I, for one, won’t be too sad to see the back of 2016… it just felt like the world kept becoming an increasingly ignorant place to exist. The Internet became the medium to block out information, not share facts and data points to foster intelligent discussion. It (almost) became acceptable to be racist; it (almost) became acceptable to talk about women as sex-objects, as long as it was playful “locker room talk”.

2016 became a time people complained about immigrants taking away their jobs – even though they’d never work those jobs in a million years. It became a time when we all finally realized so many of our politicians had lost touch with so many of the population that they got booted out… sadly only in favor of alternatives that didn’t make any sense, but it must have felt good for the disenfranchised to stick the middle finger up at the establishment.

It became a time when many of us decided we could no longer tolerate people as our Facebook friends, because they just refused to listen to rational arguments and get beyond their prejudices. Let’s be honest, it was a pretty ignorant year.

Hello to a year of, er, maybe a little common sense

So if we could have some good things happen next year…. 

Trump becomes a pragmatist. Like so many of you here, I am secretly wishing most the guff old Donald was spouting was just, well, guff. As Bernie Sanders told a private meeting of scientists recently, Trump is a very intelligent man. Plus, I believe the guy is not an idealist, he’s a businessman and a pragmatist. It’s my personal hope that he realizes globalization of business is an inevitable occurrence, but I do like his stance on China, and the fact we’ve

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Posted in: Absolutely Meaningless Comedy,  Confusing Outsourcing Information

My good pal, Steve Rudderham, formerly of Genpact, Capgemini and Accenture fame... and recently anointed the great GBS leader at Kelloggs, posed the irresistible question to me on our Robotic Premier League blog:

Phil, One thing we've struggled with is really where the rubber hits the road in terms of credentials. There are a lot of good innovation "stories" around RPA but several of the players on your list have really struggled to articulate savings and examples outside of their own in-house improvements using macros in excel. When do we expect more maturity in this space in terms of client stories that the rest of the industry can get behind? 

Fair enough, Steve, great question... so here's my answer:

@Steve Rudders -

It's early in the morning, the filters are off so I'll just answer your question as bluntly as possible: We live in ignorant times - people are blindly groping for that next vehicle to drive out cost, and RPA currently fits the bill.

I, personally, thought the hype would die down this quarter as companies struggled to figure out what not to automate. Don't get me wrong, the RPA value proposition is tremendous - taking high throughput, high-intensity processes that require large amounts of unnecessary

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Posted in: Robotic Process Automation

We did in once, we did it twice... and I bet you never thought we'd do it a third time. Yes, amigos, it's the 2016 airing of how effective the leading service transformation providers are in that beloved RPA space that just refuses to go away...

Source: HfS Research 2016 - Click to Enlarge

Ever since HfS bought the topic to the attention of stakeholders back in 2012, the robotic thrum of RPA throbs louder and louder. With the conference circuit over-flooded with more and more RPA conferences, robotically repeating the same rhetoric, the actual RPA deployments are significantly scaling up and M&A in the space is gaining momentum. Yet, true meaning and definition of what truly constitutes “RPA” are as blurred as ever, as more people jump on the bandwagon who couldn't define cognitive vs digital vs autonomics, if their job really depended on it. Enough reasons to take stock where this industry is at, and add some definition and clarity to this fuzzy world into which we're stumbllng. With that in mind, we asked our analytical Automation Overlord, Tom Reuner, to talk to the industry’s stakeholders who buy, sell, implement and generally go nuts over this stuff... and take a fresh look at the market dynamics.

(HfS subscribers can click here to download their freemium copy of the 2016 RPA Premier League table and analysis, authored by Tom Reuner and Phil Fersht.)

So, Tom, amidst all this noise what is really going on in RPA these days?

Noise is a good way of describing it, Phil. Yet, underneath the surface, we are seeing clear signs of maturation. This maturity manifests itself in different ways. The pace of change in which the suppliers are building out automation capabilities is nothing short of astounding. Most providers are embracing a holistic notion of Intelligent Automation ranging from RPA to Cognitive Computing to AI all the way to self-learning and self-remediating engines. However, we must be careful not to confuse building out capabilities with traction in the market. At the same time the leading tool providers such as Blue Prism, UiPath and AutomationAnywhere are

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Posted in: Robotic Process Automation,  Intelligent Automation

So who do you call when you want a robot? When we embarked on the 2016 RPL, we had to evaluate all the professional services firms operating in the space - both to help clients develop an RPA roadmap, evaluate the RPA software options and alignment with their processing requirements, and ultimately get some help implementing the solutions, developing out the RPA team and creating a workable robo/human governance structure.  In addition, many clients find themselves in conflict with their BPO providers and need third party help to bring them together to find workable risk-sharing compromises.  

What has transpired is several smart people, mostly working for BPO firms, eyed the RPA value proposition emerging, shortly after time we introduced RPA to the services industry in 2012, and they hatched plans to jump ship, club together and do lots of consulting work to build up their organizations.  

(HfS subscribers can click here to download their freemium copy of the 2016 RPA Premier League table and analysis, authored by Tom Reuner and Phil Fersht.)

Due to the murky, complex - and often very technical - needs of RPA, the demand for skilled expertise from real specialists is unprecedented - which is why we've seen the Big 4 leap into this space - but also why we're seeing some of these small, highly-focused, players in real demand. And they're not only making money working with clients seeing to RPA-ify BPO and shared services environment, they are also training many of the service juggernaut services to implement RPA for their clients.  In short, there's a lot of business to go round and you will often see these curious RPA pureplay folk huddled in the corners of conferences, sharing war stories and even passing business over to each other because they ae simply too overwhelmed with client demands to take it all on. 

So, without further ado, let's take a look at the seven candidates out there in all their naked glory....

Source: HfS Research 2016 - Click to Enlarge

Posted in: Robotic Process Automation,  Intelligent Automation

There's been an awful lot of focus on the emerging Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions since we unveiled the concept to the services industry in 2012. While early movers, like Blue Prism, have stolen most of the early headlines in the space, we've seen other very effective tools and platforms emerge, such as Kryon Systems, UIPath, WorkFusion and Nice.

However, one solution has been especially rampant in the BPO space (especially in finance and accounting) - Automation Anywhere - whose team has been working tirelessly with leading providers such as Genpact, Accenture and EXL to streamline processes and drive all the associated benefits of automating high volume, high throughput tasks that were previously plagued by unnecessary and costly manual interventions.

So we felt it time to sit down with Automation Anywhere's brainchild and co-founder Mihir Shukla, to learn a little more about what is driving this unprecedented demand for RPA, and where this is all leading as we venture into curious times...

Phil Fersht, Chief Analyst and CEO, HfS Research: Good afternoon, Mihir Shukla. You've been at the forefront of so much of the new thinking and ideas in RPA and Intelligent Automation in the last couple of years. Automation Anywhere almost came out of nowhere. So I'd love to hear a bit more about your background and how you really ended up leading this firm. What was the journey?

Mihir Shukla, CEO, Automation Anywhere: Good to talk with you again, Phil. It's interesting when you look back, how you end up with something. I came to the US to do my PhD around the time when the Internet was just coming around. So I got the disruption bug, and it was a lot more fun disrupting different industries than doing a PhD. 22 years later, I look back and I’m fortunate enough to have led five or six large disruptions in various capacities. First, I started at Netscape, where I had a chance to shape the era of the Internet. Then I worked at Infoseek, which was one of the early search engines, where I got to help define how to access the Internet, how you discover things, and we built an early eCommerce platform. Then I had a chance to be an advisor to OmniSky, creating the first Internet-enabled smartphones. I still remember the time when I was one of the 14 guys in Silicon Valley who could go anywhere in the world and find the nearest restaurant. Today, there are a billion of us who can do that.

There was lots of learning along the way. The genesis of Automation Anywhere came from one of my last disruptions, which was at E2Open, where I had the opportunity to integrate the supply chain of the top 10 high-tech companies. At that time I had a chance to use various BPM tools, enterprise application integration tools, and ETL tools. It was during that experience that I saw the challenges faced in trying to integrate a global supply chain that includes hundreds of applications and thousands of people.

I thinking at that time was there must be a better way to do this.

So in 2003, we started Automation Anywhere—and that was a genesis of RPA. Of course, it wasn't called RPA back then. But the idea was to simulate human behavior on a computer and be able to automate everything we do on a computer screen. And 13 years later, we're the largest provider of RPA solutions. So that's how it all started, and that's where we are today.

Phil: So what can you share with us about Automation Anywhere secret sauce? What is it that makes you guys tick? What is it that you feel has been the catalyst to this hyper-growth that you've been experiencing?

Mihir: There are quite a few things that we do very differently, that are unique to us. First of all, we're the largest and most fluent platform on RPA today. We have over 500 enterprise

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Posted in: Outsourcing Heros,  Robotic Process Automation,  Intelligent Automation

It's quite the humbling experience when your fellow professionals recognize your achievements. The HfS Research team should be very proud of being awarded both Independent Analyst Firm of Year and Analyst of the Year for 2016 by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations (IIAR), which covered 170 analysts and all the global and boutique analyst firms. 

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Posted in: None

Yes - that happened.  We just had the biggest shakeup in the outsourcing advisory market since KPMG's acquisition of EquaTerra in 2011.

The last two large independent outsourcing advisors (outside of the management consulting firms) realized they needed to stop killing each other and would be far better off becoming one. So now we're left with an even bigger ISG and a few really small shops, like Avasant, Aecus and Everest, to scrap around for the remnants of demand for former EDS executives to negotiate a nice contract for them.

This is a really smart deal for both ISG and Alsbridge.  ISG takes out its prime competitor to monopolize its space, while Alsbridge's prime investor, LLR, makes out nicely on its 2013 investment within the typical 5-year window private equity firms give themselves.

This is a great deal for most the Alsbridge consultants.  Many are welcomed back into the loving arms of their former employer and they have a bigger brand, global scale and presence to hone their craft.

This is a great deal for most the ISG partners.  Now many of them will not have to suffer their fees eroded by a very aggressive competitor (or losing deals to it). They can still easily undercut the Management Consultants' fees, and have access to more talent to win deals, especially in areas like telecom and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), where ISG was previously struggling.

This is not a great deal for all the employees.  Large mergers of like companies always present rationalization opportunities.  The new ISG will surely look to retain the cream of the Alsbridge talent and hive off its lower performers. The outsourcing market is flat and advisory

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Posted in: Outsourcing Advisors