Gianni Giacomelli is SVP, Product Innovation and CMO for Genpact (Click for Bio)

Did you hear the one about the Italian process wonk who gave up his E-Class Benz, his job-for-life at SAP and his Frankfurt home to uproot his family to spend a year in Delhi devising strategy for an India-heritage BPO provider which, at the time, was barely out of its start-up phase?  Yes, that actually happened.

I have known Gianni Giacomelli well for 10 years now, and have always described him as a misplaced analyst foraging a career on the sell-side - always one of the smartest guys to talk strategy, and great fun to bring to our HfS summits to face the fury of the buyers. Gianni today has found himself as product innovation and marketing lead for the largest business process services pureplay of all, Genpact, and moved his family from Delhi to the confines of Westchester County, New York.

So without further ado, let's find out what's going to happen in the world of business process operations..

Phil Fersht, CEO, HfS Research:  Good afternoon, Gianni - it's great to get some time with you today.  I think we last featured you on HFS (see post) about maybe seven or eight years ago right at the beginning of the blog.  So it's nice to circle back after all this time and hear from you again.  You have had a pretty colorful career in the services and software industries, so maybe you could just take us through some of the highlights.. and how you ended up doing what you're doing today.

Gianni Giacomelli, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer, Genpact:  Yeah, thanks Phil, and it's especially good to see how you guys have evolved as well.  I mean seven years ago, certainly a bunch of talented people - you never have thought that you would end up disrupting the analyst model so it's good to have seen you growing like that.

I would actually like to make a parallel.  I mean, you guys have grown and I think it takes perseverance and a lot of work but then it also takes innovation and agility - this stuff takes you, careers take you to an unexpected place.  Frankly, I never would have expected starting 25 years ago working in consumer products marketing and analytics then in consulting for BCG and so forth and ending up in SAP, product innovation in a business services companies.  I guess it's a little bit of a hallmark of our times, right?  You don't quite know where you are going to end up being.  I think all that matters is the diversity and what you call colorfully diverse.  Because when you have diversity, you actually see things from different perspectives and you end up in places that you wouldn't know but there is a logic, there is portability and I do think that is the crux of what I've

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Posted in: Analytics and Big Data,  Business Process Outsourcing (BPO),  Buyers' Sourcing Best Practices

Suddenly, everyone is a bloody analyst.  I must get at least five posts a day from a completely random selection of individuals attempting to educate me on how robotic automation, digital technology, IoT, big data and outcome-based pricing are going to be the biggest game changers to disrupt the business world since the invention of the desk.

Suddenly, there's going to be minimal need for human labor anymore, so we'll just sit at home all day running our lives from our mobiles devices sequencing our own genomes using some cool analytics app that we only need to pay for once we've added 10 years' to our life expectancy. Somebody please shoot me now... let's dial this dialog back to reality for a few minutes.

During our Blueprint Sessions in a very, very chilly Chicago this week, we started with the vintage discussion, "How can we re-set these stale services relationships to drive more value beyond labor arbitrage and standard operational delivery". Yes, the old chestnut conversation has to take place, just incase there has been a dramatic, unexpected shift in these relationships in the last six months. But, alas, as per usual, most service buyers in the room were still pacing the treadmill of operational ordinariness with little clue how to move the needle.

So we asked them one very simple question:

Click to Enlarge

Oh my god.  After all the whining about things like, "All they do is sell to us", and "All that cool stuff they promised us during the sales process and never delivered"... the real reason behind this stagnation is the simple fact that most buyers are just struggling to let go!

So there we have it, folks.  Rather than spend another minute reading the latest riveting diatribe about how "big data is about mining meaningful insights", let's focus on the real issue at hand here: TRUST.  Why do 43% of buyers today admit they need to give up more high value work to their service providers to drive value into their relationships?  Quite simply, this is an admission from buyers that they are scared of change - they worry that giving up control to a third party will minimize their own value, and their provider simply does not make them feel comfortable enough to take more of a risk.

The Bottom-line: The biggest disruptive trend on the horizon is TRUST

The solution, then, is simple:  service providers need to earn that trust - and prove they can enhance the value of their clients' governance teams by taking on higher value work from them.  This means many need to change behaviour... the overselling needs to stop and the demonstration of real value needs to start.  Service providers need to take a long, hard look at the personalties of their account managers to make sure they are providing consultative value to their clients.  Service buyers do not "let go" until they know they have a safe pair of hands to trust with their beloved processes... so let's refocus on the one real business value item that matters:  TRUST.

Posted in: Analytics and Big Data,  Business Process Outsourcing (BPO),  Buyers' Sourcing Best Practices

Scenes from the HfS Blueprint Sessions in Chicago

Posted in: Outsourcing Events

Scenes from the HfS Blueprint Sessions in Chicago

Posted in: Outsourcing Events

For the last decade, and longer, we've been debating and bemoaning how we can encourage services relationship to drive better collaboration, better automation, better talent development, throw off better data... and shift us away from a labor-based model that will not survive the test of time.  Next week, in Chicago, we will stare at that wall we've hit, and collectively figure out how to jump over it.  So without further ado, pop in your headphones, turn up the volume and enjoy!

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

Is it possible to make it through a single day with the word "robotic" being uttered somewhere?

Indeed it is not, ever since HfS Research first began covering the emergence of the new technologies in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) back in 2012.   Since then, we have seen RPA take off and become one of the dominant topics in the BPO and IT services market (read more here).  RPA is now on the strategic agenda of every service provider, third party advisor and increasingly on the minds of enterprise buyers as well.

But, until now, there wasn’t a way to contrast how different service providers in particular were both thinking about and acting on the opportunity created by the emergence of these new RPA tools.  Instead, every activity by a service provider seemed unique and it was hard to get a picture in anyone place as to how mature this capability was and how central it might be to the future operating model of the BPO service providers.

So, after dozens of interviews with service providers over the last several months, we have created the HfS RPA Maturity Model based around 10 Elements and 3 Levels that define what it means to have a mature strategy and delivery capability for RPA in today’s marketplace.    The HfS RPA Maturity Model is a useful way for enterprise buyers, third party advisors and service providers to guide conversations within the BPO and IT services ecosystem about RPA and to assess where an individual service provider sits with regards to the maturity of its RPA strategy and program.

The 10 Elements of the HfS RPA Maturity Model include:

1. Primary Goal of RPA. What does the service provider want to achieve through their RPA program, is it skills augmentation or labor cost reduction for example?
2. RPA Program Owner. Who owns the RPA program within the service provider’s organization?
3. Vision of Deployed RPA. How sophisticated a vision does a service provider have for how the

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Posted in: Analytics and Big Data,  Business Process Outsourcing (BPO),  Buyers' Sourcing Best Practices

Yes, we've bemoaned the stubbornness of some service providers, which are protecting the profitability and predictability of their labor arbitrage businesses, and laid out the key tenets of the emerging As-a-Service Economy.  So what steps can we now take to figure out who's on the As-a-Service train, and who's just pretending to be?

Click here to access the new POV "Does Your Service Provider Have A Winning Investment Strategy for the As-A-Service Economy?" by analysts Charles Sutherland, Barbra Sheridan McGann and Phil Fersht

In the As-a-Service Economy, the service provider will not be a stand-alone entity; the cost of doing business this way is simply too high. The partnership ecosystem of how technology vendors and service providers forge workable alliances over the long term, with effective investment practices and product management, will be a key factor in having a portfolio of As-a-Service options that are flexible, scalable, and in tune with these evolving times.

But how can buyers really see past the pretty PowerPoint and claims of future value?  

Simple: Here are nine key questions that can quickly clarity what's really going on behind the scenes, when it comes to service providers making the financial commitments needed to be effective in the emerging As-a-Service Economy.  Find answers to these and you'll have a much more realistic picture of where a service provider's future direction is heading:

1) Is this As-a-Service platform, or new capability, funded year-to-year, or with a multi-year commitment, including CAPEX?

2) How is the first (or first few) client(s) of your As-a-Service platform being charged - and do they

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