The Future of Business Operations is here - The Digital OneOffice™

There's nothing worse than being the "best-kept secret" in an industry... sure, it sounds cute at first, but after a while it gets frustrating as people aren't learning about you.  And there's nothing worse than being a best-kept robo secret in a market obsessed with propaganda, ignorance and bad analysts, many of whom have no clue what they are talking about.

So let's change this for one solution vendor, Redwood Software, which has quietly gone about helping enterprises automate processes around SAP workflows. When we bemoan rigid, poorly integrated processes, it's often borne out of legacy systems and ERP that have the effect of pouring concrete into a firm's operations. So what better than to develop both robotic and digital automation capabilities around SAP's R3 finance platform, helping financial leaders renovate more of that they have, without the costly and disruptive need to invest millions in expensive system upgrades that often only succeed in delivering a whole new suite of integration problems. Sounds like a simple way to make money? Well, it actually takes decades of practice and experience, so let's hear a bit more from the firm's CEO and Founder, Tijl Vuyk. and his Chief of Staff, Neil Kinson, about how they got here and where they are taking this very well-kept, soon-not-to-be so secret Redwood product...

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research: Good morning Tijl and Neil - it's great to have both of you talking to us today. Perhaps we can start with a little background on Redwood, where you have come from and what you do?

Tijl Vuyk, CEO and Founder, Redwood (pictured left): Thanks Phil. Well it’s been about 25 years since we were founded and we started in the application space where we were building Oracle applications. We saw the need for automating these applications because there were a considerable amount of manual activities running all kinds of processes within Oracle, and later on with SAP. When we started, we created a tool that would help customers build their own automated processes. In the last five to eight years we discovered that building these automations were a challenge for many of our customers. So we tried to productize the whole idea of automating these business processes and now we call this robotics - where we use the application's functions to automate the processes normally undertaken by humans. I think that's where we are. We came from a technology background where we built enterprise strength applications to automate primary business processes, and now we are trying to make this as easy and slick as possible to implement those processes without having customers spend too much money on services and maintenance. There is more to say about what we do, but these are the highlights.

Phil: Sure, so you've been around for 25 years, how did you end up in this automation space? Was it a deliberate move or was it something that evolved over time?

Tijl: I wouldn't say a deliberate move but I love automation. If I do something twice, I ask myself, “can I do this easier and faster or not do it at all?”  And that is the attitude we have

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Posted in: Cognitive Computing,  Robotic Process Automation

Posted in: Absolutely Meaningless Comedy,  Robotic Process Automation

As the fog slowly lifts from our beleaguered world of operations, we can start to put the pieces together regarding where we truly are, when it comes to building the backbone for successful businesses of the present and the future:

No - not all our firms have been wiped out overnight by disruptive digital competitors (sorry all you hypesters who've been beating that drum, but most our 'legacy' firms are doing just fine).  

No - not all of us have been replaced by robotic software that can mimic our rote behavior and render us useless (if only more customers will actually admit they are finding RPA a lot more challenging than they thought).

No - outsourcing isn't dead, it's just under pressure from commoditizing services, too many competitive service providers, greater global location choice and the emergence of specialist niche firms, which can do complex work at a much smaller scale than our juggernaut firms can afford to deliver. 

In short, our enterprises are caught between innovation and renovation, where they need to make the most out of what they have, while making the shrewd investments in the innovation the need to stay relevant in their markets. So with whom better to chew the fat than a very old friend and great supporter of HfS over the years, Ian Maher, who's been the dynamic busybody behind Hanover Insurance's sourcing and operations activies over the last decade. You won't meet many customer executives who deal with technology firms, automation vendors, outsourcing providers, procurement executives, HR, IT - you name it - and still always has a smile on his face. Maybe it's his stubborn devotion to his under-achieving soccer team, Everton, which keeps the chap so positive and focused....

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research: Good morning Ian. It's great to catch up with you again. Could you tell HfS readers a little more about you and your background in the industry, where you've come from, and what you're doing today?

Ian Maher, VP, Head of Sourcing, The Hanover Insurance Group: Phil, good morning, it's great to catch up again. As you know, my background is on both sides of this interesting equation, from both a sales  and a buy-side perspective. When I was originally in the UK, I spent the first decade of my career working for what is now Fujitsu. As the development of consulting services, on the back of technology solutions, I was fascinated by how firms created new revenue streams on the back of product sales. In the late ‘90s, I moved over to the States and joined Gartner. With roles, in account management support and financial services in the North East of the US, I then started to work more closely with the research leaders in Sourcing and especially BPO, spending a lot of time working with CIOs and similar leaders, helping them understand what was going on from the BPO point of view as it started to seep away from a technology space, into the realm of mainstream business decision makers.

One of my previous clients is the company I'm with today. I've been at Hanover for nearly 10 years. We are a growing P&C business, largely in the US but with a UK operation via our Lloyds of London syndicate. In this role, I look after a variety of functions, including, traditional procurement, contract risk and governance. But more interestingly, perhaps to me at least, is the role of trying to fix together how the ideas from the outside world can be brought to benefit, what is pretty much, a traditional insurance business. I've led a couple of major

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Posted in: Business Process Outsourcing (BPO),  Buyers' Sourcing Best Practices,  Outsourcing Heros

With Natural Language Processing, Interactive Voice Response, cognitive virtual agents, Robotic Process Automation, the very essence of our corporate existence, the conference call itself, is in grave danger of going robo.  I think we're done folks... 

Posted in: Absolutely Meaningless Comedy,  Cognitive Computing,  Robotic Process Automation

If you’ve been covering the legacy world of Business Process Management (BPM) software and the emergence of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software for the past two decades, it’s fascinating to see the two solutions to mesh together, as customers need the full gamut of automation help:  the digitization of manual work, the scripting, and integration of static data that provide the foundation for the automation of the digital processes.

Then you can get to the really exciting stuff of recognizing data patterns, taking advantage of machine learning to make systems self-remediating, and, ultimately, the injection of intelligence to make them absorb everything around them to become predictive and human-like in the way they operate. This is why we’re seeing the likes of Pega peering into the RPA space, Blue Prism partnering with Appian and AutomationAnywhere now partnering with IBM’s BPM software solution.  We’re also seeing some novel approaches, such as intelligent automation provider WorkFusion donate free RPA software to the world to bridge the divide between the manual and the digital quandary.

Yes, people, there appears to be a fair bit of life left in the HfS Intelligent Automation Continuum. Despite some critics who believe RPA is a very separate solution than digital autonomics, machine learning, cognitive and AI, the fundamental thought-process behind the HfS Continuum model still rings true: all the approaches illustrated are both overlapping and interdependent:

Notwithstanding all the feverish excitement on RPA and Cognitive, we still need to include all the less exciting - but critical – activities, like runbooks and scripting, and how these approaches must be integrated into broader digital process workflows. True Digital OneOffice only works when all breakpoints and silos are effectively automated.  If you truly want all touchpoints and processes across your organization focused on executing your vision of customer experiences and building foundational capabilities that support this entire philosophy, you have to address the entire Intelligent Automation Continuum if you want a data backbone that operates in synch across your customers, partners, and employees.

This is the context in which the announcement of IBM’s partnership with AutomationAnywhere comes in.

As part of the agreement, the two companies plan to integrate Automation Anywhere’s RPA platform with IBM’s portfolio of digital process automation software. The main focus will be on integrating Automation Anywhere with IBM’s Business Process Manager and Operational Decision Manager. Crucially, integration is meant to be on code level and therefore goes beyond more loosely integrated partnerships between BPM and RPA players. These enhanced

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Posted in: Cognitive Computing,  Robotic Process Automation

One of the leading service providers is also one of the most understated:  Hindustan Computers Limited, or its better-known abbreviation, HCL. This company has grown its revenues by more than 75% in the last 5 years and maintained its profitability to surpass $7 billion this year, while running Wipro close to being the 4th largest Indian heritage IT services firm. Its reputation is one of having a very strong engineering pedigree, a "roll the sleeves up" attitude and a no-nonsense approach to business. The fact it has never bothered to spend millions on a fancy new logo, or glitzy marketing posturing, speaks volumes for this determined, humble and very focused firm, quietly - but aggressively - going about its business as becoming one of the heavyweights of the IT services industry, and one of the best positioned to weather the current malaise caused by flagging demand, too many competitors, and creeping automation. 

So when I got a chance to spend some time with its new, young dynamic CEO, C Vijayakumar, or "CVK" as everyone calls him, I just had to share some of our conversation with the HfS community...

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research: CVK, tell us about your journey to becoming the CEO of HCL Technologies? What is your secret sauce?

C Vijayakumar (CVK), President and Chief Executive Officer, HCL: More than the secret sauce that I bring to the table, the question is, what is really special about HCL, and what is that secret sauce that has developed a range of leaders within the company. They may seem different and diverse on the surface, but all our leaders embody a core culture within, and that’s fairly constant. I have had the good fortune to be part of some great milestones and worked with some excellent teams at HCL. I have also worked across multiple business functions - strategy, practice, product management, sales, business development and delivery. This has helped me to get a well-rounded view and brought me to this position today.

Phil: So what is the number one issue with HCL and the business... what is keeping you up at night?

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Posted in: Outsourcing Heros

When we revealed Gartner's bullish 96% of clients are getting real value from RPA bombshell (see post) six weeks ago, everyone close to the action was incredulous:

Now we have the real data to prove where satisfaction levels currently sit, where we interviewed 136 major enterprises currently experiencing RPA installs:

My personal experience has tended to be about half of enterprise RPA clients today are experiencing positive progress, while the other half are struggling or aborting RPA projects altogether, so this data is pretty positive, especially when you consider that the same number are positive about both the cost and business impact of RPA.  

The Bottom-line: RPA is making sense in this era of renovation and the current satisfaction results reflect this

What I love about RPA is the fact it's making us fix a lot of the systems we're currently stuck with, using sensible, affordable technology. We spent years bemoaning the fact that enterprises couldn't just "saw off" their broken processes and replace with costly new systems and services, but the reality is that most enterprises are not ready to write off their technical debt and invest in change, especially when the outcome is not particularly clear. What is clear

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Posted in: Cognitive Computing,  HfS Surveys: All our Survey Posts,  Robotic Process Automation

One of the things I've been at pains to convey is the critical link between digital transformation... and the role RPA plays it making so much of it possible. Digitally-driven organizations must create a Digital Underbelly to support the front office by automating manual processes, digitizing manual documents to create converged datasets, and embracing the cloud in a way that enables genuine scalability and security.

Organizations simply cannot be effective with a digital strategy without automating processes intelligently - forget all the hype around robotics and jobs going away, this is about making processes run digitally so smart organizations can grow their digital businesses and create new work and opportunities.

So click here to download my full session at the recent packed-out Blue Prism World in London town:

Posted in: Digital Transformation,  Robotic Process Automation

Remember when sourcing advisors has become the "new analysts" and dominated so many outsourcing discussions?  Remember when it was the norm for clients to bring in the sourcing specialists whenever they needed a deal done, not only to get a good price, but also to make sure they selected the right partner and had a strategic view of the future?  Remember when most advisors were not only contract experts, they were also strategists, researchers, sounding boards and respected brands you could hang your hat on... Just look at our 2011 study when advisors lorded the influence over everyone bar direct peer feedback:

Fast forward to today, with all the sourcing advisors doubling-down in RPA to compensate for the drying up outsourcing deals and confidently hoping their outsourcing clients will immediately turn to them to help them grapple with the new outsourcing-cum-automation model.  Surely their ability to craft deals for clients will put them in pole position to take their clients down the RPA path...

Let's visit our brand new (still-in-the-field) study on the 2017 State of Automation, and it's telling us a very different story when we spoke with 56 enterprises actually deploying RPA:

Less than half the RPA buyers view either consultants of sourcing advisors as influential in their automation sourcing.  Even conferences are impacting automation buyers more.

So what's gone so wrong with advisors in automation?

Credibility. Suddenly many advisors who were previously hawking their deep understanding of HCL versus TCS's FTE rate cards are now suddenly adding their names to white papers on automation and trying to insert themselves into serious client conversations about said topic.  It's just not credible.

Smarter clients.  The swirl of information over social channels is so intense these days that most clients' knowledge isn't that far behind the experts.  In many cases, you'll learn more about RPA talking with a client in beta mode than an advisor or analyst trying to impress you at

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Posted in: Outsourcing Advisors,  Robotic Process Automation

Tired of the RPA hyperbole?  Well, you'd better get used to it continuing, as key industries have already made significant short-medium term commitments:

Our 2017 State of Operations and Outsourcing study with KPMG, covering 454 major enterprises, shows the hi-tech and financial services industries leading the way with, respectively, 53% and 44%  already making significant investments in RPA over the next couple

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Posted in: HfS Surveys: All our Survey Posts,  Robotic Process Automation,  2017 State of Industry Study

When an industry is enduring a secular shift that is literally redefining how we do work, it's pretty important to get some real, unfettered dialog going among all the key stakeholders this impacts. We need to break free from the glitzy paid-for sales presentations, robot keyrings, stress balls, nasty logo-ed leather notepads and greedy events firms vying for a quick buck from vendors eager to part with cash to promote themselves to all their competitors.

That's why we're assembling 100 of the industry's finest leaders in a single room for a whole afternoon to thrash out the mandate for the future of operations in the robotic age for our inaugural FORA council session in Chicago, 19th September. And we promise no sponsors, stress balls or bad white papers to take away...

Here's just a sample of the industry robo dignitaries who've already committed:

• Alastair Bathgate, CEO, Blue Prism
• Chetan Dube, CEO, IPsoft
• Chip Wagner, President, Emerging Business Services, ISG
• Cliff Justice, Partner, US Leader, Cognitive Automation and Digital Labor, KPMG
• David Poole, CEO, Symphony Ventures
• Daniel Dines, CEO and Founder at UiPath
• Jesus Mantas, Managing Partner and General Manager, IBM Business Consulting, IBM US
• Lee Coulter, Chair for the IEEE Working Group on Standards in Intelligent Process Automation
• Dr. Mary C. Lacity, Curators' Distinguished Professor of Information Systems, UMSL, and Visiting Scholar MIT
• Max Yankelevich, CEO, WorkFusion
• Mihir Shukla, CEO, Automation Anywhere
• Peter Lowes, Partner, and Head of Robotics & Cognitive Automation, Deloitte US
• Shantanu Ghosh, SVP, CFO Services and Consulting, Genpact
• Thomas Torlone, U.S. Leader of Enterprise Business Services, PwC
• Tijl Vuyk, CEO and Founder, Redwood Software
• Weston Jones, Global RPA Leader, EY

We also have leaders of cognitive and automation initiatives from the following buyside firms already signed up to get stuck into the debate:

So let's cut to the chase - it's time to have the real, hard conversation about where we really are as an industry. Why aren't those 40% cost savings happening, each time someone slams in some software and hopes it somehow eliminates manual labor because they can access a bot library? In fact, why are a third of RPA pilots just left hanging with no result? Yes, people, it's

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Posted in: Robotic Process Automation

The windy city will get extremely blustery this September 19-21, when HfS stages the inaugural FORA Council session, immediately followed by our annual HfS Summit "The Digital OneOffice: Redefining How We Get Work Done"

Friends,

Someone just described going to an HfS event as the whole industry being bludgeoned with a blunt instrument... how dare they? Yes, friends, it's nearing the time for the next, immense iteration of that HfS summit, where we're cementing together the biggest, boldest and

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Posted in: Digital OneOffice

Have we ever got so excited about a market that isn't even yet past the half-billion dollar spend level? Are we getting over excited about solutions because of their potential before they are fully tried and tested in reality?  Let's get to the realities of RPA by examining the size and five-year forecast for software and related services expenditure:

The global market for RPA Software and Services reached $271 million in 2016 and is expected to grow to $1.2 billion by 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 36%. The direct services market includes implementation and consulting services focused on building RPA capabilities within an organization. It does not include wider operational services like BPO, which may include RPA becoming increasingly embedded in its delivery.

RPA describes a software development toolkit that allows non-engineers to quickly create software robots (known commonly as "bots") to automate rules-driven business processes. At

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Posted in: Cognitive Computing,  Robotic Process Automation

I am proud to announce we've unveiled a very exciting analyst talent to lead our global research team, based in Chicago US, as our Chief Strategy Officer (see bio).

Saurabh Gupta worked with me at Everest over ten years ago where I helped train him up to help lead the firm’s BPO research team. After a distinguished career at Everest, where he earned a very strong reputation as a highly focused and respected analyst in the areas of BPO, banking, F&A, procurement, analytics and the underlying technology platforms, he went onto the buyside with AbbVie (the spin off shared services for Abbott Labs), where he helped craft the firm’s BPO and shared services strategy, working across various service lines and service provider relationships. He then had a spell with Genpact, where he has been instrumental helping them devise and shape the firm’s CFO service offerings and digital strategy. 

Saurabh has long eyed a return to the analyst fold and coming onboard HfS is the ultimate challenge for him, where he'll be leading our global research team and working with all of us to write about real buyer experiences and mapping where enterprises are on their Digital OneOffice journeys, how fast they need to move and what is preventing them getting to their ideal states.  I caught up with Saurabh this week to share more with you all what you can expect...

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research: Saurabh - it's just terrific to be working with you again after a decade since we were at Everest together!  What took you back to the research industry after your recent years on the buyer and supplier side of services life?

Saurabh Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer, HfS Research: Thanks Phil. I am thrilled to be here. I am passionate about business research and being an analyst was the best thing that happened to

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Posted in: Outsourcing Heros

Few people can claim to have led shared services and IT for Kraft Foods, built shared services from scratch for Ascension Health, become one of the first true shared services practitioners to kick the tires with RPA... before establishing the industry's first standards body for Intelligent Process Automation with the IEEE.  Plus, he's going to be at our inaugural FORA Council (The Future of Operations in the Robotic Age) as the voice of standards and reason this September in Chicago.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, meet the reincarnation of the process pontiff himself, Lee Coulter, who's going to give us a little more insight into why the heck we desperately need to adhere to some standards if we're going to find that automation haven that exists somewhere between fantasy, reality and failed promises...

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research: Good morning Lee it’s great to chat with you again. You have been pretty deeply involved in developing and working on standards in process automation with the IEEE for over a year, would you be able to give us an update on what has been accomplished, and what we can expect next?

Lee Coulter, CEO Shared Services, Ascension Health and Chair for the IEEE Working Group on Standards in Intelligent Process Automation: Absolutely Phil, it has been quite a journey and I am very happy say that after working through the various societies of IEEE, the Board of Governors realised that this work impacted multiple societies and decided to use their reserve prerogative to sponsor a standards effort at the Board of Governors level. The first standard establishes some common terminology for us, it goes for approval on 5 May and that’s the procedural verification, making sure we have followed all the procedures of setting the standard, and we expect it to be published in June.  At the same time a part of IEEE called NeSCom which stands for the New Standards Committee that reviews all proposals. The next efforts, which will be referred to as P2756 in the IEEE world and their website, will be technology, taxonomy and classification for intelligent process automation products. Incidentally, in the same meeting where our first standard will be approved, they will also be reviewing and voting on the next standard. We have significantly increased attention for the second standard, which is really where we wanted to start but we realised we couldn’t do a taxonomy until we agreed what words meant. Several new members across the spectrum of providers have become advanced corporate members with IEEE and we expect to have a first working group meeting towards the end of June, as we go down the path of establishing a taxonomy.

Phil:  And when you look at the general state of automation in the industry today, where would you say companies are, as a whole, and how does this tie in with the need for standards?

Lee: It’s interesting, I recently presented an update at an event and a bunch of people hung out after the update, these were people new to the world of automation. They came up to thank me

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Posted in: Robotic Process Automation

Last year we couldn't help ourselves revealing our lovely Gartner analyst friends, via the voice of Chief of Research and Distinguished Analyst, Fran Karamouzis, declaring, "3 million of us will be supervised by robobosses by 2018".  

So, while many of us are counting down the last few months enjoying our last experiences of having human bosses (or maybe some of us will actually prefer a robot), we can now breathe a huge sigh of relief that a whopping "96% of clients are getting real value from RPA" (Robotic Process Automation).  And not only that, RPA is thriving at a "satisfaction level greater than anything Fran has seen in her 17 years at Gartner":

I personally would love to meet this incredible cross sample of delighted clients Fran has had the good fortune to interview, seeing as we've been covering the emergence of RPA for nearly 5 years and this space is still at a very early phase of (sometimes) painful RPA experimentation, as enterprises figure out how to scale these tools, govern them and learn how to integrate them with other applications using scarce technical skills, while dealing with very challenging change issues.  

At HfS, we just came off a very intense day with 60 enterprise clients tinkering with RPA, and can officially declare that 96% of them are definitely not in love with their experience.  In fact, only a handful are making real progress, while the majority lack a cohesive governance program to get this stuff working on even a few rudimentary processes.  At HfS, we estimate, from our extensive ongoing research, that about half of today's RPA implementations are, so far, making some progress, while even Ernst and Young's new RPA report declares it has seen 30-50% of initial RPA implementations fail. (And this McKinsey piece entitled "Burned by the bots: Why robotic automation is stumbling"  has since been published... well worth a read).   

Why claiming 96% of RPA customers are seeing real value is plainly ridiculous 

Several of the RPA solutions vendors are painting an over-glamorous picture of dramatic cost savings and ROI. RPA software firms are claiming - and demonstrating - some client cases where ~40% of cost (or more, in some cases) is being taken off the bottom line. While some of these cases are genuine, there are many RPA pilots and early-phase implementations in the industry that have been left stranded because clients just couldn't figure out the ROI and how to implement this stuff. This isn't simply a case of buying software and looping broken processes together to remove manual efforts... this requires real buy-in from IT and operations leaders to invest in the technical, organizational change management, and process transformation skills. 

Several RPA clients cannot scale their solutions and are aborting implementations.  One solution in particular, which featured high in many analyst scatterplots, has recently suffered

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Posted in: Confusing Outsourcing Information,  Robotic Process Automation

When an industry is enduring a secular shift that is literally redefining how we do work, it's pretty important to get some real, unfettered dialog going among all the key stakeholders this impacts. We need to break free from the glitzy paid-for sales presentations, robot keyrings, stress balls, nasty logo-ed leather notepads and greedy events firms vying for a quick buck from vendors eager to part with cash to promote themselves to all their competitors.

That's why we're assembling 75 of the industry's finest leaders in a single room for a whole afternoon to thrash out the mandate for the future of operations in the robotic age for our inaugural FORA council session in Chicago, 19th September.  And promise no sponsors, stress balls or bad white papers to take away...

Here's just a sample of the industry robo dignitaries who've already committed:

• Alastair Bathgate, CEO, Blue Prism
• Chetan Dube, CEO, IPsoft
• Chip Wagner, President, Emerging Business Services, ISG
• Cliff Justice, Partner, US Leader, Cognitive Automation and Digital Labor, KPMG
• David Poole, CEO, Symphony Ventures
• Daniel Dines, CEO and Founder at UiPath
• Jesus Mantas, Managing Partner and General Manager, IBM Business Consulting, IBM US
• Lee Coulter, Chair for the IEEE Working Group on Standards in Intelligent Process Automation
• Dr. Mary C. Lacity, Curators' Distinguished Professor of Information Systems, UMSL, and Visiting Scholar MIT
• Max Yankelevich, CEO, WorkFusion
• Mihir Shukla, CEO, Automation Anywhere
• Peter Lowes, Partner, and Head of Robotics & Cognitive Automation, Deloitte US
• Shantanu Ghosh, SVP, CFO Services and Consulting, Genpact
• Thomas Torlone, U.S. Leader of Enterprise Business Services, PwC
• Tijl Vuyk, CEO and Founder, Redwood Software
• Weston Jones, Global RPA Leader, EY

We also have leaders of cognitive and automation initiatives from the following buyside firms already signed up to get stuck into the debate:

So let's cut to the chase - it's time to have the real, hard conversation about where we really are as an industry. Why aren't those 40% cost savings happening, each time someone slams in some software and hope it somehow eliminates manual labor because they can access a bot library? In fact, why are a third of RPA pilots just left hanging with no result?  Yes, people, it's time to wake up and smell those robotic roses and have those really tough conversations about what is real, versus why so much of this stuff just isn't working - and why we're not putting together properly governed RPA rollout plans like we do with ERP software and SaaS platforms.  Why are we making such a mess with this, when we could have so much to benefit from?

So join us in Chicago this September 19th for FORA the inaugural council meeting that finally debates the true Future of Operations in the Robotic Age

FORA is the very first industry council is established to bring together buyside operations leaders, service providers leaders, expert advisers and technology developers to steer industry’s transition to the Digital OneOffice™.  

FORA’s mission is to bring together the leadership from senior buyside operations leaders, service provider leadership, expert advisers, and technology developers to set the agenda for the transition to the Digital OneOffice™, and to develop an industry mandate for navigating and managing the creative destruction that looms. Supporting the FORA initiative is the IEEE’s Intelligent Process Automation Standards initiative that will encourage further research and investment, leading to powerful and attractive new service offerings. But the commercial frameworks needed to encourage and sustain wider deployment of these technologies are lagging because they fundamentally threaten established models.

In order to communicate the learnings from the FORA meetings, the group will produce a quarterly “FORA Mandate” that communicates core recommendations to the industry from the group meetings that will be held at quarterly HfS Summits.

So how can you get considered for Council Membership?

HfS will consider applications to the FORA Council based on seniority and relevance. Are you interested in participating? Just email us at [email protected]. 

This is a really important development as we consider the future of services and operations amidst all this creative disruption. I hope to greet many of you personally in Chicago this September.

Cheers,

Posted in: Outsourcing Events

It's always more fun to be the disruptor than the disrupted in markets where innovation is the key differentiator and commoditization the curse. The world of technology is a constant challenge as programming languages become commonplace, processes increasingly standardized and automated, and global service delivery efficiency a bread-and-butter offering. How can you continue to grow at a double-digit clip, while maintaining profit margins of 20%+ amidst cut-throat competition and clients forever eager to batter down their costs?  

Fortunately, the entire role technology plays is changing at a pace that is faster than most industries that can barely tolerate, which keeps driving new opportunities for smart firms with a disruptive appetite at their core and a willingness to live outside of their comfort zones. Today, enterprises are asking for business problems to be addressed and simply expect their service partners to get the job done. It's no longer "Provide me with 50 developers for this amount of time to perform these tasks", it's more, "We need to redefine our healthcare insurance business to be more competitive in the market to survive - come help us do that", or "These new banking regulations are crippling our ability to remain viable - what can we do to get ahead of these and operate effectively in this environment, faster than our competitors?"

Hence, it's up to the ambitious service providers to pivot how they address their clients' needs by redesigning business operations through smarter automation, process design and a much more proficient understanding and orchestration of their critical data sets. This is what digital is really all about - and this is where Cognizant CEO, Francisco "Frank" D'Souza is determinedly taking his organization. Cognizant has been Wall Street's golden child of IT services growth over the past decade, the firm ballooning from $2bn in 2007 to $13.5bn exactly a decade later, and last week announced 11% year-on-year revenue growth and a 26% increase in year-on-year net profits to $557m. Cognizant continues to outperform the market with relentless growth and appears to be on a new upward growth trajectory after a challenging 2016, which saw the whole IT services industry tackle this new secular shift, which Frank believes if the most pivotal transition since the onset of the Internet itself.

I caught up with Frank this week in London to get a little deeper into this pivotal industry shift and learn more about how he intends to keep disrupting his market.

Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HfS Research: Frank – great to see you again. Was good for the whole industry to see you guys announce strong results last week – is the gloomy cloud that’s been hovering over our industry lifting, from Cognizant’s vantage point?

Francisco D'Souza, CEO Cognizant: Phil, last year was an important foundational year in our pivot to digital. I think we were ahead on some of the digital thinking, code halos and SMAC (social, media, analytics and cloud), we have been talking about those for many years. I think last year was the year that picture, at least in our minds, and our clients’ minds, crystallized around what are the specific opportunities around digital. Prior to last year, digital was the typical catch-all term used for lots of different things.

I think it’s become very clear, Phil, with every day that goes by, is the notion that if you think about a company’s enterprise model (what is the business model, what’s the operating model and what’s the technology model) it’s now become clear what is the implication of digital technology at each layer in that stack and by industry. What does that mean for financial services, what does that mean for healthcare, what does it mean for insurance?

Last year was about crystallizing around that – we reorganised the business we took all our capabilities, we grouped them into three big practice areas: digital business, digital operations, digital systems and technology. Within that we really focused and emphasized the key digital themes and trends in each of those areas. If you think about the technology space we built and emphasized the cyber security aspects, we built and emphasized performance and scalability,

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Posted in: Digital Transformation,  IT Outsourcing / IT Services,  Outsourcing Heros

A new trend is developing in the tech and business world and the speed at which it is happening is alarming. The need for people is waning as companies seek to scale themselves profitably on a digital backbone - and it's having a serious impact on our career paths.

When companies historically did layoffs, it was because they were in financial peril and had no choice but to saw off costs to stay solvent on the balance sheet. It was always painful, because you needed people to grow your business. Sacking people was not a good thing to do.

Suddenly it’s in vogue to shed people

However, if you were unfortunate enough to get caught in a layoff, you dusted off your CV, went out on the job market and (usually) found yourself something pretty quickly. Companies needed people – whether they were superstars, or solid foot soldiers; when you needed an employer, you would always find something.

Now something different is happening in the mindsets of business leaders – companies which are doing really well are in the process of proactively removing staff – both at junior and senior levels. You really don't want to get caught up in one of today's layoffs if you're eager to stay in a similar job in future, because the modern business is adopting a new mentality - cut costs and scale profitably with a digital backbone.  Adding armies of people is no longer the order of the day when you peer into an uncertain future, and many savvy businesses are eagerly looking to

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Posted in: Cognitive Computing,  Robotic Process Automation,  Global Workforce and Talent