Shantanu Ghosh, SVP CFO Services and Consulting, Genpact (Click for bio)
Digital, digital everywhere, but what about the finance function? It took a decade for accountants to make the seismic shift from Lotus 1-2-3 to MS Excel… so how much focus is our favorite business function putting on today’s advances in analytics tools, interactive and collaborative solutions, mobility and automation?
Can finance executives really embrace digital to break away from some of the legacy mindsets, processes and technologies that have plagued the function for decades?
Not too many people have been driving the digital agenda as aggressively with the CFO’s office than Genpact’s Shantanu Ghosh, with his firm’s own methodology “lean digital,” so we thought it high-time we caught up with him to get his viewpoint on the impact of digital o the finance function.
Phil Fersht, CEO and Industry Analyst, HfS: Shantanu, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve had you on here. Can you tell us a bit about what you’re up to in Genpact today?
Shantanu Ghosh, Senior VP & Business Leader – CFO Services and Consulting, Genpact: Actually, my remit remains pretty similar to what it was two years back. I lead the financial accounting, sourcing and procurement service lines, globally. I also lead consulting across Genpact.
But I’ll tell you, the complexities, the scale and the type of solutions involved in all three have changed pretty dramatically in the last two to three years. So it feels like I’m doing a new job every day, even though broadly the remit remains the same.
Phil: I’ve seen Genpact has been on a real tear, particularly over the last 12 to 18 months. I’ve seen a real uptick, especially in Europe, where you’re winning a lot of deals. What’s going on? What are you doing differently?
Shantanu: I think there are four things at play, Phil. One, I think it’s a result of there or four years of sustained investment in our domain capability and our front-end capability. Obviously, in this business it takes a little bit of time for that to result in winnings in the marketplace, because you have to start engaging with clients at a different level. Then you get into a virtuous cycle, because as you get engaged with more and more clients they see the differentiated value that you’re bringing to the table—and the advisors see that as well. You get involved in more dialog and, as a result, you get in on bigger deals.
Let me share a data point. Our big deals—deals that are worth at least $50,000,000 in total contract value—have gone up five to seven times over the last four or five years. Obviously, the growth, other than GE has been pretty robust.
We have really focused our attention on a few verticals and a subset of clients. So, in terms of mining our existing clients, we have focused on a few and we have gone deep with them. We’re spending far more quality time with them. And, therefore, we’ve been far more proactive in terms of solutions and business opportunities, than just reacting to demand that is coming out from the market.
The last thing is that we’re combining much more technology, analytics, traditional strengths of Lean and Six Sigma into our process solutions. That’s creating a differentiated view in the market, which we’re branding as Lean Digital. Lean Digital wasn’t done over night. The branding is more recent but we have been on this journey for the last three to four years.
Phil: What would you say is the secret sauce that you can share that differentiates Genpact? What do you think makes your culture unique compared to maybe some of your competitors in the market?
Shantanu: That’s an interesting question, Phil. I’m not so sure that it’s a really secret sauce. I think it boils down to three fundamental factors. One is the real focused investment and persistence in building deep domain expertise, in a few chosen verticals and a few chosen service lines. We’ve been extremely insistent and persistent on that for the last three to four years—to the exclusion of everything else. We go very deep, and create differentiated capabilities.
The second thing is the bundling, which we talked about. Our focus on leveraging new digital technologies and what you can do to leverage data and analytics, has gone up 10 times over the last three to four years. That’s obviously resonating very well with clients, because the value equation has changed from just cost to many things outside cost. Third, we come back to the cultural point that you’re making. There are some pieces that have been consistent for the last 15 years, which is the maniacal focus on customers. Our Net Promoter scores have continued to go up. Last year we ended at 67%, which is our highest level ever. So that’s been consistent.
I think what has changed in the culture is the level of experimentation that we’re able to now do, both in terms of solutions as well as commercial constructs—because of the confidence that we have built up in our vertical and service mind domain expertise, and in our capability to try really large fundamentally, transformational programs for our clients. I think it’s about our interest in experimentation, our co-innovation mindset with customers. We go out and put a stake in the ground and continuously push the boundary and commercial constructs in terms of getting paid for results and performance, rather than just for effort. I think that’s been a big change over the last few years. If you look at us five years back and today, I think you’ll see a pretty significant change.
Phil: So we did a recent study that looked at the impact of digital on finance. Were you surprised when we saw that three quarters of the finance professionals fundamentally view digital as changing the way the function operates? Where do you see digital impacting finance in the medium term?
Shantanu: No, Phil, I wasn’t surprised at all. Actually, I am surprised that more people didn’t say that. I would have almost thought 100% would say the same thing, but I’ll give you two different dimensions to this. I think most people think of digital as having a very, very significant impact in cost and cycle time. There are lots of stories on what’s happening on the financial services world with fintech, what’s happening with robotic automation and stuff like that.
I think what is less appreciated today is the level of flexibility or agility, that this is bringing to operating models in finance, one. Two, with a greater level of data leveraging, analytics, predictive modeling, and forecasting means you’re really becoming a better business partner. I think that’s under appreciated and possibly not viewed as a fundamental shift. So no, I’m not surprised. But I think if you dig down, you will find all the dimensions are possibly still to be discovered in their entirety.
Phil: Shantanu, I’m really starting to see a growing, stronger link between automation and digital in the back/middle office. You can’t really develop a strong digital capability without a smart, actionable roadmap. I’d almost go as far as saying we’ll even cease using this term RPA soon because it’s just becoming a core component of digitizing the business. So do you agree with this viewpoint? Are you expecting this robo hype to continue? Or do you think it’s just going to become mainstream in the offerings very quickly?
Shantanu: Two different questions, Phil, so I’ll answer this separately. One is, I 100% agree with your world view. In fact, our entire positioning of our solution structure and the whole lean digital platform that we have taken, is fundamentally based on the premise that a lot of digital disruption and innovation so far has happened in the front office—changing the way customers interact in a B2B environment or a B2C environment. However, one of the biggest learnings from that innovation in the front office is that after the initially hype it causes severe customer dissatisfaction.
And it causes severe business problems if the middle and the back office does not get streamlined, does not get digitized. So we have focused exclusively on making that middle office and back office transformation become real for our customers, ensuring that the front-end transformation that many of them are on is something that they can deliver and they can actually delight the customer. That’s my answer to the first point, which is in 100% agreement with your view.
We’re seeing the customers are getting into that mindset now, they’ve understood that linkage. While many of them started from the front end, now the focus is coming back to the middle and the back end. Obviously, the evolution of the technology and the platforms that are happening, are allowing them to get over the historical impediments of cost and inflexible systems.
To come to your second question on the robotic automation piece: I think the hype will morph from the concept of robo today, which is primarily mimicking of a human task, to the application of bundled digital technologies, which is robotics, plus machine learning, plus cognitive algorithms, plus visualization and stuff like that, that transforms a process very fundamentally. When robotics came in initially, it was really just making an inefficient more efficient. But it’s not a fundamental transformation, but it takes out human beings and just mimics what the human being was doing, even if the process was inefficient.
What we’re seeing is increasing application of purpose-built solutions across the whole value chain of a commercial operation, which has various pieces of bundled digital technology, to really great differentiation. Our entire focus on the digital element and the process solutions that we’re developing, is about bundling rather than focusing exclusively on robotics, which would cater to just the hype. .
Phil: I think that’s a very good point. I’ve had some interesting conversations about the term “digital labor”—so getting away from the term “robotics” because it’s a little toxic. But I take the attitude if you’ve taken a manual process and digitized it using robotics software, it’s no longer labor, it’s a digital enabler. So that’s one of the reasons why I think we’re going to start to get away from that term. It’s like outsourcing was the act of moving services to a third party, RPA is the process of moving certain processes into technology.
I have a final question, Shantanu, about the impact on talent, and this has come out hugely in some of our recent client group sessions. I think some clients are scared today, they’re worried about what’s going on and are they still relevant. How can they stay ahead of the curve and be successful? How is the workplace changing finance professionals? What’s your advice here in terms of how to handle a lot of this disruption, to many of your peers and colleagues and clients?
Shantanu: Phil, this is possibly the most common question I face when I interact with senior finance professionals across our clients and potential clients. So I’m exactly on the same boat as you are. So let me give you some reflections, but I’m not sure it qualifies as advice. I think if you look at traditional finance skill sets, there was a lot of emphasis on the technical aspect of finance, then grounding your experience in the operational delivery of finance. So the traditional management training to senior leadership model was you go through practice, you go through sales offices, you go through profit centers, you go through corporate offices and you learn how operational finance happened in each of those places.
Then you did it in treasury, you did it in this company, you became a CFO–for the people who made it, that’s really how you went through the pyramid. With what is happening in the fundamental finance operating mode of transformation and digitization of operations, three things are becoming more important. The first one is analytical literacy, and that’s different from visual literacy. So how do you use data to be a true business partner? Phil you and I both know, almost every research study done with finance professionals has always shown serious dissatisfaction on the potential to be a business partner and the reality.
I think that has fundamentally changed, given the sheer amount of data that gets spewed out of the systems—and what you can do with that data in terms of modeling, forecasting and stuff like that. So that’s one. Two, with that data comes the whole concept of risk management. Risk management is going from the static view of controlled definitions and one-time control set up, and then auditing to really far more dynamic risk management—and also multivariate risk management across the globe.
The third is really the mindset shifting from cost-to-serve and managing cost-to-serve and cycle time, to creating really agile and flexible operating models—not just in finance, but in the core supply chain and being a partner to that.
So if you think of those dimensions, traditional finance does not cater to that. So it is a very live issue and I don’t think I have a ready made answer. But as we go through a lot of this, the sources of the talent will possibly have to change. So the curriculum will have to change. So I think there are more questions out there than answers.
Phil: That’s has been a very rich discussion, Shantanu, and I look forward to sharing this with our audience and the network on the blog very soon. We really appreciate your time and the thought that you’ve put into this.
If you weren’t able to make our excellent buyers summit at our research partner Cambridge University, we managed to crack the code (finally) on surviving in these disruptive times – in twelve simple steps. Just download our report and all will become crystal clear:
75% of finance executives agree that the new wave of digital technologies is fundamentally changing the way that the finance function operates. So what will the finance function of the future really look like?
Join us on April 21st to be part of this exclusive webinar and find out!
Join these experts from HfS Research, Genpact, Mondelez and KPMG as they discuss the findings from recent research that shows how digital technologies are delivering competitive advantage. They will share their insight on the future of F&A and explore:
What are the key drivers for F&A leaders to embed digital technologies, such as SaaS platforms, analytics, mobility tools, RPA, and machine learning, into their operations?
Where are most F&A organizations in their digital journeys and what lessons have they learnt?
What are the talent requirements and skill sets that finance leaders need in their functions to take advantage of digital technologies?
Where are digital pioneers investing and what challenges are they experiencing?
The BFS industry is completely dependant on data and analytics and the services to provide these analytics are critical. These services enable analytics data preparation and management, routine business intelligence reporting and dashboarding, advanced analytics modeling and ongoing decision-making for industry-specific use cases, including customer and marketing analytics, fraud, risk and compliance, and portfolio analytics.
To this end, we’re excited to announce the release of our latest Blueprint Report–this one on BFS Analytics Services, authored by HfS Research Director Reetika Joshi‘s exhaustive research to arrive at this comprehensive view of the market. So let’s get an up-close view from Reetika on the Blueprint Report:
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Reetika, why have we undertaken an HfS Blueprint on analytics services specifically in banking and financial services?
The BFS industry is heavily reliant on the use of data, and yet the potential for embedding analytics-driven insights into operations is still far greater than adoption. The last few years have seen their focus on risk analytics intensify as regulatory changes and government scrutiny continue to mount. Along with balancing this growing compliance work, banks have also found a renewed interest in customer analytics to orient their growth initiatives. Most banks are not set up to meet digital consumer needs and are now embarking on digital transformation, powered by customer and marketing analytics.
Major banks and financial institutions are once again focusing on the next generation of analytics models, tools, and skillsets. We see demand from BFS clients across fraud, risk and compliance, AML/KYC, and customer and marketing analytics. Enterprise buyers in this industry are either unable to find the talent they need, for areas like specialized fraud, risk and compliance, or technology platform expertise, or are unable to afford it at the level of scale needed today—leading us to undertake this Blueprint to understand market direction. We see BFS clients trying to balance and complement their internal analytics teams with the global talent access that some service providers can bring them.
Report author Reetika Joshi, HfS Research Director (click for bio).
So how would you describe the current state of BFS analytics services?
For most service providers, big data and analytics services are the fastest-growing businesses in their portfolios, with significant revenues coming from BFS clients. This is due to the growing adoption of data-driven decision making within different parts of the enterprise for BFS buyers, and the need for more analytical support than internal staff can support.
Service providers have doubled down on BFS verticalization in their analytics portfolios, turning initial work with clients for analytics modeling and reporting into portfolios of pre-packaged industry-specific use cases and catalogues. As service buyers consistently stress the need for domain expertise from service providers, we see service providers strengthening industry training programs and hiring professionals from BFS industry backgrounds to increase contextual understanding and allowing for more meaningful analysis. We see the types of BFS analytics solutions changing today, with the next level of analytics use case development. BFS analytics services buyers seek the following:
The application of cross-vertical learnings to banking, especially from other consumer-facing industries that have progressed in customer experience analytics (e.g., from telecom to retail banking)
The incorporation of newer sources of data into existing analytical models to gain new insights into fraud, risk, and marketing (e.g., sensors, geolocation mobile data, and web and social data)
The exploration of modern business intelligence and reporting applications and tools, big data infrastructure, and advanced analytics platforms (e.g., cloud-based data warehousing, the mobile delivery of reports, and insights)
These initiatives are step changes for in-house data and analytics teams that are already struggling just to keep up with the demand from a growing list of internal clients. Service providers are bringing in the skills, technology, and scale to these categories coming from investments in the last few years in this industry vertical. We see this market as gradually transitioning, with service buyers and providers becoming more collaborative and focused on solving business problems to improve the outcomes for different functions within banking and financial services organizations. We view this as a step in the direction of a transition to the As-a-Service Economy, with service buyers leveraging their service providers more strategically for their big data and analytics needs.
Which service providers are leading this market today, Reetika?
The banking and financial services industry vertical has historically been the biggest revenue contributor for most service providers in our evaluation. They have developed meaningful relationships with BFS clients across the globe by taking on outsourced IT services, infrastructure, and BPO services. In the last decade, they expanded services to include data management, reporting, and analytics across industry-specific and horizontal business functions. As a result, today we observe a significantly mature set of service providers that have strategically invested in this vertical, have strong multi-tower relationships with their clients and have both analytics services and technology expertise across different BFS business needs. This is visible in our Blueprint grid results with several As-a-Service Winner’s Circle and High Performer positions from leading service providers in this market:
Accenture is creating an industrialized analytics model using FinTech networks and innovation
Cognizant is fostering specialized talent for BFS analytics and platforms
EXL has been described as an “extension to the advanced analytics team” by its BFS clientsGenpact is augmenting niche BFS talent development with a new IP-led strategy
IBM is introducing its BFS clients to the potential of cognitive risk management with Watson
Infosys is investing in analytics platform specializations to drive new value for its BFS clients
TCS is a BFS domain expert bringing automation to legacy analytics engagements
High Performers in this study include:
Standalone analytics specialists, Mu-Sigma and Fractal analytics that have a loyal client base of BFS clients that see them as business problem solvers.
Capgemini and Wipro that are pivoting from their experience in data management, BI and routine reporting to invest in analytics, with Capgemini driving customer experience analytics and Wipro focusing on cognitive and analytical solutions in risk and compliance.
Due to multi-faceted demand, service providers have evolved their analytics practices in different ways, e.g., EXL and Genpact have more large scale, multi-year BFS engagements, while Accenture and IBM have more experience with projects and consulting services for banking clients. The Winner’s Circle and High Performers are now developing adjacent capabilities on the back of these traditional strengths. So BFS clients are advised to take a new look at their analytics service provider to freshly evaluate their capabilities. In the last few years, service providers have undertaken several acquisitions and other investments in developing critical thinking, data sciences, and analytics technology platforms. Due to past perceptions of capability, we see the pigeonholing of service providers as a key inhibitor to partnering at a strategic level. There is an opportunity here for service buyers to collaborate and influence market direction for strategic partners at this stage of their growth, where they are extremely amenable to making investments in BFS-specific solutions.
Finally, what recommendations do you have for BFS analytics service providers in 2016?
Facilitate Industry Collaboration: Barring a couple of Winner’s Circle leaders, the majority of service providers lack the ability to act as facilitators for sharing ideas across companies in their client base. BFS clients in our research stress that they would really value the opportunity to connect through forums, etc. with other enterprise analytics users, academic communities, and FinTech startups to understand next-generation analytics developments. While it is difficult to orchestrate given confidentiality concerns in the banking industry, clients would also value cross-industry perspectives, especially for consumer-facing verticals that have rapidly advanced their analytics adoption in the last few years.
Find New Ways of Lowering Costs: In the near term, there is still value to be found in leveraging offshore talent for BFS analytics, and this is an area of utmost importance to BFS clients. However, the costs continue to rise year after year for Indian analytics data scientists, PhDs, and analysts. Service providers must continue to explore cost controlling levers, including hiring in Tier III locations, and building in more automation to eliminate work (and pass on savings to clients).
Above Everything, Have an Iron-proof Global Talent Strategy: We see a few service providers like Accenture, Genpact, Infosys, and EXL focus on expanding the talent pool and contributing to curriculum development with university tie-ups across global talent locations. As the data sciences field continues to grow, BFS-specific specializations in risk and compliance will command greater attention from clients.
Initial Printing of Groundbreaking New Magazine to be Mailed to 200,000 Subscribers
The firm that coined the As-a-Service Economy is now disrupting the analyst industry even further. HfS Research, The Services Research Company, today announced it has launched its most disruptive research offering so far: HfS unDigital Magazine.
This revolutionary publication will challenge the rhetoric and hype currently being stirred up in the IT and BPO services industry, building on the success of the radical blog “Horses for Sources,” which will soon be replaced by this cutting-edge print publication. HfS is now taking disruption to an entirely new level…by revitalizing the hallowed glossy magazine. The firm believes people are so tired of relentless social media that bringing back printed words and pictures will change the research game once more.
In announcing the latest development, Phil Fersht, HfS Founder and Industry Analyst, noted that this is not the first time the firm has shaken up the marketplace.
“In 2007, when I created the Horses for Sources blog, people thought I was crazy,” said Fersht. “Who would read that? Then, when I started HfS Research a few years later, people became truly concerned for my sanity. Soon after, we created the industry’s best summits. Now, with well over a million hits on our sites every year, we have decided to shake things up once again. How can people still doubt us now?”
HfS unDigital Magazine will be available on newsstands around the globe and via subscription to 200,000 existing clients and community members:
The first issue of the magazine is printed by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, in Heidelberg (Baden-Württemberg), Germany, on 80lb glossy paper stock, features the following stories:
Phil Fersht tells all with his Undisrupted Undigital Experience
Dumb and Bummer: Why Artificial Intelligence is all hype
Hot News from December 2015Outcome-based pricing is worth the paper it is written on
A Labor Arbitrage love-fest with Agony Uncle Charles
Design Stinking: HfS sifts through the cheese to get to the real deal
De-automating your Back Office the Reuner way
“This is a huge undertaking,” Fersht added. “But we know that a lot of our community has grown tired of staring at pixels and yearn for the feel of the printed page once again. Disruption has moved full circle and now we’re disrupting back in print. Our clients tell us they miss being able to sit on the loo and flick through pages of their favorite analysts waxing lyrical. Those days are now back… so take your seat and enjoy!”
And of course… this was an:
Please, please don’t tell me you fell for this again! (Even though the business model might kinda work…)
And while we’re reminiscing about falling for April Fools’ gags, here is 2015’s classic:
HfS supply chain process expert (among other things), Charles Sutherland has finally done what no other analyst has done before him… define and develop the first comprehensive view of Supply Chain Management As-a-Service….
Supply Chain Management BPO has, since its inception, been an enigma in the overall BPO industry. Combining both large-scale transactional order management contracts along with focused domain and analytic skill-enabled forecasting engagements, it has been both an outlier in the portfolio of many large service providers as well as a lucrative market for specialist pure play providers. Clients often considered these engagements as something more like prolonged consulting deals than actual outsourcing contracts, while service providers wondered where best to house the delivery teams inside the organization as a result.
Now, more than a decade into operations—and with total market ACV closing in on $2 billion—HfS is seeing that many of the characteristics of Supply Chain Management BPO that were once considered causes of its uniqueness (Design Thinking, Collaborative Engagement, Accessible and Actionable Data) are now traits sought for all BPO engagements as the market moves toward As-a-Service solutions.
Once ahead of its time, Supply Chain Management is now very much integral to the realization of As-a-Service and so it was time for HfS to look again at this market following our inaugural Blueprint in 2014 to describe how it is developing and which service providers are leading the way. So let’s get Charles’ thoughts on this market and its leaders…
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Charles, how would you describe the current state of Supply Chain Management As-a-Service?
We describe this market as one that is fast growing but still tiny against the backdrop of the entire BPO marketplace. But we believe the potential opportunity is massive—at potentially $300 billion-plus. So penetration today of this addressable market is less than 1% and we expect to see the current enthusiasm for participation by service providers to continue and only grow more in the next few years.
We covered 14 different service providers in this Blueprint (with 3 service providers covered for the first time) and what is striking, versus say the Finance & Accounting BPO marketplace, is how unique the offerings and capabilities are between these 14 service providers today in supply chain management. These service providers are not mirror images of each other. Each one brings different industry specializations, domain knowledge, technologies and commercial models to bear. This heterogeneity of service providers highlights the still early and evolving stage in the lifecycle of this offering and the scope of the opportunities left to be addressed.
We would also highlight that As-a-Service is the model today and for the future in supply chain management. As-a-Service has been part of SCM services since its inception. In particular, service providers have acted as “Brokers of Capability,” partnering with enterprise clients to identify operational issues and then bring the required insights and talent to improve business outcomes. In the last several years, the availability of deeper analytical talent, digital platforms and design thinking approaches has moved this market even further through the As-a-Service model.
Finally, this is also a market where service providers have to respond to an ever changing landscape. It is clear to HfS that the increasing adoption of IoT, the deployment of intelligent automation (both robotic process automation and cognitive computing) as well as the growing utilization of formal design thinking practices will impact this market tomorrow and for years to come. Success in this market comes from understanding not just the client business issues of today but how these issues will evolve and manifest in the future. So, more than anything else, this market today is one that both requires and rewards real and substantive collaborative engagement between service providers and enterprise clients.
Charles Sutherland, HfS Chief Research Officer and author of the HfS Blueprint Report: Supply Chain Management As-a-Service (click for bio)
How has that changed since our inaugural Supply Chain Management BPO Blueprint in 2014?
Already back in 2014, we could see many of the Ideals of As-a-Service nascent in the offerings of the service providers. But over the last two years we have seen a massive uptake in interest and investment in this offering by the service providers. Today, having a strong supply chain management offering is a way of showing commitment to the evolution of BPO from legacy delivery models to one that exemplifies as-a-service and clients are responding as well. Supply chain management growth rates at 20%-plus are well above the market norm and that is encouraging further attention and investment in this market as well. In 2014, service providers (and clients) were just starting to see how Control Towers—which can provide an end-to-end process view of operations in a supply chain—were important to service delivery. Two years later, it’s clear that this is fully recognized and so we are seeing a heightened level of investment in Control Tower solutions across the market. Service providers and clients are also seeing that, whereas in 2014 just getting visibility into the supply chain through a Control Tower was valuable, today it’s about modifying the processes around these solutions so that either party can intervene in the supply chain process when the analytics show an emerging problem and take actions to mitigate what might previously have been significant business impacts.
In 2014, many service providers and clients talked about how they were looking ad-hoc at issues and trying to solve problems before they impacted the processes. They weren’t calling it design thinking then but that’s what it was. Today, many service providers are calling this out and embedding a formal design thinking methodology into the way that service providers and clients work together over the life of a contract.
What’s also different since 2014 is the realization that other emerging trends such as IoT, 3D printing and intelligent automation are going to have major impacts on today’s supply chains and that the processes of tomorrow will be significantly different than in the past. The last few years really were about service providers and clients working together to determine what an end-to-end supply chain looked like. Now, in 2016, that is changing to working on how that end-to-end process view will need to continue to change into the future.
Tell us, Charles, which service providers are leading this market today?
Our HfS Blueprint methodology assesses service providers against a variety of criteria related to Execution and Innovation capabilities of the service providers based upon buyer reference calls, market interviews, RFI submissions and detailed market briefings.
The service providers in the As-a-Service Winner’s Circle are the providers that scored highest on both Execution and Innovation and included: Accenture, arvato, Brightstar, HAVI Global Solutions and OnProcess. These service providers stood out for the excellence of delivery operations, the depth of domain and process expertise, the inclusion of client feedback, the comprehensiveness of their vision for supply chain solutions and the effective utilization of accessible and actionable data to deliver business outcomes.
We identified two service providers as Execution Powerhouses—Infosys and TCS—that excel today in execution of supply chain management services and are making investments in innovation that should enhance future operational solutions as well.
Our High Performers, which captured a balance of strengths between Execution and Innovation, numbered six and included Capgemini, Entercoms, EXl, Genpact, Wipro and WNS, with some service providers really pushing the boundaries on overall innovation in the marketplace and all offering capabilities to meet the needs of today’s supply chain management buyers.
Finally, we also identified a High Potential service provider in HCL—new to our 2016 Blueprint. HCL is using a depth of capabilities in IT and engineering to deliver platform-based supply chain management with domain expertise.
What recommendations do you have for enterprise buyers looking at Supply Chain Management As-a-Service?
Our overall recommendation would be to jump in and test the waters if this is new to any enterprise. The offerings from service providers are maturing rapidly and the levels of strategic commitment and investment have never been greater. This will be one of the major growth offerings for the years to come and enterprises have a chance to shape those offerings to meet their own needs today.
Having decided to take the jump, adopt a design thinking mindset when it comes to assessing the issues in your supply chain and what solutions might be most suitable. Sitting down with your prospective service provider(s) to better understand the business context in which your current processes operate and what can be done to realign or reimagine those processes to achieve different and/or better business results is always an exercise worth undertaking.
Having made that jump, we encourage buyers to not test using labor arbitrage models from the past but to push for as-a-service solutions. With all the current (and future) business challenges enterprise supply chains face, it’s important to secure solutions that are flexible and agile and which can grow to meet your needs as they evolve over time. Don’t settle for a long-term fixed model of solution delivery that might work in F&A or HR because it won’t work here.
Along the way this year and beyond, also ask the service provider for insight into how 3D printing, IoT and other innovations are likely to impact the supply chain processes you have in place today. Use quarterly business reviews and other interactions with service providers to review their vision for the evolution of supply chain management as a service.
Having embarked on a collaborative journey together using design thinking, continue to push your service provider and your own team to be more collaborative, more visionary, more inclusive and more trusting together. Extend this same new mindset to how you think of data and physical security to make sure that your policies on security aren’t coming with unnecessary costs to your supply chain. Address the enterprise pain points of supply chain and realize the resulting business outcomes is easier in a close partnership than in a closed-off zero-sum mindset relationship. So, work with your service provider(s) in a manner that facilitates long-term mutual success.
So that’s our take on the state of Supply Chain Management As-a-Service at the start of 2016. Please share your thoughts with us as this fast growing and dynamic segment of the As-a-Service Economy continues to evolve.
Coming away from our Cambridge University buyers summit this week, I was pleasantly surprised by the increased level of sophistication and maturity many services buyers are now exhibiting.
Gone are the provider bitch-fests and endless ranting about failed promises and absent innovation (that they didn’t pay for in the first place). Instead, there was a desire to look at themselves, and really try to figure out how to broker change and run their outsourcing engagements as part of a broader business agenda, not some quirky siloed activity, forever tarnished by the word “outsourcing”.
Adopting a mindset to change today (not tomorrow), is where everything must start
Yes, the conversation has turned to buyers accepting they need to change first, before heaping all the blame for their woes onto their service providers. This is why our Ideals of As-a-Service begin with a mandate for buyers and providers to change how they behave, how they can adopt a mindset to start writing off their legacy processes and technologies. In short, it’s time we focused on fixing our present – it’s time we focused on Being As-a-Service:
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It’s time we stopped talking about this scenario of “this was legacy and this is our future desired endstate”… we’ll just remain stuck in this perpetual stranglehold of never getting anywhere. We’ll always we a work-in-progress, a project that never finishes…
As someone joked during our Cambridge University summit this week “Cognitive computing is always going to be huge in the future”… so let’s stop evangelizing about a nirvana we many never reach and, instead, start talking about what we need to do today. Let’s stop panicking about the future, which is scaring so many people, and start focusing on what we can do today to be more effective.
Let’s start talking about Being As-a-Service today… not tomorrow, or some far off point in the future, where we just hope this all becomes somebody else’s nightmare…
Bottom-line: We have to narrow the chasm between hype and reality in order to be successful in the present
Our industry is beset by fear, like never before. People are scared – they know their skills and capabilities could quickly become obsolete in a world where the job openings increasingly demand creativity, analytical prowess and an ability to pivot across domains. Suddenly, if you’re not a Digital native who talks about endless disruption and the coming robo-geddon, you’re a dinosaur… The gap between hype and reality has reached ridiculous proportions, and it’s time we stopped thinking about the fantastical future and focus on what we can achieve today.
Successful sourcing executives have to become “brokers of capability” (which one buyer commented sounds like a rock band) where they can live in the present to drive a change mindset for the future. Most of the executives have been tasked with adopting Digital strategies (whatever those may be) and to come up with smart approaches to take advantage of automation technologies. But to get there, they need to change how their teams think, collaborate and operate.
It’s a mindset change, it’s a culture change. It’s about bringing together the key stakeholders and delivery leads to address the As-a-Service Ideals today and stop looking at them as some far off nirvana someone else will take them to. Simply put, most firms can’t simply saw-off their legacy by disposing of some archaic ERP system and slamming in some SaaS product, or mimicking every defunct manual process into a piece of RPA software, or firing an entire department of ineffective process wonks. In fact, a lot of the legacy actually works and the ROI of binning it doesn’t make financial sense. Writing-off legacy is about starting the process of re-imagining a future without those legacy systems and processes that are holding back our businesses.
So the Ideals of As-a-Service can be initially addressed today by making the most of what we currently have, not simply waiting for the day budget magically appears from above to bring in teams of nose-ringed consultants to redesign our businesses.
Amidst the relentless robo-hype in our current era of robotic rhetoric, it’s fast-emerging that many buyers and service providers are really struggling to work together to create workable Robotic Process Automation initiatives – in many cases, neither are willing to make the necessary investments, trade-offs or sacrifices to make his work.
So let’s start with those selfish service providers unwilling to share the robotic rewards…
Some service providers want to implement RPA on themselves and avoid passing on the savings to their buyers. Having come off a great many buyer discussions about their developing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities to augment their BPO engagement productivity, I have been shocked to hear a common thread from several buyers: their service providers only want to implement RPA on themselves and insist on charging their buyers the same legacy FTE rates. Some service providers simply cannot stomach sharing gains with their buyers – some have, but the general experience, from the buyers, has been they are not really interested. And one of those service providers even boasts its own “cannibalization fund”, while refusing to do anything different with several of its biggest engagements. It’s quite mind blowing how contrary some of these service providers can be, when it comes to what they claim they are doing versus the reality of what they really up to.
Yes, amidst this talk of the leading service providers breaking away from the old model and openly exploring ways to invest in initiatives to delink headcount from revenue, it would appear that some are simply playing lip service to the industry while, in reality, they are just looking at RPA as a vehicle to drive down their own costs and improve their margins, while maintaining their legacy FTE-pricing. One buyer even mentioned to me that their service provider had the nerve to ask them if they could reduce their own staff delivery headcount using RPA, but keep charging them the same FTE rates…. no joke.
However, this isn’t just the fault of the service providers, many buyers are equally to blame for robotic restraint…
Buyers need to entrust their providers with more intimate data access. Most enterprise buyers, for security and control reasons, keep the providers at bay and force them to connect to their systems only using Citrix. This limits the effectiveness of RPA overall and encourages an “us versus them” mindset between buyer and provider, so it’s no surprise service providers do what they can on the other side of the “Citrix” firewall. Both parties cannot enjoy the full benefits of RPA and Intelligent Automation, without genuine collaborative engagements and a holistic security model that aligns the capabilities more effectively.
Greedy buyers need to stop treating RPA like legacy offshore BPO, demanding all the savings up front. I would also argue that many costs of RPA –greater testing, maintaining a fall-back agent pool and the incremental manner that robots are typically actually rolled out (versus a one time overall reduction in costs, as often asked by buyers) diminish the “greedy” aspect of this from many service providers. In addition, many buyers want royalties for advancing the automation initiatives of the sell side – there is a whole new business model evolving around access to data as well as contribution to IP, when it comes to developing effective RPA platforms.
Sadly, many buyers are often too greedy and want to get all the theoretical cost savings from a new deal up front, even before the RPA benefits have been formalized – and without realizing that RPA often drives up service provider costs in the short term for increased testing and QA. In this way, buyers are keeping the mindset used in legacy outsourcing deals, where savings driven through labor arbitrage were much more predictable and tangible. I would argue that many costs of RPA – a great deal of testing, maintaining a fall-back agent pool to mitigate transition risks, and the incremental way that robots are actually rolled out (versus a one time overall reduction in costs as often asked by buyers) put the service provider in a much riskier position to guarantee productivity benefits and cost efficiencies, than they ever were with their legacy outsourcing deals. Robots are not as easy to plug into legacy processes as offshore labor…
So clearly we are rapidly arriving at a juncture where a couple of scenarios will play out as to how buyers and service providers make RPA work…
Legacy BPO deals will continue to stagnate for some time. In most cases, deals struck several years’ ago have met their initial productivity targets through offshoring and some basic process standardization. The service provider has no incentive to do anything but maintain the same rates and same margin, and most are willing to risk their buyer trying to bring in a competitive bidding process. They know that in many cases, their business is not that attractive to other providers, and the cost of switching outweighs the benefits of “winning” the business.
Where we will see the advent of Robotic-led BPO solutions
Definition of Robotic BPO: “Applying robotics to transform legacy business process outsourcing engagements that were developed with a legacy FTE pricing and mindset. Deals are wholly or partially financed by the anticipated future headcount reduction and productivity improvements driven by the RPA, where the buyer and provider share the risks”.
It’s very rare today that RPA results in the elimination of entire job roles for staff in the BPO world (less so than with IT automation). Hence, we view an emerging focus on human-augmentation robotic solutions that combine people-driven processes with genuine RPA capability where it is cost effective and secure to implement.
We are already witnessing a serious potential for service providers to offer RPA-led offerings to streamline bloated stagnant BPO engagements, especially where there is a lot of very automatable offshore work that is efficiently run with well documented process flows. Enter R-BPO, where we will surely see the first automation-led human augmentation solutions, where the deals are partially funded by the expected headcount reduction and productivity improvements over the course of a multi-year engagement. We believe this will be especially relevant in F&A contracts which form the baseline of the BPO market today
Once we get passed the constraints of Citrix and the non-collaborative application and data security strategy of many enterprises there is real opportunity to reshape the market of F&A BPO contracts. In Finance and Accounting, many deals are mature and rooted in legacy models, the work is highly transactional, and buyers have been stuck with the same FTE loads for years (or decades). But the real reason why F&A is starting to deliver real potential for R-BPO is the simple lack of widely accepted enterprise F&A SaaS which can fix the dysfunction of a process, with a broad-brush implementation and hefty license fee. We are seeing it in pockets with SaaS solutions such as Workday FM, Netsuite and even FinancialForce, but it’s the ultimate failure of F&A to over-rely on legacy technology, maintain strict controls that defy collaboration, and keep bloated numbers of people to deliver legacy processes that is creating a huge potential new market for robotic-led processing and human augmentation.
The Bottom-line: Legacy BPO may be stagnating on its own, but it’s ready for R-BPO
What’s abundantly clear is that the outsourcing industry is caught in one bloody great rut: too many engagements are simply stuck in this Catch-22 where they are no longer attractive to competitive bids and the incumbent providers simply do not see the value (or have the onus) to invest in the buyer. You can’t trim the fat until you fix – and automate – the process underbelly, and today’s emerging RPA tools, such as Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and UiPath, are increasingly providing the platform to do that. So the next phase is for R-BPO solutions to be come to market that are priced against future productivity gains through automation, not immediate cost-savings through labor arbitrage and elimination.
A momentous event occurred in the world of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) today, when its pioneering vendor, Blue Prism, became the first pureplay RPA vendor to announce officially its intention to IPO.
Naturally, this sparked some feverish debate among the RPA cognerati over whether we may see one of the established services firms make a play to own their very own RPA platform, as opposed the the currently practice of every service provider partnering with every RPA product on the market.
My personal viewpoint is that IBM should take a serious look at Blue Prism, especially now RPA is officially a market-worthy capital asset. IBM is a huge software company and could seriously benefit from having an RPA offering it can build out as an enterprise platform, provided it makes sufficient investment and has leadership attention to develop the solution.
So let’s look at the pros and cons:
Why IBM should probably buy Blue Prism
Watson alone is not going to do it for IBM in the Intelligent Automation space. IBM needs an RPA offering as the first building block along the Intelligent Automation Continuum (see below). Pushing RPA onto more clients will also open up the Watson conversation as a logical next step for many clients.
A Blue Prism + Watson platform could create a whole new ecosystem of possibilities. Adding Watson’s cognitive capabilities to Blue Prism would create a real differentiator in the Intelligent Automation domain – you would end up with a whole new ecosystem of services and capabilities for enterprises across automation, predictive analytics and cognitive computing.
IBM needs to focus on becoming the leader in industry-centric Automation/Cognitive services. This is where IBM can really make its future mark in 2020-and-beyond enterprise services. There are limitless possibilities with the potential of artificial intelligence in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing and retail. Simply providing a cognitive engine is not enough – IBM needs to build leading-edge business practices around it. It is doing some very cool stuff in healthcare and medical research, for example, but I believe it can do so much more to help enterprises streamline their processes and act on realtime data, with a defined Intelligent Automation roadmap.
A genuine RPA underbelly for enterprises. IBM can position Blue Prism as a true enterprise RPA platform, as opposed to a mere robotics tool for specific processes. It’s one thing tightening up a few loose parts, another entirely, when you overhaul the engine…
Brand credibility and IBM’s hooks into leadership discussions. IBM has real credibility to dominate the RPA conversation with enterprise leaders – having its own platform adds some serious fuel to the fire. Automation and cognitive are high on the leadership agenda, where IBM has the potential to make it a market of one.
More than BPO. In addition to fuelling its BPO capabilities, IBM could leverage Blue Prism as part of its management toolset and BPM portfolio
Modest initial investment. For IBM, the likely cost of acquiring Blue Prism would be modest compared to its regular mega acquisition habits
Why IBM probably should probably not buy Blue Prism
Alternative offerings could be considered. Some clients prefer (or claim to prefer) using Automation Anywhere and UiPath, among others. However, there is no reason why and IBM-owned Blue Prism could not operate in a multi-solution automation environment.
Citrix issues. Some Blue Prism partners claim they struggle with Blue Prism in Citrix environments.
Longevity of RPA as a “solution”. In two years’ time, nobody will talk about RPA anymore – it’ll be native in any enterprise process solution worth its salt.
Does IBM really need it? IBM’s current BPO business portfolio is active enough to drive significant bot deployments on its own.
Size of IBM’s box of tricks. Will the emerging roadmap for industrializing RPA become lost inside of IBM’s bulging software portfolio?
Reduces attention on RPA as a solution in its own right. Will embedding Blue Prism in IBM lead to a reduction of attention on RPA as a solution in its own right, just at the moment when RPA is becoming a coordinated strategy for many enterprises?
The Bottom-line: No clear Intelligent Automation services leader has yet emerged. Acquiring one of the leading RPA platforms could be the catalyst
IBM needs to do something – buying up Weather Channels and Workday implementers is all great for today’s markets, but with its huge bets on Watson and cognitive computing, the addition of an enterprise RPA platform underbelly could be a killer move. Service providers such as Accenture, Cognizant, HP and TCS are already very active pushing RPA deployments, and, while IBM is also deep in the mix, it is already playing catch-up to some of the service providers. And maybe Blue Prism is not the right move to make – there are other potentials to look at (which it surely is doing), but the pros are far outweighing the cons in today’s climate, where aggressive moves are critical.
One of the most significant shifts towards As-a-Service delivery, in recent times, has been the investments in delivering comprehensive IT and business process services to support the enablement of leading SaaS platforms. With the gravy train of revenue the leading service providers have enjoyed from clunky on-premise ERP services, over the last 2+ decades, now slowing, the land-grab to manage the data, business transformation and integration elements of the leading SaaS platforms is hotter than ever.
To this end, we’re very excited to unveil the industry’s very first HfS Blueprint on SuccessFactors Services. With HfS Principal Analyst in SaaS services, Khalda De Souza, at the helm, this Blueprint builds on the direction we carved out in our Workday and Salesforce Blueprints in 2015. So who better than Khalda to bring us up to date:
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Khalda, why have we undertaken an HfS Blueprint on the SuccessFactors Services market?
Blueprint author Khalda De Souza covers SaaS for HfS. (click for bio)
The SuccessFactors Blueprint continues our theme of looking at the markets for services around leading SaaS platforms, following on from our Workday and Salesforce Services Blueprints of the past 12 months. All of these markets are in high growth mode as enterprises seek flexible, user-friendly solutions to better manage their HR or CRM processes. The service providers included in our SuccessFactors Blueprint have experienced an average of 45% growth in SuccessFactors services last year and expect to see the same growth levels next year. Given that enterprises with SAP ERP in the back-office are more likely to select SuccessFactors for their cloud HR solution, the potential market is huge.
We also see snippets of the HfS Ideals of the As-a-Service Economy in the SuccessFactors service market. Clearly, enterprises are making the commitment to Write Off Legacy by moving to SuccessFactors and building new HR processes around the platform. Service providers are also driving Collaborative Engagements with flexible engagement methodologies and a key focus on desired business outcomes.
How does HfS define the SuccessFactors Services market?
HfS has defined a Value Chain of services that applies to all the SaaS platforms we cover. This includes the five components delivered by service providers to create value for enterprises: Plan, Implement, Manage, Operate and Optimize. For SuccessFactors services, Plan includes consulting services such as SuccessFactors business case development, compliance, security and governance services, as well as HR strategy and SuccessFactors-specific process and design services. Implement covers all the services and skills required for effective deployment, including but not limited to project management, testing, training and data migration services. Manage includes all ongoing integration and support services. Operate includes business processing outsourcing (BPO) services where they are delivered by the service provider around the enterprise’s SuccessFactors environment. Finally, Optimize services are intended to improve the impact of SuccessFactors solutions and may include: the assessment of new SuccessFactors releases and solutions and on-going HR strategy alignment.
So, which service providers are leading the services for SAP SuccessFactors market today?
Using our HfS Blueprint methodology we found four service providers who belong in our As-a-Service Winner’s Circle for SuccessFactors Services today. These are Accenture, IBM, NGA Human Resources (NGA HR) and NTT Data. These service providers stood out include the breadth of their delivery experiences, the strength of client references, the alignment of supporting tools and technologies to SuccessFactors coupled with visions for the transformation of HR processes using the platform.
Six service providers are in the High Performers category: Aasonn, Capgemini, Cognizant, EY, HCL and Infosys. All of these service providers also have strong capabilities and scale and have invested in a services vision for Success Factors, HR process knowledge, Design Thinking services and tools development to create value for clients.
We also identified three service providers in the High Potentials category: Hexaware, TCS and Wipro. The SuccessFactors service practice for these providers is in aggressive growth mode and, based on their solid investments and vision for this market, we expect these service providers to continue to grow their capabilities in the next few years.
What are the major trends we see which will impact these service providers over the next several years?
We see a mix of deployment behavior, with some enterprises choosing to implement only one SuccessFactors human capital management (HCM) module and run a hybrid cloud and on-premises HR solution, while others opt to deploy the entire SuccessFactors HCM suite. Service providers, therefore, need to continue to hire and train talent in all the SuccessFactors HCM modules.
However, it goes beyond just technical capabilities. Clients tell us that the single most important contributor to value is the service provider’s ability to share HR best practice advice. Hiring activities therefore also need to focus on people with good HR experience so that they can bring this business process knowledge to engagements. Service providers with a strong SAP practice and/or HCM practice are at an advantage as they can cross-train consultants to augment their SuccessFactors practice organically. In addition, service providers who have developed services and solutions to support and expand the payroll and analytics modules have opportunities to grow as these areas increase in popularity in the next 12 to 18 months.
What about the trends within the specific services?
Clients tend to contract a separate consulting provider, such as Deloitte and EY, to help with solution selection, HR process advice and roadmap setting. Service providers that have invested in SuccessFactors consulting services need to market these aggressively to ensure being considered for consulting services.
Implementation services are the biggest part of the SuccessFactors market today. Enterprises select a deployment partner based on service capability, geographical scale and cost effectiveness. There is often little or no scope for the implementation service provider to bring any vision or thought leadership to the engagement. While clients admit that they did not ask for this, they realize post –deployment that business-oriented advice from the implementation partner would have been useful. There are therefore opportunities for service providers to share HR best practice knowledge in implementation service contracts.
We also expect to see increasing demand for management and optimization services, with a focus on flexible services and pricing methodologies. Consistent with the SaaS service market in general, clients need access to skills and talent on demand to solve ongoing issues. Typically enterprises can purchase a bundle of hours per month to pay for these services. Operate or BPO services are still very small in the SuccessFactors service market. Service providers will general HR BPO capabilities are best placed to take advantage of this market as demand grows, but we don‘t expect to see rapid growth in the short-term.
Finally, what recommendations do we have for service providers through 2015 and 2016?
HfS believes that service providers that want to have the greatest impact on enterprise clients and lead the SuccessFactors services market should:
Invest in a functional understanding of the HR process: Leading service providers are able to share HR process best practice advice to clients. This is relevant in all the phases of the Value Chain. Service providers should hire and train consultants with HR process backgrounds.
Upsell management services more aggressively: Service providers should be proactive in explaining the importance of post-deployment management services, as most clients do not consider this.
Invest in tools and technologies: Service providers should continue to invest in tools and technologies to enhance their SuccessFactors service offerings. In particular, investments in HANA extension tools and industry focused templates and tools will stand out in this crowded market as clear differentiators.
Invest in account management skills: Service providers should prioritize strengthening account management skills to foster deep relationships with clients. This is an important factor in client satisfaction as well as a major consideration to engage the service provider for additional work.
Be flexible: Enterprises like to work with service providers that are flexible. Service provider teams should prioritize client needs and deliver the required service, without being constrained by strict contracts. Flexibility is also a key element in successful management and optimization services, where access to specialists is preferred on an on-demand basis.
Amidst the relentless robo-hype in our current era of robotic rhetoric, it’s fast-emerging that many buyers and service providers are really struggling to work together to create workable Robotic Process Automation initiatives – in many cases, neither are willing to make the necessary investments, trade-offs or sacrifices to make his work.
A momentous event occurred in the world of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) today, when its pioneering vendor, Blue Prism, became the first pureplay RPA vendor to announce officially its 
