand customers, enable personalization, and be more predictive.

Wendy: How is this changing BPO services engagements?

Melissa: Digital channels and the underlying technology will fundamentally change the way that service providers and buyers of BPO services engage. We have learned from our recent Intelligent Operations study that almost half of senior leadership buyers are using a “customer first” strategy to drive their sourcing models. This means embracing the change and solution ideals of “As-a-Service,” including design thinking. We see opportunity for service providers to use design thinking to help their clients develop better processes, especially around “customer journey maps.” Rethinking customer journey design is absolutely essential to the digital customer experience. 

For example, HfS recently spoke with a retailer that was struggling with efficient scheduling processes for an in-store service. The service provider took the approach of interviewing the staff members fulfilling the services to understand the areas where they saw inefficiencies and problems. The results included a scheduling process redesign that blended the digital self-service channels and those that were human assisted. Often, design thinking projects will involve an employee-centric approach—recognizing that employees are customers, too, who often hold the key to improving customer experience. 

The service provider-buyer relationship is also affected by buyers’ expectations of greater flexibility and value. Some service providers are looking to their BPOs to be really nimble, and scale, as needed. Additionally, they want their service providers to be thought leaders and help them figure out this puzzle of digital customer interactions. 

Wendy: What do you see as the future of digital BPO?

Melissa: In a customer-first digital economy, BPOs will strive to find the right balance of technology and talent, and deliver that as effortlessly as possible to clients. Contact center service providers’ strategies must be multi-fold—they must provide something more valuable in conjunction with traditional operations that addresses automation and self-service, built in with exceptional support (with a great talent strategy) to address the changing contact center model to derive more value out of clients’ investments.

What’s one of the biggest wild cards, with the biggest impact? It’s artificial Intelligence, or the development of “intelligent” virtual assistants. While right now most contact center automation is augmenting agent talent, we are seeing virtual agent pilots and POCs that can replace some contact center talent. Regardless of how quickly this evolves, eventually artificial intelligence will have a material impact on contact centers. Service providers, together with their clients, will need to figure out how to blend the best of human and artificial intelligence, and most importantly have a greater sense of urgency to understand how this will impact the customer experience. 

Posted in : Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), customer-experience-management, OneOffice

We’ve seen a number of consulting and outsourcing firms making investments in design thinking over the last couple years.  The most visible approach recently has been the roll of acquisitions of design-thinking boutiques. A few representative ones that are being covered in our current research for the Design Thinking in the As-a-Service Economy Blueprint include:

• Capgemini – Fahrehenit 212 (2016)
• Cognizant – Idea Couture (2016)
• Tech Mahindra –BIO Agency (2016)
• Wipro – Designit (2015)
• Accenture – Chaotic Moon (2015), Fjord (2013)

And while other outsourcing companies are not making acquisitions, they are partnering with design thinking firms  (e.g., Sutherland with UXAlliance, Genpact with Elixir Design) and academic institutions that offer design-thinking curriculum (e.g., Infosys with Stanford d.school).  Do their clients feel like it really makes a difference?  From what I’m hearing in my interviews with operations executives, product managers, and finance transformation leaders to name a few… Yes, it does.

Here’s how:

From designing to doing: Design thinking offers an approach for a diverse group of people to work together to identify and articulate a common problem, brainstorm ideas for addressing it, quickly prototype/wireframe/storyboard and test it, and continue to iterate on the idea as it takes shape into a proposed solution. While designers often operate within a “non-constrained world,” Consultants bring a healthy dose of a reality check into the process, shared one interviewee. For example, a market-based and analytical approach adds context to the process of testing the ideas and prototypes for how well they could work in the business and how relevant they are to the market. Another executive described it as an “innovation agency” partnering with a “solution provider.”

Industrialization of methods and tools: Consulting and outsourcing firms have a rich history of standardizing what they have seen work in multiple instances. Many of them have been known to go to the extreme of “this way or the highway.” Most design thinking firms take a more creative, empathetic, and flexible approach, but are typically not as strong in analyzing, identifying, and setting standards. There are design-thinking agencies that are known for strictly adhering to standardized approaches and toolsets – IDEO comes to mind – but it is not the norm in the industry.  Likewise, there are pockets of creativity in consulting and outsourcing, but, again, not typical. These two groups are starting to find complements in one another. Clients are appreciating this emerging combination of creative, engaging, and simple (thanks, designers) and standardized, contextualized (thanks, consultants) approach. 

Research depth: Design thinking can be a richer experience through thoughtful diversity – bringing together people at different levels (hierarchy) in a company, from different business units and functions, and from different professional backgrounds (e.g., ethnographers, CPAs, and programmers).  Design thinking firms are rich in creative professionals; and consulting and outsourcing firms can tap into industry subject matter experts, technology gurus, and change management leaders, as well, because of the breadth and depth of their organizations. They can help address needs from market sizing to industry experts to rapid prototype development with new, emerging technologies because of internal experts or their own ecosystems. 

Recalibration underway 

A key theme we hear over and over in the outsourcing industry is the drive toward “recalibration.” Outsourcing firms that have been in business for years were built on the premise of providing lower cost, higher efficient processes using best practices: Lean six sigma, and ERP or now, increasingly, cloud-based/SaaS platforms. But to keep doing something basically the same way and expecting different results is insanity (a refrain often accredited to Einstein) – design thinking offers an approach to finding those new results. 

Bottom line: A design thinking led approach moves the focus of the operations executive and service provider partner off the process itself, off the internal, “what’s wrong inside of what we do” to “what do we actually want to achieve” (the business outcome), and what do we want people to feel and do naturally that will lead to further engagement and new—and different—results. 

After seeing the impact of the human-centered, flexible, creative, fast approach within “innovation centers,” “labs,” or “digital” business units, consulting and outsourcing firms are realizing that design thinking can help a company and its clients reimagine something that desperately needs a new way of working. Outsourcing and service delivery is an industry suffering from hitting thresholds on cost reduction, failing to meet expectations of innovation, and wondering how to use digital technology and overcome barriers in communication set up within and between clients and service providers.  At the same time, though, there are key aspects of rigor, process orientation, and service inherent in the services industry that fit well into enabling design thinking to move into solutions and results such as increased customer and employee loyalty and new revenue streams.

About 18 months ago, we thought – wow, what an interesting idea, using design thinking in the services industry. And we launched the first Design Thinking in the As-a-Service Economy Blueprint to explore whether it not it was feasible – if there were any examples of how design thinking was changing the way consulting and outsourcing firms work, internally with or for their clients. There were a few. As we go through the current refresh, we are finding that design thinking is actually changing the way many clients and service providers work, that there is a real complement between designers, consultants, engineers, and service delivery; and we will continue to share examples over the next few months.

Posted in : Design Thinking

As we mentioned in our recent blog on the IT Services Market we are looking to make our content more visually appealing. So we have below the companion primer cover the BPO market for 2015 to 2021. We will be doing a full update of the forecast at the end of Q1. When we have a chance to analyze all the vendor results for 2016.

Click Here to Enlarge

This chart gives our top level view of the BPO market in numbers – this provides a top level look at the market as a whole. We will be looking at producing a number of cuts of this data over the next few months, especially as we roll out our BPO Top 50 report and our updates to our market forecast.

The Bottom Line – Watch this Space

We are publishing a point of view on market conditions over the next few days, which presents these charts again with some additional commentary. Please find the piece at www.hfsresearch.com.

Posted in : IT Outsourcing / IT Services

HfS has been spending the past several months talking about the Digital OneOffice – a business model focused on placing the customer at the center of every internal operation, even those not normally considered customer-facing. Whether you consider your firm a “traditional” business or a digital native, you need better customer centricity.

Recently I saw evidence of how this new focus on customer centricity is affecting the retail industry. Retail is rife with brick and mortar giants struggling to pivot their operations to support omnichannel shopping, and online upstarts vying to make their voices heard amid the e-commerce din. After hearing yesterday’s news that Target’s Goldfish project — its mysterious Silicon valley digital startup —  now swims with the fishes, I started thinking about the tales I heard at the recent NRF conference. From both retail giants and small retail innovators, moving to OneOffice is about enabling the ability to support heightened customer expectations and often strengthening business fundamentals in order to do so. 

Stepping into the Customer’s Shoes

Target’s stated reasoning behind abandoning the potential e-commerce spinoff was to renew a focus on the brick and mortar business, strengthening the personalization of the in-store shopping experience with greater personalization and payment options on its shopping app.  In doing so, Target is putting a stake in the ground about where it wants — and doesn’t want — to compete. In the case of this retail giant, leaders see greater value in digitizing and optimizing the experience of its in-store customers than in creating something new that doesn’t necessarily jive with what customers want from Target.  It seems counter-intuitive that focusing on brick-and-mortar stores helps in Target’s Digital OneOffice transformation, but this move shows that the retailer is honing in on its customers’ experiences where the customers want it.

This strategy had plenty of examples at NRF. I saw providers demonstrating solutions which have the potential for retailers to take their traditional businesses to the next level. These solutions ranged from getting real-time information from the store to engaging the shopper around product education to promoting promotions or specials while they’re making the product decision were top of the list for this kind of optimization. Specifically, here are some exhibitor examples: 

• Wipro Intelligent Displays: Wipro had a retail in-store demo which featured the use of sensors to allow the shopper to get more information about the product on a display screen in the store.  For example, the shopper could pick up two items and compare them side by side as they would online or in a mobile app.  This could also be reconfigured with near field communication (NFC) to connect to the app for greater personalization. I think this would be even more effective. 

• Infosys Home-to-Store Journeys: Infosys took a real customer-journey-centric approach with its immersive demo of a full home-to-store shopping experience.  The journey demonstration begins in the customer’s living room, with the customer shopping on a mobile app and noting preferences and upcoming events (birthdays, vacations).  The journey then moves to the store, and demo participants were greeted by name by the store employee who knew what items the customer shopped for at home.  The comprehensive booth also featured a demo of the possibilities for augmented reality in store.  Infosys is using a combination of technology and services to customize these journeys for its retail clients and showing what’s possible for the future of retail. 

• Sutherland’s Predictive Chat: A demo at the Sutherland booth highlighted a chat solution which originated with a design thinking approach to bridging store and online experience.  The platform enabled more proactive engagement with customers by drawing customer data from various external and internal retailer sources, feeding insights into the chat which could pre-empt customer questions and concerns.  

• Honeywell Employee Tools: There were also interesting products at NRF. I popped by the Honeywell booth where I saw demos of plenty of tools aimed at making the customer experience better through improving the employee experience.  This ranged from a software infused headset enabling pick and pack staff to more efficiently sort items in the warehouse (and move away from manual tracking!) to light, durable wearable scanners that employees can wear on the wrist or finger to enable more swift customer check out; all pointing toward creating better efficiencies in the entire process behind a shopping experience. 

The bottom line: being customer-focused means improving the customer’s experience in store as well as online. Remember that in store sales still represent the bulk of revenues in the retail sector. Optimizing legacy systems to make them complement new business initiatives in a way that supports customer experience is how retailers will successfully move to DigitalOne Office.

PS: If you’d like to know even more about Digital OneOffice, come to our New York City Summit on March 30!

Posted in : customer-experience-management, OneOffice

HfS has published its second analysis of the Salesforce services market. In the HfS Blueprint Report: Salesforce Services 2017, we analysed and positioned twelve Salesforce services providers according to their execution and innovation capabilities.

So, what’s changed since last year?

There has been some consolidation in the Salesforce services market since we published the HfS Blueprint Report: Salesforce Services 2015. For example:

• Accenture acquired Cloud Sherpas in 2015
  • IBM acquired Bluewolf in 2016: see IBM Culls the Pack of Salesforce Partners by Buying Bluewolf
• Wipro acquired Appirio in 2016: see Wippirio Could Leave Its Indian Heritage Competitors in the Cold… if It Gets This One Right
• Mindtree acquired Magnet 360 in 2016
• CSC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) merged in 2016
• NTT DATA acquired Dell Services in 2016

Acquisitions continue to be an important way to gain consultants and certifications. They can also bring valuable approaches and mind-sets that understand the cultural aspects of enterprises adopting cloud applications, which is essential to succeed in this market.

Service providers in general have continued to invest in developing service capabilities and investing in tools to support clients’ Salesforce deployments. Salesforce’s recent products, including Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, and Commerce Cloud, change the value proposition from being simply a set of CRM tools to a complete customer engagement platform. As we highlighted in the 2015 note, Salesforce.Com Service Provision Must Have Real Investment To Succeed, Salesforce service providers need to adopt a holistic, business-led approach, and bring all relevant skills to the table, including mobile, security and social capabilities to differentiate in this market. While most of the current market is for Sales Cloud implementations, enterprises often expect the delivery of a complete solution, for example including mobile access to applications.

Growth areas identified in the report include:

• Consulting services: including cloud readiness services and organizational change management services.
• Ongoing management services: including advice on new releases and functionalities.
• Analytics services: whether it is the Salesforce Analytics Cloud or an alternative solution
• International deployments: more than 60% of current Salesforce deployments are in NA.

Leading service providers are investing in developing these capabilities, ahead of the market demand.

So, which service providers stood out?

In general, service providers in the Winner’s Circle have made impressive investments to achieve certifications for technical architects, Fullforce Master, and Fullforce Industry solutions. Salesforce itself views these as differentiating strengths in the Salesforce services market.  These service providers also typically adopt a business outcome approach, supported by a strong vision for Salesforce effectiveness for clients. They have developed differentiating tools and services, and received among the highest client reference scores in the research. Accenture, in particular stands out as Salesforce’s biggest partner. As well as having impressive scale and bench strength, it continues to invest in services to further differentiate in the market. All the service providers in the Blueprint Report demonstrated a good understanding of the Salesforce service market and a desire to invest in innovation. Deloitte remains a strong contender for the leadership position, while Appirio, Bluewolf, PwC, Capgemini, Cognizant and NTT Data all impressed with their execution capabilities. All of the Blueprint participants had an impressive investment in innovation, including the relatively smaller practices. For example, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Persistent Systems and VirtusaPolaris have developed proprietary solutions to support specific industry sectors. Moreover, Infosys and Tech Mahindra demonstrate good use of partners to develop solutions. Persistent Systems positions as a Healthcare specialist, and VirtusaPolaris is developing its analytics services.

What are we expecting next year?

The number of certified technical architect, Fullforce Master and Fullforce Industry solutions remains low in the market as a whole. Although they require a lot of time and effort, they represent an opportunity for all Salesforce services providers to differentiate in this crowded market. So, we expect all the players to drive certification programmes in these areas over the next year.

All of the service providers in the Blueprint Report have enhanced their service capability and proprietary solution development in the past year. Those who have made acquisitions, will solidify acquired entities and work on integrating offerings, and marketing new value propositions to clients. Others will continue to make prospective clients aware of their developing capabilities.

Bottom Line – Providers need to build market awareness to make a success of the Salesforce services market

Buyers need to prioritise technical skills as a selection criteria if they don’t already. As this combined with clear business outcomes are the main ingredients for a successful relationship. The path to success in Salesforce services market is clear: strong technical credentials, outcome based services and market awareness.

Indeed, lack of market awareness of capabilities was the most noted challenge in the service providers we profiled. Salesforce has thousands of service partners. In order to stand out, the service providers must make a considerable effort to increase awareness of their skills with prospective clients and with Salesforce, which often called upon to recommend partners to clients. Choice for buyers is increasing so building awareness and capabilities through certification is the best way not to be left behind. For more detailed recommendations for Salesforce buyers and service providers, see the HfS Research site.

Posted in : HfS Blueprint Results, saas-2

Every CHRO focus group or survey these days identifies “enhancing analytics capabilities” or “crafting a people analytics roadmap” as a top initiative. This, of course includes analytics of a predictive nature, as these generally have the highest impact. It’s now time-critical for both HR execs and HCM solution providers to think about what type of technology capabilities are needed to support these initiatives, which, if successful, clearly help make the case for HR having that proverbial seat.

So we’ve decided to put a stake in the ground and evaluate what most enterprise software vendors are describing as their “early” capabilities and customer experiences in this area.

Many HRMS (employee life cycle) vendors cut their predictive analytics teeth around the retention risk area. Some of those providers have progressed to predicting potential to succeed in different roles or factors that impact employee engagement and productivity. A few now forecast labor and skill set gaps and use that intelligence to optimize work schedules. One or two HCM solutions now even highlight potential compliance risks and recommend training to mitigate those risks or offer other examples of prescriptive guidance.

Is this the bulk of what HR leaders are looking for? Hardly, as any HR Tech vendor will tell you: “They are just getting started!”

One HR tech vendor exec we spoke with for this research said, “the ultimate vision here is to predict all employee-related outcomes that materially impact business performance, understand why the outcome is likely, communicate why this insight matters, and determine and pursue the key actions needed.” As a destination point, it’s probably better than most.

2 key indications the time is now for getting this research out there:

• A few of the larger HCM solution vendors weren’t in such a hurry to discuss their predictive capabilities. Yes, this can happen with emerging technology areas; plus getting a read on “customer and market readiness” perhaps requires soothsayers as much as product managers.
• HR buyers’ interests seem to be out in front of what a large swath of the HR tech vendor community is delivering when it comes to these capabilities. This is not a dynamic observed very often. Vendors have historically done a lot of the pulling in this relationship.

Finding the “homeostasis point” where HR tech customers and vendors can both see and derive business benefit from moving the ball forward on HCM predictive capabilities keeps us moving forward with this research, underlining its sense of purpose — and urgency!

Bottom Line:  The value of predictive capabilities in major HR tech platforms, and understanding how providers’ plans are meshing (or not) with customer needs, will be covered in this first-of-its-kind research to be published in mid-February. We at HfS look forward to generating some lively discussions.

Posted in : Digital Transformation, HR Strategy

I plugged my iPhone into my new (fuel-emission friendly) VW this week and – for the first time – my car was connected to by digital life.  Siri (finally) came alive and started sending my contacts voice to text messages, my favorite Spotify soundtrack was arranging itself in all its glory on my vehicle dashboard, and I didn’t have to worry about tuning radio stations, pairing devices that barely talked to each other, or getting stuck using some horrible proprietary technology my previous car had forced me to use, or those awful attempts at being “appy” from the cable TV providers that look nice, but require months of frustration to figure out.

My car was finally seamlessly connected with my personal apps that run my life, and my suicidal urge to text and drive has been cured by Siri finally doing it for me! While it’s been pretty cool to program the air-con using a mobile app or have automated replenishment of new coffee capsules… being able to take your digital life into your moving vehicle is what IoT is all about. It’s high-time to get past the buzz about IoT being bigger than IT itself – it’s really about sensors, data and most importantly what we can do with this data, and how we can create digital experiences outside of our traditional mobile and laptop screens.  

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the 2017 landscape for IoT service providers and have a chat with report co-author and manufacturing-engineering analyst guru himself, Pareekh Jain, about the emerging landscape for IoT services…

Click to enlarge

Phil Fersht, Chief Analyst and CEO, HfS: Pareekh, how do you see the IoT market evolving and what are the key IoT trends you have been observing?

Pareekh Jain, Research Vice President, HfS: Phil, the current state of IoT revolves around sensors and data collection and its use in sub-process or process optimization, but there is not enough visible thought or action by IoT service providers in exploiting the potential of data for the business reimagination of the Digital OneOffice^TM. Take the example of Amazon Go – the concept store where there will be no checkout queues (seriously). Shoppers can pick… and just go. The combination of IoT with artificial intelligence and machine vision is what makes Amazon GO possible. This is just one of the business reimagination possibilities of IoT, where these true digital experiences come alive, and we’re finding this kind of conversation depressingly absent in our discussions with some of the service providers.

Having said that, we do see real progress with the foundations of IoT over the last couple of years and are observing five key trends in our IoT research.

1) IoT is for real, but is limited in scale and scope at present. We found many examples of PoCs and actual customer engagements. The customer engagements are small and limited in scope to a couple of business or geographical units. The organization-wide IoT strategy and implementations examples are rare. 

2) IoT update is pervasive and use cases are cropping up across all industry sectors. The highest number of IoT examples we have seen are in manufacturing or Industrial IoT, smart cities, and connected cars.

3) Efficiency or cost optimization are the major drivers in IoT projects at present. This is probably to chase the low-hanging fruit and develop business cases for organization-wide IoT implementations.

4) IoT is too industrial and The role of end consumer in IoT is under-appreciated.  The majority of current IoT projects are in B2B areas and smart cities, and advantages of IoT to the end consumer are too often a mere afterthought.

5) There is a lack of discussion on the role of algorithms in IoT. The majority of discussion is focused on the use of sensors, connectivity, data collection, data storage and dashboards. People think that analytics is a known capability and, once they have IoT data, they can analyze it in the similar way that they have been doing with their big data analytics. But there are differences in IoT data, namely the formats of data (be it a picture, video, temperature record, etc.), and frequency or volume of data (for example, one can have a continuous stream of temperature recording at every second). Some insights from IoT data can be derived by leveraging existing algorithms, but the broader IoT value will only be nurtured when the enterprise clients and their service providers create new IoT-specific algorithms. 

Phil: Why is IoT adoption limited untill now, Pareekh. What are some of the challenges enterprises are facing in their IoT strategy and implementation?

Pareekh: The IoT services offerings are still evolving, and this sector is facing several roadblocks from enterprise clients, service providers, and technology evolution. We are observing four challenges faced by enterprises that are stunting adoption:

1) Enterprise technology complexity is inhibiting IoT proliferation. As older enterprise systems do not have the capacity to handle so much data flow, legacy stacks need to be modernized. Thus, a lot of investment commitment is needed, restricting the scope of IoT implementation. Also, for organizations, greenfield IoT implementations are very rare, so service providers need to carefully select API, SDK, and gateways for easy integration of IoT solutions with other enterprise applications.

2) The lack of alignment of IoT with other enterprise digital and transformation initiatives is limiting IoT’s value potential. The value of IoT is much more powerful when it is combined with other technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine vision, intelligent automation, etc. as discussed earlier in Amazon Go example.  As IoT initiatives must be aligned with the broader digital strategies of the organizations, planning is very important for that purpose.  Service providers need to get involved from the digital strategy formulation stage of clients and have to be very strong in IoT consulting.

3) Fragmentation of IoT platforms and IoT standards are creating interoperability issues. At present, 300+ IoT platforms are available, hence service providers are facing challenges developing platform-specific solutions for easy integration. We expect there will be major consolidation in the IoT platform space, similar to what happened in the ERP market in the last couple of decades, but, for now, the major challenge for the service providers is to identify the right IoT platforms they can invest in.

4) Lastly, data security is becoming a major concern for IoT services. Service providers are building capabilities to address the security concerns in IoT, but this takes time to prove the security robustness of solutions. 

Phil: And how did the IoT Blueprint analysis turn out?

Pareekh: This Blueprint analysis was interesting and we evaluated 18 service providers for this study. 

The As-a-Service Winners are service providers that are being entrepreneurial alongside their clients and innovating in IoT activities, building new markets, paradigms, digital systems, and data flows around a breadth of different types of connected devices. The service providers included in this quadrant are Accenture, Atos, Cognizant, EPAM, Harman, IBM, HCL, TCS and Tech Mahindra. Accenture leads the pack due to its strong consulting base and execution scale in different industry verticals. Atos has a strong client base in Europe and good manufacturing and analytics capability. HARMAN is a mature player in industrial IoT, with a strong vertical focus, including automotive. Now with Samsung’s acquisition of HARMAN, its IoT capabilities will be augmented further. Cognizant has a very solid experience with its clients’ digital journeys and imparts Design Thinking in IoT implementation. EPAM has a good breadth of IoT portfolio and has a full stack approach. A strong partnership environment, engineering heritage, and IoT implementation capability are key strengths of HCL in IoT implementation. IBM is focusing on delivering cognitive IoT solutions and has a broad array of platforms and tools for IoT offerings, with real potential in develop IoT specific algorithms. TCS has deep competencies in multiple industry verticals, possessing the talent and skills to manage large-scale IoT projects. Tech Mahindra leverages its manufacturing heritage in IoT and has a strong implementation record.

High Performers are service providers that execute well around older Industrial M2M models, and are exploring and investing in newer IoT. The capabilities are also related to evolving demonstration of more traction with clients in defining and delivering at scale against business outcomes and co-innovation. The service providers included in this quadrant are Dell, Infosys, NTT DATA, NIIT Technologies, Syntel, and Tieto. Infosys has a strong IoT capability in multiple industry verticals and also has a deep focus on IoT security related features. Dell Services is strong in IoT infrastructure area, and NTT DATA can become a major global player in IoT with integrating the Dell Services offerings into its portfolio. NIIT Technologies is very focused on IoT solutions mainly in the travel and insurance industries and has the capability to scale up the IoT offerings in other verticals. Syntel has strong capability in IoT integration area and can capitalize its IT client relationships. Tieto is co-investing with customers in IoT and has a great portfolio of verticals in the Scandinavian region.

Execution Powerhouses are service providers which have deep pedigrees and competencies in Industrial Internet work on a global scale, with tremendous resources but have to catch up in modern IoT innovation and entrepreneurship. Genpact and Luxoft reside in this quadrant. Luxoft is very strong in automotive & BFSI domain and has a good delivery presence in both Europe and North America region. On the other hand, Genpact has strong partner ecosystem in manufacturing with the lean digital approach.

High Potential service providers demonstrate vision and strategy in IoT implementation but have yet to gain momentum in the execution of it. VirtusaPolaris has high potential with post-merger growth showing promise through rapid maturation as a modern IoT player.

Phil: So what should we be watching for in the next few years in IoT?

Pareekh: Over next few years, we will observe more IoT adoption. We will be watching six key trends.

1) Mega outsourcing deals in IoT services might become a reality. If IoT has to realize trillions of dollars in value as predicted by many analysts, the billion dollar IoT services outsourcing deals should not be far away.  As IoT point solutions become more effective and mature, organizations will go for large scale implementation of IoT.

2) More IoT adoption and application of IoT in other verticals apart from manufacturing. Also, the usage of IoT will expand beyond traditional large companies to customers of different sizes including SMBs and also in different consumer applications.

3) IoT partnerships likely to grow further as ecosphere expands. As IoT services need both the hardware and software components, the IoT service providers will collaborate with both software and hardware providers for the IoT network and connectivity related requirements. Also, service providers will develop APIs for IoT integrations and vertical specific digital plug and play solutions for rapid implementation of IoT solutions.

4) More robust security standards will evolve for data security so that data flow can be communicated easily among IoT and other enterprise applications.  IoT platform winners may start emerging, which will give confidence and clarity to both enterprises and service providers.

5) The IoT market will see M&As as the Global and Indian service providers look for specialization and boutique consulting in the IoT space to get rapid access to industry domain and technical capabilities. For example, Samsung has acquired HARMAN recently to expand its IoT portfolio (Read here).

6) Lastly, service providers will integrate their IoT offerings as a part of a broader digital transformation or Digital OneOffice^TM offerings by involving cloud, mobile, analytics, automation and security divisions. The IoT consulting expertise will become a genuine differentiator.  With IoT analytics, service providers will develop more predictive and prescriptive IoT analytics capabilities and will talk more about algorithms.

Phil: What are your plans for IoT coverage in 2017?

Pareekh: There are three aspects of our IoT coverage. Firstly, IoT is an important component of Digital OneOffice^TM so we will cover IoT extensively along with other HfS analysts as part of our Digital OneOffice^TM coverage.  Secondly, we will segment the IoT market and provide deeper insights into individual segments. Currently, we are doing Industry 4.0 services study which will provide deeper insights into manufacturing IoT market. We plan to cover smart cities IoT and consumer IoT separately in upcoming Blueprints. Finally, IoT is all about the ecosystem and we plan to extend our IoT coverage beyond traditional service providers. We plan to cover IoT platforms, telecom players, hardware players and emerging startups also along with service providers.

Phil: Last question, if you have to sum up the state of IoT in one sentence for our readers, what would you say?

Pareekh: I will say that IoT is for real but not transformational for consumers yet. As you said earlier, we need those real digital experiences coming alive with IoT!

A free copy of the HfS IoT Services Blueprint is available to download from hfsresearch.com for a limited time. Register your account and get your copy!

Pareekh Jain is Research Vice President Engineering Services, IoT, Telecom and Manufacturing at HfS Research. He established the global engineering services practice at HfS Research which covers mechanical engineering services, embedded engineering services, software product engineering services, PLM services, and Industry 4.0. His IoT coverage includes consumer IoT, industrial IoT and smart cities. Click here for his bio.

Posted in : internet-of-things, OneOffice

A company’s security posture changes often. The change can be company-created, for example, by opening an office in a new geography or entering a business with different regulatory requirements for data protection. Security posture also changes as new threats like previously unknown malware emerge, and more sophisticated techniques for hacking evolve.

When engaging a managed security services provider, it’s tempting to believe that keeping up with changing security posture is “being handled” by the provider. But is it?

Providers Often Forgo Innovation For Operating Efficiency

A very common complaint among outsourcing and managed services clients is that the providers rarely suggest changes unless the client brings it up – unless, of course, that change benefits the provider’s ability to run the process. In security environments, this heads-down approach goes beyond ineffective – it can cause significant damage to clients as threats and mitigation options change quickly.

Yes, providers generally do a security posture assessment before beginning the engagement. However, in our current blueprint research we found little evidence that providers re-assess security posture formally during the ongoing engagements. 

Recently, in fact, we even heard of one provider that regularly discovered threats in a client environment but didn’t report them to the client because the particular threat types were out of scope of the engagement. The client found out only months later, and by accident, about the omissions.

Even with such egregious scenarios of intentionally not alerting the client, many providers miss threats. They miss them because they’re not looking for them and their analytics engines aren’t detecting new patterns.

Be Proactive With Incident Monitoring And Reporting

There are many ways you can work with your managed security services provider to ensure that changes to your security posture are being addressed. From most quickly implemented to longest, here are some actions you can take:

• First and foremost, monitor news and trends in security and threat intelligence. Don’t wait for your provider to flag new threats types to you.
• Be proactive in asking questions about changes and new threats. Sometimes even a quick email asking the provider about a new ransomware technique that you read about will spur discussion about making changes to the service scope.
• Include security market changes and news as part of monthly meetings. Make it an agenda item to discuss what’s happening in the market. And build into the provider’s mindset not to wait for the regular meetings to bring up new events.
• Expand the scope of your engagement to include regular security posture re-assessments. This can depend on your industry and other factors, but it might be quarterly, semi-annual, or annual.
• Include a new engagement metric on the provider’s ability to find and address new threats. The provider’s ability to keep your data and organization protected from threats even as those threats change needs to be part of the provider’s success metrics if it isn’t already.

Bottom Line: Don’t let inertia set in on your security managed services engagement—make sure your engagement includes specific, proactive approaches to staying current with your security posture.

Posted in : security-and-risk-mgmt

We hear a lot about how retailers are trying hard to bridge the online and in-store experience for customers, but have you thought about how this concept can help patients in healthcare?  VCU Health, for example, is a forward thinking hospital that is looking outside the hospital walls for how to create a better experience and outcome for stroke patients before they even reach the ER.  Partnering with the ambulance authority and technology providers, VCU Health is testing remote assessment of the patient during their ambulance journey to shorten their time to treatment.  Led by neurologist Dr. Sherita Chapman Smith, this hospital’s story involves a passion for modern and mobile patient care, a lot of collaboration, and some real outside the box thinking in order to fine-tune and bring the idea to life.

At the heart of the effort is empathy – making an effort to “get inside” the experience of each person involved, understand their needs, and how to address those needs both simply and effectively.

The group that Dr. Chapman Smith gathered to the table included individuals from the local ambulance authority, the VCU Health Telemedicine Center, and technology provider swyMed, to determine what was needed to have a secure and stable system that would work and work well for all users. To get a patient perspective, the hospital reached out to specialty actors who have been trained to act in patient scenarios with medical students and residents, to give feedback on how they should interact with patients. The team trained these patient “stand-ins” on how to act out symptoms for a stroke.

These “patients” were picked up in an ambulance and connected via teleconference to the vascular neurologist in the hospital, who conducted a remote assessment; and when they got to the hospital, the scenario had them quickly advanced to the next stage of treatment. Afterwards, each one shared feedback via survey and interview, such as, did they feel safe, did they feel connected with the neurologist, were they comfortable, what did they think of the audio/visual quality? Participants ranged in age and ability to take into consideration comfort with technology and levels of hearing. The hospital also compared the responses with bedside evaluations. The feedback, combined with the experience from the physicians and EMT has led to proposals for changes to protocol and to the solution.

As the project moves along, they keep zeroing in on what will make the patient comfortable, and whether that works for the physician and EMT in the ambulance.

What makes it work?

Internal and External Network of Active Participation: “It’s a small group of vascular neurologists at VCU,” said Dr. Chapman Smith, “so I just asked my colleagues – can we give this a try?” She talked to her department chair, who connected her to the Chief of Emergency Services Operations and Medical Director of a local EMS agency, and then reached out to the communication office, and then to the ambulatory authority, bringing in representation from groups that all have a stake in how it would work, and how easily, and how smoothly. A small community banded together to test—what will work for the hospital, the patient and the EMT, and provide feedback. They have roles in working through implications to protocol, simulations, and dry runs.

Steady Visual Connection: “We wondered if the patient really needs to see the physician or EMT from within the ambulance,” said Dr. Chapman Smith, “but a main comment from the patient simulators was that it put them at ease to see a face versus just hear a voice… just a voice can add to the anxiety.” So the ambulance clearly needs a steady and secure connection with high enough bandwidth as it makes its way to the hospital. A modem, antennae, and single carrier connection did not do the trick; in test runs, the ambulance encountered multiple dead zones.  “We want to be sure wherever we go, we can do the assessment/exam without a drop.”  So, as part of the solution under development, swyMed software monitors for connections and can switch cell towers and antennas to get the best quality signal at the lowest bandwidth.  It’s part of a portable solution the team developed to keep a live-video connection to a doctor all the way to the medical center.  

Ease of Use and Access: During the assessment, the neurologist wants to be able to see the patient, but not have to click arrow keys to move around a camera. Taking this into consideration, the team designed a set of predefined commands such that a command would move the camera to a certain spot to look at an arm or a hand with as few arrow clicks and mouse moves as possible.  Also, the physicians and EMTs want a mobile solution: physicians don’t want to be limited by being at a desktop computer; and the EMTs want something that is portable between vehicles, something not every ambulance has to have, since they are not all in service all the time.  These insights all came from interviews, observations and dry runs.

There are a number of healthcare providers working inside the walls to create a better and more effective experience for health and care, but what happens before and after that care can have significant impact on outcomes as well.  The work that VCU Health is doing is an example of a human-centered, not hospital-centered or technology/telehealth-centered care. The hospital is on a journey—still to finalize the protocols and rollout the remote assessment with real patients—but it’s a worthy example of forward thinking that shows how healthcare providers can step outside the storefront and provide real remote services that can really impact the quality of care.

Posted in : Healthcare and Outsourcing