Year: 2026
Are Global Evaporation Centers next? Your GCC will likely be agentified in 18 months if your board is already questionning its value
We’ve already called out that the next 18 months will witness the dying embers of labour-intensive services. That includes your GCC. If your GCC focuses predominantly on repetitive manual tasks it’s little more than a transaction factory, and it’s the first thing the board will look to automate next. It won’t gradually downsize or pivot, but will likely experience rapid, devastating headcount reductions. Just because the labor costs are lower doesn't negate the fact that these are still costs.Read More
Stop treating FDE as optional: Your AI Flywheel will not spin without it
Who actually wires AI into your live systems, governs it in production, and makes it keep working when the AI software vendors leave the room? The answer is Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE). If your transformation strategy does not have it, you are building an AI theater, not an AI operating model. Read More
The HFS AI Trust Curve: AI isn’t failing… leadership is
The HFS AI Trust Curve rewards an organization that achieves an outcome in which AI can influence decisions. The firms breaking through the curve are not doing so because they have superior algorithms. They are doing so because leadership has resolved the human questions: Who owns the data? Who owns the insight? Who owns the outcome? Until those answers are explicit, AI remains advisory theater.Read More
Welcome to the last 18 months of labor-intentive services
The defining question for 2026: can services relationships demonstrate Services-as-Software capability and accountability for business results, or are both sides still pretending their effort-based contracts deliver "transformation"? Because those providers and buyers who can't answer that question by mid-2027 will find themselves explaining to boards why their "strategic partnerships" became obsolete.Read More
Say CIAO to the CAIO in 36 months
Only appoint a Chief AI Officer if you're committed to giving them COO/CEO-level authority to kill initiatives, force standards, and drive uncomfortable organizational change, and only if you're prepared for the role to disappear within 36 months as AI embeds into every functional leader's responsibility.Read More










