It’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen any major consolidation in the contact center BPO top ten providers with Concentrix acquiring Convergys, but last week Sitel made it clear that large contact center acquisitions are still in vogue by announcing its intention to buy peer SYKES.
As for the $2.2b price tag, Sitel now expects to generate $4b in revenues from the combined entity. The combined revenues will be biting at the heels of their next-largest competitor, Concentrix, which is second only in revenue and scale to contact center BPO giant Teleperformance. In 2020 SYKES revenues grew 6%, whereas Sitel’s grew 18%. With this acquisition, Sitel jumps ahead of the now 4th largest competitor, TTEC:
WFH leadership is the significant boost behind SYKES’ appeal
SYKES has arguably been the work-from-home (WFH) contact center leader since pre-pandemic days, with the foundation of its 2012 Alpine Access pure-play home-based contact center acquisition. Since, SYKES has further developed this core capability into a very sophisticated recruiting, onboarding, training and collaboration platform – fully virtual. The long-standing WFH expertise and the capability of its OneTEAM platform enabled a successful shift to remote in early 2020 and continues to be one of SYKES’ major differentiators.
With 40% of staff expected to be working from home across Global 2000 organizations over the next year (see below), having the broadest geographic experience and depth will surely align the merged entity with the strategic resourcing desires of many leading customers. If Newco leads with WFH, customers will surely entrust more with them.
In addition to the WFH and tech capabilities, SYKES offers an attractive and complementary geographic footprint, including a European multilingual hub with delivery out of Egypt.
SYKES brings the only scaled-up global automation services capability that could position Newco at the heart of OneOffice
Its other key capability, which we touted as the first real automation investment by a contact center in 2018 is the RPA strategy and implementation capability of Symphony ventures. While the Symphony resources have largely been held together by SYKES, the firm declined to embrace automation into its core value proposition and failed to excite the market by rebranding this unique capability as the bland “SYKES Digital Services” last year. If Sitel can embrace automation to drive front-to-back processes and a OneOffice mindset for its clients, it’s not too late to revitalize the former Symphony team to create a genuine edge for itself in the market.
In a OneOffice organization (see Exhibit 4), automation becomes a native competency, where human performance is augmented by unleashing creativity and personal interaction, where the immediacy of data creates insights to support decision-making that can make or break the firm. The only true way to create a OneOffice experience is to be able to integrate the front office processes and interactive technologies (most of which are embedded in the call center) with the operations of the organization:
OneOffice is where teams function autonomously across front, middle and back-office functions to promote broader processes with real-time data flows that support rapid decision making. It’s where front, middle and back offices will cease to exist, as they will be, simply, OneOffice. Sitel+SYKES has a unique opportunity to consult to enterprises to make these front-to-back connections and weaves these capabilities into their managed services offerings. The merged entity can offer real expertise to provide automated processes as-a-service and help their clients through the journey.
Bottom line: While scaling up to compete with Teleperformance and Concentrix is clearly the game-plan, Sitel/SYKES needs to focus on the value of the parts and integrate at speed
Sitel is virtually unrecognizable from the firm it was six years ago. A debt restructuring plan following its sale to French conglomerate Groupe Acticall was completed in 2018, opening up the firm to footprint expansion, digital investments, and a major rebrand which unified the company and all of its complementary assets. Sitel has recently made major investments in growth. Its design thinking and discipline organically, including hiring design experts and developing its MaxHub and EXP + model.
This latest major announcement sets in stone the firm’s intentions to be a leader in this global, remote, and increasingly digital contact center market. Now speed is of the essence to integrate the two firms, and we can expect an aggressive competitive response to this. Sitel and Concentrix were widely rumored to have come close to a merger, and neither top two firms will stand still and take this new competitive threat lightly. There are several mid-tier CX providers which will struggle to maintain growth in the coming short-medium term, and we will be surprised if we do not see some more large-scale CX services mergers over the next 6-12 months.
Not only is a clearer picture of the “future of work” emerging in today’s new reality, but its very nature is also changing day-by-day. In short, no one can paint an accurate picture of what the emerging work environment will eventually look like, but we can develop scenarios to understand how this will play out in the coming months and years. What is clear is enterprises are grappling with the need to drive unprecedented innovation in a work-from-home culture, and are figuring out how to arrive at a more predictable, acceptable, and effective work culture as we look beyond this pandemic era. Developing a work-from-home capability is the table-stake to survive in today’s environment, but innovation will only thrive in a hybrid work environment where people can inspire and motivate each other.
There is only so much you can achieve remotely – the smart way forward is a hybrid work model
We’ve talked to hundreds of executives over the past year, and they all complain about the same thing – they are managing an almost unmanageable amount of internal meetings over video calls, simply to keep the wheels on basic task management and accountability. Simply put, it’s becoming increasingly complex and awkward to run business operations in a remote model where training is a huge challenge, where motivating people is almost impossible, where getting beyond the basics of keeping activities functioning is a huge challenge. Communicating, collaborating, idea-sharing, white-boarding, etc are critical for taking businesses forwards and driving real innovation. They are also critical for helping employees become comfortable with change, to be comfortable with automating mundane elements of their jobs, and to become adept at embracing ways of accessing the data needed to exploit market opportunities.
With industry lines blurring, supply chains fragmenting and new opportunities and challenges springing up at a breathtaking pace, the time to bring people back together is fast-arriving, and so many enterprise leaders are now seeing this in spades.
Embedding digital fluency into your workforce is paramount to drive a truly cloud-enabled business architecture
The clearest barometer that shows the major changes facing Global 2000 enterprises over the next 12-18 months are the clear priorities to develop “Digitally Fluent” workforces to be best equipped to function effectively in the cloud.
Digital Fluency describes the ability to drive the seamless interplay between business and technology:
Ability to translate the understanding of digital tools to create new ways to serve customers’ needs and drive value;
Ability to consider how digital technology will impact every aspect, every functional area of the organization;
Ability to examine the organization’s business model, strategy, and operations in the context of digital technology.
While the magic number from the new HFS Pulse study of 800 Global 2000 indicates that 60% of staff will return to the office over the next year, we must recognize that this is not a static metric — this will be fluid in the coming months as we grapple with the complexity of a pandemic recovery and fluctuating hybrid workforces.
These undulations of work-from-home can be viewed at three levels: organizational, functional, and individual.
Organizational cultures. There are dictating some return-to-office mandates, with Goldman Sachs ordering employees back in the office and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon saying that WFH is a problem that needs to be fixed, citing business lost to competitors due to lack of focus in a remote environment.
Functional needs. Some roles and departments that have depended on socialization (we dove in on this in call centers here), or on collaboration (such as design experts), are eager to get back to in person.
Individual preference. Some of us are just more social creatures that miss the camaraderie, whereas others perform and focus better at home or are still wary of offices given the pandemic-induced fear, or have been based at home for so long they struggle to “snap-back” to going back to an office environment. This varies generationally as well, with a widespread sentiment that millennials prefer to see their colleagues in the flesh, whereas their older and younger colleagues are more content to work remotely. While we’re confident that the 9-5 is dead, and companies have learned to keep the wheels turning in remote environments, the question remains how to sustain innovative mindsets to remain competitive regardless of where the dust settles for our hybrid workforce.
We’re entering a hybrid reality, where digital and physical work cultures are blended
The digital exuberance of 2020, where declarations from many leading enterprises – the likes of Unilever, Hitachi, Mastercard, Google, and Amazon – that they had become “work-from-anywhere enterprises” is clearly losing steam as so many enterprises have struggled to maintain a motivating, dynamic culture. From leadership down to interns, employees are burned out with the sheer monotony of a 100% digital environment and the inability to whiteboard ideas, share ideas, collaborate on process design, and embrace emerging tech. This is especially the case with Gen-Z and Millennial staff desperate to get back to an office environment. In fact, many are choosing to work for firms embracing an in-office culture – something we have already seen happening aggressively in the call center environment (download POV here).
Leadership has a laser focus on the employee experience in a remote environment
The pandemic ushered in a new wave of thinking about how leaders approach staff management and motivation, and our recent HFS Symposium showcased the breadth of thought from leaders across industries. As Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM, rightly called out on our “Power of One” panel, the industry’s focus during the pandemic shifted completely to wellness and health. And as Paul Papas called out in our “People Process, Change” discussion, leadership at IBM turned into looking at colleagues and direct reports through a more empathetic lens.
While the early stages and stabilization of Work-from-home focused on immediate needs, as lockdowns dragged on for months into a year plus, business leaders are thinking forward to making remote/ hybrid optimized in the long term. The focus of employee experience and performance management continues to shift, or instead broaden as if climbing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs toward self-actualization. With ensuring security and wellness as a baseline, employers then began ensuring employees had collaborative tools and virtual workspaces that attempted to emulate physical environments that promote camaraderie. They focused on ‘unleashing’ talent by giving them ‘satisfying’ work, empowering people to perform at their highest capability. Companies also dug deep to talk about culture, mission, vision, and what kind of “profit with a purpose” values are important to them. As we continue up this ladder, an element seems to hang in the balance: how can you nurture innovation in a remote environment?
What’s next? Unleashing innovation-from-anywhere
For many during the pandemic, jobs became a “tick the box exercise,” moving from task to task, and once completed, preparing for the next Groundhog Day. Despite the efforts above, what seems to have been lost for some firms and individuals is the element of innovation. While innovation may seem to flourish in a physical environment, we can do things to ensure we innovate as individuals and as organizations.
Innovation as a culture. Whether remote or physical, adopting innovation as a culture is critical. An innovative culture encourages new ideas and doesn’t punish failures (unless done with incompetence). This applies to companies as a whole as well as individual contributors. As Marie Myers of HP (noted, companies must not let having a fear of failing to impede innovation. Sharing success stories of ideas coming to fruition supports this culture. Individual incentivization plays a role as well; Kaushal Mody of Accenture noted that their staff is rewarded for transforming their own roles.
Innovation as a discipline and a mindset. It may sound counter-intuitive at first – isn’t innovation born out of spontaneous, imaginative ideas? No, innovation is developed and cultivated. Innovation doesn’t have to be a group of creatives in a room solving giant problems. Innovation doesn’t have to be grand. Often it can come from the most straightforward thought of, ‘what if we did it this way?’ This can come from anyone in any role and at any level of the organization. The trick is to get in the habit of training our brains to think this way. Are all of your staff meetings focused on blocking and tackling problems at hand, or is there time set aside for brainstorming new ideas and ways of working? As an individual contributor, are you too focused on checking the tasks off your to-do list to wonder how we can improve this process or what new service or product we could be offering?
As Manish Sharma of Accenture operations boldly declared at our symposium, “Work-from-home innovation is here to stay.” We are optimistically in agreement with his sentiment, particularly as the OneOffice experience mindset matures and employee and customer experience get more tightly aligned. As people increase embracing change, have better data (that they trust!) at their fingertips, ideas will flow more easily. As we reskill our workforces for digital fluency, we’d be remiss not to adopt innovation as a culture and discipline to take full advantage of innovation at scale.
Work-from-home innovation is here to stay if we make It a discipline, and a fabric of our culture
We can’t deny the experience of the last year has driven a genuine need to configure business operating models to function in a remote virtual environment, as most businesses simply can no longer limp along with on-premise systems, fragmented processes, and an inability to operate in the cloud. However, as we evolve towards a new reality where we can visualize a physical future for businesses, it’s also become clear that companies are struggling to function entirely in the cloud and depend more than ever on a people-driven culture.
In this vein, organizational leaders today must be thinking more about how to innovate in a virtual and physical hybrid model and align your people to the needs and goals of the business across remote teams. Even more importantly, do your innovation goals engage diversity, sustainability, and purpose? We are stepping into a new era of cultural innovation in a work-from-home environment.
This is the time for leaders to provide the vision and the tools to innovate from anywhere, and for individuals to figure out how they can unleash their creativity and motivation to work toward a shared goal. Leaders must not assume that innovation will happen spontaneously, and individual contributors must take the responsibility to be diligent about their innovation.
Bottom-line: Much can be achieved in a pure remote model, but it’s simply not sustainable for a healthy, energizing work environment in the medium-long term
While many businesses struggled – or failed completely – during the pandemic, many have thrived as costs have been decimated and a return to growth has created so many new markets to exploit and customer demand to satisfy. This has also created a highly fluid job market, where people can get hired rapidly over Zoom and staff can dictate where they want to work. Companies with strong, dynamic leaders who inspire staff to learn new things, collaborate, and focus on purposes beyond mere profit and efficiency are fast becoming venues where ambitious staff want to apply themselves.
While much can be achieved in a pure remote model, it’s simply not sustainable for a healthy, energizing work environment in the medium-long term. Running data and processes in the cloud is critical to keep companies operating effectively, but those are merely the baseline table-stakes to survive in this new hybrid reality. Technology is essential to provide the infrastructure to exist, but it doesn’t dictate the business model… people do.
Talking to Manish Sharma is like going through a karma carwash – you feel pretty fresh and sparkly at the end. But don’t take the effervescence lightly – Manish has cultivated his career at Accenture over three decades, now leading “the largest operations business on the planet.” I had the opportunity to catch up with Manish during HFS’ OneOffice Symposium, in addition to a behind-the-scenes catch-up call. He uses words without embellishment, so when he speaks of dramatic mindset shifts, super compressed transformations, and the multiplier impact, you know this era has been a stunning one.
Both RohanKulkarni and Sarah Little captured key highlights from our Symposium “Digi-side” chat (think “greatest influencers” and alignment with the OneOffice mindset).
You can create your own karmic takeaways from the closed-door call below:
Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HFS Research: Good afternoon Manish. It is great to see you again. You’ve been traveling for some time, right? Great to have you on here. For some of the folks not so familiar with you personally, maybe you could just give us a little bit about you and your background, and how you came to be in your current role. Did you always want to be leading a multi-billion-dollar P&L within Accenture? Or did you have other plans when you were starting out?
Manish Sharma,Group CEO of Accenture Operations: First of all, Phil, it’s always good to chat with you, and catch up about the industry trends. In terms of my own journey, I have been with the firm now for 27 years. When I joined, it was a small consulting office in Mumbai. That is where I joined, and my background, funnily enough, is an engineering background, and never in my life, in my early years, did I ever think that I will be in an operations business or a BPO business. My dream was to design the best ever machine tool, whether it is the boring machine tool, or for cutting, or any other stuff, but that was my original plan, with my background. I joined because, at that time, it was Arthur Andersen in 1995, and I joined for setting up a manufacturing excellence practice in India, including supply chain, and everything else. That is where I spent all my years on, and I was always. I lived in Mumbai.
After a few years, when the outsourcing started, we got our first few clients, and I was told that “Can you help with one of the clients for few weeks?” I said, “Okay,” and I did my Monday to Friday from Mumbai to Bangalore, as we were setting up our business. Now, that two or three weeks, or two or three months, has got converted into virtually a decade, two decades out there. Right? That is the funny part of it. I have always enjoyed my journey in this. ’95 to 2002 consulting, 2002 onwards in this business, right from the formative years.
“It is exciting to lead the largest operations business on the planet. Right?”
It is exciting to lead the largest operations business on the planet. Right? When I think of it, what inspires me is our people. I think the best thing for me has been that I have seen people who joined us, when they came in, in early 2000, and now they are having families, and great infrastructure where they live in, great careers, growth of their people. It has been fascinating to just see the people grow, along with our client portfolio.
Phil: Excellent. You took the role of Group Chief Executive for Accenture Operations just over a year ago now, right? Was it February last year, something like that?
Manish: Yeah. It was announced in January, and on March 1 I took over. It is just more than a year now.
Phil: Wow. You’ve spent your entire first year in a completely different business environment than you were expecting, right? [Laughs].
Manish: Yeah. [Laughs].
“The good thing was that I have been in the business right from the beginning, so I know all of our leaders, I have traveled to almost every single center of ours, probably selected the site of each of the centers, and everything else. I knew our leaders and our people really well before the pandemic started. In that way, it was much easier for me, even during the COVID times.”
The good thing was that I have been in the business right from the beginning, so I know all of our leaders, I have traveled to almost every single center of ours, probably selected the site of each of the centers, and everything else. I knew our leaders and our people really well before the pandemic started. In that way, it was much easier for me, even during the COVID times.
Phil: How different has it been for the business that you’ve been running, compared to what it was like before? I mean, you’ve got the perfect comparisons. But how different has it been for you guys?
Manish: I would say, for me, while I think personally, and for our people, we have tried to do everything keeping people at the center with people’s safety at the center of everything that we do.
After making our people secure, and our clients’ work secure, if I look at the business, I think we have seen some dramatic mindset changes from the clients. I use the word dramatic not lightly because it is what I am seeing in terms of our growth, sales volumes, the number of clients, which I have never seen that before.
I have never seen the kind of demand for super compressed – I am not even using the word compressed, I mean super compressed transformation timelines, and we have done some of the most complex transformative deals in the last one year. It shows the appetite, where the clients have understood that there is no way to get around the digital transformation and relentless focus on creating business value. There is no way around it. I think the appetite for some of these things has really grown up.
“I have never seen the kind of demand for super compressed – I am not even using the word compressed, I mean super compressed transformation timelines, and we have done some of the most complex transformative deals in the last one year. It shows the appetite, where the clients have understood that there is no way to get around the digital transformation and relentless focus on creating business value. There is no way around it. I think the appetite for some of these things has really grown up.”
I will give you very simple examples. Earlier, you had to go and talk to the clients, and ask, “I want to do automation, I want to do this stuff,” and they would say that they would put you through the security, this, that, which used to take huge timelines for doing even simple stuff. Now, guess what? In these times, people understand the value of time. People understand the lead time has to be crushed for doing and enabling digital transformation. So, the realization is very high.
“The absolute super compressed transformation is now the stuff that the clients want. They do not want a journey of five years. They want a journey of next two to three years, and what can be achieved in that timeline.”
The absolute super compressed transformation is now the stuff that the clients want. They do not want a journey of five years. They want a journey of the next two to three years, and what can be achieved in that timeline.
Phil: Wow. And what do you think is the biggest change that they’re having to go through, to go through such a rapid transformation? What are they having to overcome, themselves?
Manish:
I would say that there is some bit of inertia. I think the inertia got virtually shaken up because of COVID. That was one thing.
The change part. Is everybody on board? Is everybody still aligned?
The third important piece is the silos that they operated in, because now it is an enterprise play. It is not a functional play. There is a correlation between different parts of the enterprise. How do you get integrated enterprise coming together?
I think these are some of the key things that the organizations have to think through.
What has really happened is that operations have now become central to the CEO and the board agenda, and there are more conversations which are involving the CEOs and the board than ever before. Five years back, or even three years back, we used to speak to the GBS owners and the functional leadership. Last couple of years, we are talking to the CFOs, CMOs, CHROs in the C-suite.
“What has really happened is that operations have now become central to the CEO and the board agenda, and there are more conversations which are involving the CEOs and the board than ever before. Five years back, or even three years back, we used to speak to the GBS owners and the functional leadership. Last couple of years, we are talking to the CFOs, CMOs, CHROs in the C-suite.”
Given the transformational nature of the deal, size of impact to the core business, including revenues, expedience, and cost, we are now talking to several CEOs and boards, because they need to move towards overcoming the inertia and changing the siloed behavior, which is not a functional thing. It is something at a board level, that the discussions are taking place.
Phil: Right. How much is trust becoming a factor here, Manish? I don’t get the feeling you can walk into a client you’ve never worked with before, and take on a deal this size. Is this, very much, years and years of working together, and suddenly it’s, “We know these guys, we’re going to go with them”? I mean, how is that playing out? Or is every client very individual, at this point, and very unique with their own needs?
Manish: No, I think trust has become more important in these times, Phil. I think relationships have become more important in these times. When you think about pure outsourcing, it is a transaction. I think the difference what we are seeing now is that people are not doing transactions. They are trying to build partnerships. The trust and the relationships now certainly matter. The kind of people that are involved, from your team, and from their team matter. I would say trust has become a huge part of the buying pattern from the clients, along with the partnership levels and our ability to help during tough times. I think how we reacted when the pandemic hit us, held us in good stead, because we put everything for the clients, while making our people safe. I think that really solidified our relationship and trust with the clients.
Phil: How has this changed the Accenture Operations approach to taking on additional scope, additional business? Because, I mean, I’ve seen you guys aggressive in the market, more aggressive than I’ve seen you in a long time, and some of these deals feel quite strategic, in that it’s maybe you’ve got to win the baseline work, to start with, that might not be the most profitable work in the world, but that will lead to some much broader transformation with those clients in 18-24 months. Are you taking that type of view now, that sometimes you need to compete for some of the commodity stuff, to really up the value in time? And how is that shifting, in your mindset?
Manish: Let me put two points in terms of how we are shaping and what is the approach that we are taking.
“I think the speed and the scale of impact is seen as what I call as a multiplier impact, as process transformation is now coupled with technology disruption.”
I think the speed and the scale of impact is seen as what I call a multiplier impact, as process transformation is now coupled with technology disruption. Right? Let us talk about some of the examples. One is integrated solutions across automation, analytics, and AI, which I know HFS has always highlighted as a key development in the industry as the Triple-A when I read some of your stuff. The second one is no-code, low-code, and AI on unstructured data, and data science on the big data. That is the second, you know, in terms of what we are trying to do. All the above, when combined with functional and industry-leading practices and implementation, create a multiplier effect on the speed and scale of outcomes. That is the one point that I will certainly say that we go aggressive in the market because we are seeing a huge impact on this.
The second one, I think you touched on that, Phil, is data is becoming central to driving the intelligent operations for us, powered by SynOps. SynOps is, like, one end-to-end transformation play that we are really proud about. We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in that. There is a lot of talk about some of these things to be a mere statement, but I think for us it is real.
“SynOps is, like, one end-to-end transformation play that we are really proud about. We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in that. There is a lot of talk about some of these things to be a mere statement, but I think for us it is real.”
At last count, I will give you some figures, because data is something which I know you and I have a huge passion towards, right?
We have processed 1 trillion data elements annually with increasing variety, whether it is contacts, emails, documents, pictures, calls, inventory data, invoice data, and the list that can keep on going. Secondly, we continue to respect how we treat client data, but continue to harness the power of data within those limits through aggregation and anonymization, which is the way we get that. We are leveraging data-driven process discovery, data-driven benchmarks for the clients’ business cases, and data-driven automation diagnostics, data-driven knowledge graphs for complex AI.
“We are leveraging data-driven process discovery, data-driven benchmarks for the clients’ business cases, and data-driven automation diagnostics, data-driven knowledge graphs for complex AI.”
Now, I am just saying that the power of what we can do, and along with these three things, processing the 1 trillion stuff, and, you know, data points, and what we are doing with end-to-end data is creating value as we work on more comprehensive scope for clients, across functional and industry value chains. Then, what we are doing on top of these layers is mixing external and internal data optimally, as only one of them is not much of use without the other. That is kind of what comes in our SynOps platform as the benchmark, when we start any particular study. Before I start doing any diagnostic this and that, right, get the level of details around the benchmarks, and with the data that we have. But that kind of leads us to a very different approach, as we approach the market, Phil.
Phil: As you look at the development of these solutions, and maybe over your career, since you have been at Accenture, in particular, who have been the major influences on you personally, Manish, in terms of shaping your thinking, and the way you carry yourself, and your leadership?
Manish: Sure. You know, I have always been driven more by people who are on the ground, and on the floor. They are always driven to shape my thinking. When I look at it, I remember when you were there in Bangalore once, and we were starting this journey, and I do not know whether you remember when we were sitting in the band 9 innovation floor. If I look at even the automation journey, we have now got 82,000 robotic solutions, the world’s largest robotic workforce, I will say in terms of what we have within SynOps. What really inspired me to convert this industry from an MRPT, measurable, repeatable, predictable, and transactional work into a value-driven work, was driven by one of our employees, who came once to me in 2014 or ’15, and she said, “Why are you making us do this kind of work? I know how to do this work much better, and much faster, and I don’t even need to be involved.” But that kind of shaped my thinking, that what are we doing. Are we really utilizing the human potential?
“I have always been inspired by my discussions, by walking around. And even in these times, I go around with our people even virtually, because that inspires me, and that gives me most of my ideas and my thinking around this.”
I have always been inspired by my discussions, by walking around. And even in these times, I go around with our people even virtually, because that inspires me, and that gives me most of my ideas and my thinking around this. Then, when we started the discussion, that idea came, and she is still an employee with us.Human beings should not do any work which is measurable, repeatable, predictable, and transactional.
Now, if I just go back two months again, we started this. Quickly we started, “Okay. Let us go and automate it.” You know, it was not a great journey. Because a lot of the folks were doing task-automation, which is the worst form of automation. They were not looking at end-to-end. You know, it was all like, I would say hardwiring your organizations to waste, and we didn’t really want to do that. Again, the idea came from someone suggesting that anybody who automates their job gets promoted. Thus, imagine the paradigm shift. This way, you are not instilling fear about job losses. Instead, you are creating a different feeling that you will get promoted when you actually get an automation done. That is the second thing, again, coming from our employees.
“It is always the people on the floor who have the best ideas, and always the thing for us, as a leadership team, is how do I really harness them, and actually create client value from those ideas?”
If I just continue to weave through my journey, the thought has always come from a discussion from the people on the floor who are closest to the work. It has never got super inspired from some other thing. It is always the people on the floor who have the best ideas, and always the thing for us, as a leadership team, is how do I really harness them, and actually create client value from those ideas?
Phil: Well, I think it’s making people secure and excited to innovate, versus to protect and to stay on top of tasks, because the more you can remove the breakages, the link… anything that slows down the business is what you want to move away from. And I feel speed is the new watchword of our industry. It’s how do we move fast? You know? We’re finally seeing deals signed that we… we used to call them, d’you remember, multi-tower deals, back in the day, and things like that, but we’re now seeing these engagements that we could only really dream of, 15 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, so it’s fascinating to really feel them coming into the market.
I think a final question I have for you, Manish, is, as we look out to next year, and I know we’re having a difficult time with COVID… India’s having a really bad time, I’ve been hearing, this week, the last couple of weeks, as well. But as we eventually move beyond this, we vaccinate everybody, we get used to this, do you think that we’ll go back to something like we had before? Or do you think we’re going into a very different environment now?
Manish: I think we are for sure moving into a different environment. I don’t think so it is going to be one way or the other. It is not like all the people will be working from offices, or all of them working from home. As you have rightly said, the situation is very tough, as we speak. I do think that once things come back to normal, it is going to be a mix. I am seeing people really craving an office environment. We can say all the good stuff that we want to say, about the convenience, and everything else, but I think there is some learning opportunity which people are missing, which they get when they are together.
It is like when you talk about our team leader in the organization, you learn by being a leader, in the earlier stages of your career, by watching, by being with the folks, by managing a team, and everything else, and trying to do it virtually. You know, there is stuff that we need to do. I think learning is great, in a virtual fashion, but I think learning, again, has got to be in a class participation mode. I believe the reskilling and the relearning agenda is going to be a topmost thing, whether it is for us or for our clients.
“For us, reskilling and relearning is now a major initiative across the firm, and I think we will see more of that. …Right now, for our clients, we are opening our own academies, so that they can actually participate, whether it is automation, AI, blockchain, or any of those things. I do think that the world will be a mix. ”
For us, reskilling and relearning is now a major initiative across the firm, Phil, and I think we will see more of that. …Right now, for our clients, we are opening our own academies, so that they can actually participate, whether it is automation, AI, blockchain, or any of those things. I do think that the world will be a mix. Hopefully, we will get over this time, and once we get through this, it will be a mix of everything. But reskilling and relearning will be a major part, along with the mixed model that we have of home and office.
Phil: Yeah, I think you are absolutely right. I mean, if you look at even the call center market right now, on average, call centers outside of the US are back up to 70% capacity, and in the US I think it’s, like, 60%. A lot of this is younger generation folks. They want to go to an office, want to actually mix, want to work with people, and if your company is not offering it, they will go and work somewhere else. This is a hot job market. I think it is the older generation who is probably a little more comfortable with work at home – okay, it’s not ideal, but I can live with it, I get more time with the kids, I travel less, I can eat better food, whatever – but the younger generation is helping make decisions for us; they want to be in an office, they want to be in an environment where they can learn. You can’t have this very remote environment working, I think, functionally forever.
I think there has to be a hybrid mix between maybe a little less travel, a little more focus on health. I just bought my whole team Apple Watches for doing Q1, blowing it out of the water, but only because they can monitor their health now. But I really believe this is a generational-driven issue that we are going to see more of, as we come out of this. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. I look forward to sharing this with our readership, and I really look forward to you sharing your views at our symposium in just under two months’ time. So, I will pause here, Manish! Cheers
Click to Register and make a voluntary donation to India’s Covid-19 fight
The countdown has officially begun for the first HFS One Office Digital Symposium on June 8 and 9. This is an exclusive digital symposium for industry leaders in business and technology to gain access to the most expansive global community of pioneers, practitioners and peers.
HFS CMO Nischala Murthy Kaushik spoke with me to learn more about the complete story around the symposium…
Nischala : Firstly, Thanks for your time Phil. We are a few days away from the HFS One Office Digital Symposium. How are you feeling about it?
Phil : I am excited about hosting the HFS One Office digital symposium. As a company, our events are well known and popular in the industry as we bring together executive leaders for thought-provoking discussions and unfiltered dialogues – in the unique and exquisite HFS signature style.
However, the reality is that we are far from doing live events yet! And so, as a company, we felt it was a good point in time to host our first digital symposium. I am personally excited about the amazing speaker line-up of 70+ speakers from across the world, the topically relevant agenda we have curated, the sponsorship support we received from our clients, and also the phenomenal response from the industry in terms of registrations.
When I last checked, we had more than 800 sign-ups and are still counting and expect to surpass 1000 before registration close on Monday! And the interesting insight is that we have registrations from across all industries, geographies, roles and functions. The best part is that doing a digital symposium presents us the opportunity to connect and engage with a wider section of the global industry and ecosystem; it’s almost ~4X the numbers we typically host in our live events!
Nischala: That’s wonderful to hear Phil. And I am sure there is excitement in the air at HFS around the upcoming HFS OneOffice Digital Symposium. I also know that you have committed to use the proceeds from the HFS One Office Digital Symposium towards the COVID-19 relief response work in India. Can you please share more about it?
Phil: Yes, Nischala, a lot of our business and clients are based in India – it is the heartbeat of the global services industry. Over the past few weeks, we have seen and heard of the ground reality of the situation in India. And we made an executive decision to make immediate donations from the Symposium proceeds for the collective fight against the pandemic in India.
I am incredibly happy that the funds we have given are making a real difference on the ground. A facility for pregnant women with COVID-19 needed $7,000 to open. We just made that happen. We also funded a 200-bedded hospital in a small town in Tamil Nadu and have just helped a maternity center become operational for women with Covid-19. So it truly gratifying to see the realization of our passion for a purpose to make a real difference.
In addition, HFS commits that the symposium proceeds will also be used to support causes we believe in – especially the importance of accessible college education for all racial minorities..
Nischala: That’s great to hear Phil. What is personally heartwarming is to see and read the immediacy of the impact of how the symposium proceeds are making a real difference on the ground in the lives of people.
Phil: yes. Every time I get a direct update on how the symposium proceeds are being used – it is personally very satisfying.
So attending the HFS One Office Digital symposium is really a win – win for all.
One, we all collectively make a positive difference in life of someone through what we do at work.
Two, anyone attending the HFS OneOffice digital symposium stands to only learn and gain.
So, anyone associated with the HFS OneOffice digital symposium is part of the conversation and the solution
Nischala : So, what is the theme for the HFS One Office Digital Symposium?
Phil: The theme for HFS is OneOffice. OneOffice is a really a “mind-set” which we strongly believe organizations need to consciously institutionalize for them to have a fair chance of long term survival, sustenance and success.
Thanks to the global pandemic, organizations have just taken a rapid drive down an unprecedented channel of change. It’s been a shock for many and a calling card for accelerating digital transformation.
This forced transformation is a final reckoning to create a collaborative, cross-functional, enterprise operation that natively automates your processes, propels your people, and powers your decisions – breaking down your front-to-back legacy silos to create the only “office” that matters: OneOffice
And we are almost at the half year mark in 2021. And we already see many organizations have embraced this mindset. For those who haven’t, it is a good time to start. Hence, we felt the combination of the timing and theme was appropriated to bring together industry leaders, business titans, decision makers and influencers to have an open authentic dialog on the future of industry, ways of working and navigating change.
Nischala : So, who should attend the HFS One Office Digital Symposium?
Phil: Any industry and anywhere in the world, if you are a business leader, decision-maker, or influencer in the area of business process, emerging technology, innovation, diversity, data, people, change management – you should sign up for the HFS One Office Digital Symposium.
Nischala : It is a power-packed speaker line-up and an equally power-packed agenda you have there. What are the Top 3 sessions you are really looking forward to and Why?
Phil: It’s hard to single out any one session as they are all so awesome across all aspects of people, process, technology, and change – just check out the agenda =)
Nischala : Our last interview was for International Women’s Day in March 2021 around the topic of gender diversity. As part of our conversation, you highlighted that for all HFS events we actively and consciously identify women who can be invited to speak. How does the speaker lineup look at the HFS One Office Digital Symposium in terms of gender diversity?
Phil: I am so glad you asked this question. We made a public commitment and I am happy to share that we have honored that commitment.
So for the upcoming symposium, we have a line-up of 18+ women speakers. They are all very senior women leaders, mostly C-suite and from across roles/functions and also across industries. I must confess that as a company, we do spend a significant amount of time as part of the event planning exercise ensuring that we identify and invite the right speakers based on their experience and expertise.
And the good news is that all these women are out there. So we believe it is our responsibility to give them the podium to share their ideas, insights, and inspiration.
Nischala: Anything else about the HFS One Office Digital Symposium that you would like to share with any reading this piece?
Phil: We really need to come together as an industry to shape the world we’re moving into at a speed we have never experienced before. We have so many more complex issues to grapple with that will impact us, such as our brittle infrastructures that are being exposed, especially in the wake of unprecedented cyber-attack escalations, getting ahead of subconscious biases with gender, race and sexual orientation, learning to innovate in this work-from-anywhere environment and paying much more than lip-service to climate change… where there is no vaccination to get us out of trouble. Please do try and join us and a voluntary donation to our Covid-19 relief organizations is deeply appreciated. Cheers!
One platform which has scaled new heights over the past year, geared to orchestrating processes in the cloud, is ServiceNow. One area that is becoming increasingly critical for these platforms is driving up the excitement of the leading – and emerging – services providers to train their staff to deploy, develop and help manage the solutions. Hence, it is no coincidence that we’re seeing SNOW rise in prominence with the service providers with ex-SAP chief Bill McDermott at the helm.
HFS’ IT services leader, Dr Tom Reuner, supported by analyst Martin Gabriel, have spent the past few months talking with an exhaustive quota of end-customers of ServiceNow, in addition to drilling into HFS’ customer perception surveys, to draw up the definitive Top Ten guide to ServiceNow Services in 2021. Premium HFS subscribers can access their copy of the report here.
So let’s hear a bit more from Tom about this evolving market…
Phil Fersht, CEO HFS: Tom – why has ServiceNow become the orchestration platform of choice for so many enterprises in recent times? What has changed to drive such a level of interest?
Dr Tom Reuner, SVP IT Services Research, HFS: Suffice it to say, Phil, the attraction of ServiceNow is in the eye of the beholder. For me, it is one of the key enablers for operationalizing the OneOffice. Let me peel back the HFS nomenclature for a moment. ServiceNow is the operational layer that helps organizations to deliver digital customer and employee experiences. In a nutshell, it is achieving this by offering workflows in the cloud that are underpinned by a single data model. But crucially, these workflows are cross-functional and organizations are looking to obtain that single pane of glass with all the operational data.
So what does cross-functional really mean? Many organizations started their journey with ServiceNow with IT workflows as they got fed up with the lack of agility of their often highly customized ITSM solutions such as Remedy that are still on-prem. But many organizations are expanding ServiceNow beyond ITSM toward IT Business Management or SecOps within IT, while others are literally taking the platform and leveraging it in business functions such as customer service, HR, and procurement. Thus, ServiceNow is a conduit for overcoming the organizational silos that we at HFS keep talking about. As one service provider put it, you have to earn your right in IT workflows to expand the platform to other business units.
Another strong alignment with the OneOffice mindset is that ServiceNow is delivering digital customer and employee experiences that delight folks rather than frustrate them. Those experiences could come from portals but increasingly are coming also from mobile devices. A good example is returning to work projects and even vaccination management as we are hopefully getting toward the tail end of the pandemic. You only get to high levels of customer and employee satisfaction if your operations are underpinned by consistent data sets and actions can be adapted easily.
How is the service ecosystem evolving around the NOW platform, Tom? What are you seeing from the major providers and the emerging niche firms?
There is an immense dynamism in the broader ServiceNow ecosystem. I would point to three major trends. First, clients are starting to scale the cross-functional journey with ServiceNow. We are seeing organizations managing GBS operations with ServiceNow end-to-end. They are taking the platform across HR, F&A, procure, and beyond. This is a far cry from the beginnings of ITSM. Second, ServiceNow is pushing an industry-led go-to-market. Thus, service providers have built out deeply verticalized offerings. Compelling examples are Operational Resilience in the financial services space and on the telco side, Network Performance Management offerings that get deeply integrated with the OSS/BSS landscape. And you can see those two trends clearly in ServiceNow’s financial performance. In Q4 2020 only 62% of new contracts were around IT workflows. And many of the leading service providers have an even lower percentage of contracts around IT workflows.
The third trend is the war for talent and with that, the unavoidable acceleration of M&A activity. Given the scarcity of talent, ServiceNow pure plays are being acquired by the GSIs. The most recent examples are NTT DATA acquiring Acorio and Cognizant gobbling up Linium. Both pure-plays had a strong focus on the US market. But we have also seen private equity (PE) firm Sunstone Partners acquire three ServiceNow pure-plays (Evergreen Systems, Cerna Solutions, and Novo/Scale) to create a new pure play challenger with global ambitions. It will be intriguing to see how this new company called Thirdera will fare.
So against the background of those trends and developments how are service providers reacting to this and who is standing out from the crowd?
Pivoting to broader transformational programs where the platform is being taken beyond IT workflows into what ServiceNow calls ESM ( i.e. customer and employee workflows) and more recently even into industry-led solutions is where the wheat is being separated from the chaff. It is here where the leaders like Accenture, Infosys, KPMG, EY, and DXC Technology are standing out. Many clients are looking for more than just implementation services that are commoditizing fast and that are often driven out of offshore factories. Put in other words we are seeing the OneOffice mindset come through. Organizations are progressing toward a more holistic data model and are looking to drive workflows across organizational boundaries. Beyond the leaders Atos stands out as the leader in the “Voice of the Customer”, IBM has made significant progress and is building out deep industry solutions while LTI gets strong client references for highly scaled IT workflow projects.
However, outside of the usual suspects, the unsung heroes of the ServiceNow ecosystem are often the leading pureplays or boutiques. For example, Enable Professional Services is the champion in Australia and Asia with strong ESM credentials while Plat4formation is at the cusp of innovation in manufacturing and beyond. Cask excels with a transformation focus in the US market while GlideFast has a strong sales momentum in the same market as well as a high CSAT score. As an analyst engaging with these organizations is immensely rewarding as you glean so much more information about the market.
Has Bill McDermott made a big difference, in your view?
There many ways of looking at it, Phil. For starters, he is a brilliant sales guy. I remember him from my days at Gartner donkey’s years back when he was heading up sales there. Looking at it from the ServiceNow angle, Bill’s tenure marks a new phase in their corporate development. His predecessors built the core functionality and established the brand. The next phase is strongly accelerated growth. You can compare this to the evolution of Salesforce. Therefore, the next logical step is verticalization. Bill hasn’t devised the strategy but he is excellent at communicating it. He keeps talking about ServiceNow being the platform of platforms. Which is a clever way of emphasizing cross-functional workflows. Yet, those workflows only happen through integration with all the applications and toolsets.
Having said that, there is a bit of a cult cropping up. Almost all the service providers we talk to point to “having discussions with Bill” and quite frankly just drinking the Kool-aid. But as the platform is being expanded into completely new use cases, having this communication “magnet” is immensely helpful. And we should keep in mind that ServiceNow has always avoided being pigeonholed. It was never the ITSM company. If anything, not too long ago it positioned itself as the “cloud company”. Now the positioning crystalizes around “Workflows for the Modern Enterprise” and as mentioned, the notion of the platform of platforms. Given the heterogeneity of the capabilities, having a highly visible figurehead is immensely helpful.
We recently saw ServiceNow acquire one of the small RPA providers, IntelliBot. What was that all about Tom? Why did they opt for a small firm in this space and not go for one of the larger RPA firms?
What appears to get lost in much of the ‘excited’ commentary of the Intellibot acquisition is that we have to move beyond a siloed mindset. This is not about RPA or AIOPs. This should be about moving toward cross-functional workflows. Put another way, ServiceNow is not entering the RPA market. As with all its acquisitions, it is looking to re-platform the capabilities of Intellibot. Or put yet another way, it will not offer Intellibot as a stand-alone offer. The aim is to expand the workflow experience toward the automation of legacy systems. Intellibot’s low code credentials have the additional bonus of allowing users to create automation. Therefore, comparisons to the leading RPA provider are misguided. This is a tuck-in acquisition that allows the integration of legacy applications and data sources. As such, this is more akin to SAP acquiring Contextor. For SAP the direction of travel is opposite to ServiceNow. Rather than allaying concerns of clients to migrate to the new world of HANA, ServiceNow is the cloud-based innovation that is aiming to integrate with the plethora of legacy systems. They aim to offer a connector to all leading applications and tools etc. Deeper process intelligence capabilities are the next logical steps, but again only focused around ServiceNow data, not as a competitor to the likes of Celonis.
You invented the “Intelligent Automation Continuum” during your earlier days with HFS. Is that still relevant, or have you changed your thinking? Are enterprises starting with basic RPA before graduating to more sophisticated technologies or is something else happening?
As a failed historian, it is always a tad indulgent for me to go down memory lane. To some degree, I am amazed that the Intelligent Automation Continuum is still being talked about and that clients still find value in it. While the market has moved on, the thought-process behind the Continuum remains valid, I would argue. But as with many things, automation really is in the eye of the beholder. For me, Intelligent Automation was always about end-to-end process automation and the need to integrate and orchestrate both legacy technologies as well as innovative offerings such as the cloud. But I was expecting a convergence of IT and business scenarios. So much so that I declared “RPA is dead” back in 2016 just to make a point.
Looking at some of the more detailed discussions on the Continuum, the idea was never that you have to start with basic RPA to progress to more sophisticated technologies as you put it, Phil, but rather two other fundamental points. First, that all the approaches and technologies plotted across that Continuum are both overlapping and interdependent. Therefore, clients have to find ways of orchestrating those. Second, the direction of travel is toward unstructured data and probably less obvious toward less well-defined processes. Cognitive and artificial intelligence is meant to overcome the limitations of these two dimensions.
And with that, we are back to ServiceNow. The cross-functional workflows and the integration capabilities of ServiceNow’s Integration Hub are taking us back to those discussions to progress toward end-to-end automation and decouple routine service delivery from labor arbitrage. We have to re-focus on those outcomes rather than getting side-tracked by the task automation pushed by the RPA incumbents. It is here where the ever-expanding capabilities of ServiceNow are coming in. But to be frank, I don’t think the RPA camp has taken too much notice of how much ServiceNow has changed.
So finally, Tom, what will be we talking about in the next couple of years as we see AIOps matures and other data-centric technologies become more prominent? How are operational process solutions going to take shape?
For me, it is really building on the points that I was just trying to make. The focus should be on the convergence of IT and business and enabling this cross-functional mindset to overcome organizational silos that we keep discussing in the context of the OneOffice. But to get there, we need enterprise-wide service management and monitoring. Yet, we are still miles away from getting even close to that. There are many missing pieces on that journey. But I expect deep investments around operationalizing Data Science, be it around process intelligence or AIOPs. The focus must be on integrating disparate inputs including metadata from logs or data that is adjacent to the actual process. However, the ability to ingest disparate sets of information has to be matched by the ability to execute and ultimately automate actions. Over time we have to progress to the non-deterministic application of dynamic scripts. Thus, this is also more about the platforms such as ServiceNow and Celonis, rather than about all those points solutions. I am tempted to close out with the thought process behind the Continuum: the focus on end-to-end automation and the need for integration and orchestration. But then again, markets rarely evolve rationally.
HFS Premium subscribers can click here to access their full copy of the 2021 ServiceNow Services Top 10 Report
What a difference six more months of staring into the digital abyss has made
When we interviewed leadership from 400 Global 2000 enterprises at the end of last year only 37% saw them returning to an in-office environment. Our very latest HFS Pulse study, covering 800 Global 2000 enterprises, clearly shows a marked shift towards sending staff back to the office, with a 60% ratio of staff expected to be office-based over the next year:
We’re entering a hybrid reality, where digital and physical work cultures are blended
The digital exuberance of 2020, where declarations from many leading enterprises – the likes of Unilever, Hitachi, Mastercard, Google and Amazon – that they had become “work-from-anywhere enterprises” is clearly losing steam as so many enterprises have struggled to maintain a motivating, dynamic culture. Employees – from leadership down to interns – are burned out with the sheer monotony of a 100% digital environment and the inability to whiteboard ideas, share ideas, collaborate on process design and embrace emerging tech. This is especially the case with Gen-Z and Millennial staff who are desperate to get back to an office environment. In fact, many are choosing to work for firms that are embracing an in-office culture – something we have already seen happening aggressively in the call center environment (download POV here).
Bottom-line: We’re seeing a significant “digital-flip” towards an in-office model
We can’t deny the experience of the last year has driven a genuine need to configure business operating models to function in a remote virtual environment, as most businesses simply can no longer limp along with on-premise systems, fragmented processes, and an inability to operate in the cloud. However, as we evolve towards a new reality where we can really visualize a physical future for businesses, it’s also become clear that businesses are struggling to function entirely in the cloud and depend more than ever on a people-driven culture. Why is this?
Businesses thrive on people and technology empowers us, not dictates how we work. While many businesses struggled – or failed completely – during the pandemic, many have thrived as costs have been decimated and a return to growth has created so many new markets to exploit and customer demand to satisfy. This has also created a highly fluid job market, where people can get hired rapidly over Zoom and staff can dictate where they want to work. Companies with strong, dynamic leaders who inspire staff to learn new things, collaborate together, and focus on purposes beyond mere profit and efficiency are fast becoming venues where ambitious staff want to apply themselves. While much can be achieved in a pure remote model, it’s simply not sustainable for a healthy, energizing work environment in the medium-long term. Running data and processes in the cloud is critical to keep companies operating effectively, but those are merely the baseline table-stakes to survive in this new hybrid reality. Technology is critical to provide the infrastructure to exist, but it doesn’t dictate the business model… people do.
There is only so much you can achieve remotely. We’ve talked to hundreds of executives over the past year, and they all complain about the same thing – they are managing an almost-unmanageable amount of internal meetings over video calls, simply to keep the wheels on basic task management and accountability. Simply put, it’s becoming increasingly complex and awkward to run business operations in a remote model where training is a huge challenge, where motivating people is almost impossible, where getting beyond the basics of keeping activities functioning is a huge challenge. Communicating, collaborating, idea-sharing, white-boarding etc are critical for taking businesses forwards and driving real innovation. They are also critical for helping employees become comfortable with change, to be comfortable with automating mundane elements of their jobs, and to become adept at embracing ways of accessing the data needed to exploit market opportunities. With industry lines blurring, supply chains fragmenting and new opportunities and challenges springing up at a breathtaking pace, the time to bring people back together is fast-arriving, and so many enterprise leaders are now seeing this in spades.
Rajan Kohli is quite possibly one of the coolest and calmest global leaders in today’s services industry, at a time when the speed and the pace of change bounce between hot and scalding. Are things moving as fast as clients want? And what about the internal pace of change? Wipro has recently completed both a major restructuring under new CEO Thierry Delaporte and the eye-catching acquisition of Capco in the past few weeks, so how are they really pulling it together to deliver the value clients so urgently seek?
Rajan now leads Wipro iDEAS (Integrated Digital, Engineering and Application Services), one of the firm’s two new global business lines, so I spent some time with him to wade into those waters…. after his daily run through Central Park. Here’s a peek into the conversation…
Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HFS Research: It is great to have you back on here again Rajan. I think we last spoke on HFS about three or four years ago, so quite a lot has happened since then with you, your career, and with Wipro. For the benefit of everyone here, maybe you could just give us a rundown on yourself again, and where you have evolved from, to the position that you are in today. Then we can talk a bit more about how you are hoping to take things forward in the new setup at Wipro.
Rajan Kohli, President and Managing Partner, Wipro iDEAS (Integrated Digital, Engineering, and Application Services Business Line): Absolutely. The pleasure is all mine, Phil. I think, when we last spoke, I had just taken over as the leader of Wipro Digital, and Wipro was making a big bet on digital in that space. Prior to that role, I was head of banking and financial services, and before that, I had been the Chief Marketing Officer at Wipro. But most of my time had been in leadership roles in our financial services business. We set up Wipro Digital in 2014, and I’d been leading Wipro Digital until a quarter back.
If you remember, Phil, our initial hypothesis was that in Wipro Digital we’ll develop capabilities that are differentiating, capabilities that don’t currently sit in any part of Wipro, and then, over a period, we’ll move other parts of Wipro under Wipro Digital so that we can do an end-to-end digital proposition for our clients. And that is the journey we were on.
“Through the massive restructure that Wipro had… we added the digital experience parts of Wipro’s business into Wipro Digital, then we added application modernization. With this latest reorganization, Wipro has now added all of engineering, all of applications, all of data also under this new group called iDEAS.”
Earlier this year, through the massive restructure that Wipro had, we have continued that journey forward. Initially, we added the digital experience parts of Wipro’s business into Wipro Digital, then we added application modernization. With this latest reorganization, Wipro has now added all of engineering, all of applications, all of data also under this new group called iDEAS.
The new global business line of iDEAS consists of Wipro Digital, Apps and Data, and the Engineering and R&D business of Wipro. We have also brought Industry Domain and Consulting under the iDEAS business line.
This is now the new construct, where we have two global business lines, iDEAS, and the second one is called iCORE, which is infrastructure, operations, and cybersecurity.
Phil: So it has obviously been quite the year now. We have been operating in a work-from-anywhere scenario quite literally, and I think a lot of the theory and desires that we spoke about over the last decade, some of that is now coming into practice for many enterprises, for many of our own companies, and into our own lives.
What do you see is the real speed between the desire for change and the actuality of the pace of change in the market? Are things moving as fast as clients want, or are you seeing a mismatch between what people want to get to versus where they are heading?
Rajan: That is a very good question. I think all our clients, enterprises, post-COVID, want to move much faster. They want to do more digital, but the gap between their desire and ability is what I will call digital fitness. It is comparable to having a desire to run 100 meters in 10 seconds, but not having the capability to do that. The gap really is fitness.
“All our clients, enterprises, post-COVID, want to move much faster. They want to do more digital, but the gap between their desire and ability is what I will call digital fitness. It is comparable to having a desire to run 100 meters in 10 seconds, but not having the capability to do that. The gap really is fitness. …Those who had modernized their IT application and infrastructure were able to achieve much more.”
I think the realization is there, among our clients now, that they need to modernize the core to really become a digital enterprise. That came to the fore during COVID because, if you talk to most of the CEOs and CIOs, the biggest issue was the IT, the application, the legacy nature of the landscape, and just the sheer amount of effort and time it took to do simple things. Those who had modernized their IT application and infrastructure were able to achieve much more.
There are good examples of enterprises that were able to pivot very fast. Best Buy was able to offer curbside pick-up very quickly, and Target could do a lot of omnichannel business. Chipotle – their stock did really well because they were able to order on their app and offer pick-up from the stores. A lot of enterprises took advantage of the scenario to gain share. There were many others who suffered, and that is the difference that I call digital fitness.
Phil: I think you have had your own shift in strategy, Rajan, where you have moved much more in a geolocation strategy model than maybe what you were doing before. How do you think that is going to go as you work through a lot of change with your clients as well?
Rajan: I think the current model of geo-based structure is a good one. I will tell you two or three reasons why I believe it is a really good one.
“The industry definitions of the past no longer really hold true. … For us to be able to serve our clients the best, it is better to organize against a particular account and bring all of the Wipro value proposition into the account, irrespective of the industry boundaries of the past.”
Number one, if you really see, the industry definitions of the past no longer really hold true. If you look at Amazon, of course, it is a favorite example of all. Is it a tech company? Is it a retail company? Is it a delivery & logistics company? It is all, right? Similarly, if you look at Zillow, they want to compete on the buyer journey, so why would they not want to offer mortgage loans, if possible? Do they now become a financial services company? Look at Walmart, they want to get into banking and financial services. For us to be able to serve our clients the best, it is better to organize against a particular account and bring all of the Wipro value proposition into the account, irrespective of the industry boundaries of the past.
Secondly, through this reorganization, Phil, we have brought our accounts and account management team closer to the customer. Client relationships were reporting level four or level five below our CEO. Now, they are on level three, and some on level four, and so we have brought ourselves closer to the client.
While we have become regional, we also need to stay global, because we do not want our capabilities to get siloed. So, the global business lines are truly global. iCORE and iDEAS are two global business lines that give us the ability to learn something, to deliver something in one client, in one region, and then replicate it in another client, in another region. That is why I like this construct a lot.
Phil: In terms of internal transformation, as a OneOffice type of organization, I know there is a lot of work going on internally to really pull that together, as well. Can you talk a bit more about what you are doing internally to, sort of, reformat the whole way Wipro is operating in this economy?
Rajan: I would say two things, Phil. First, in the past, there were a lot of operations that were sitting outside of the service lines and were being centrally managed. Now all of that operational capability has been brought into the service lines. Service lines now can decide how much they want to hire, where they want to hire, at what price they want to hire, and equally how they build talent in-house. A lot of that decision-making has been given to them.
Second, for us to now operate this model, we need a much better fabric that connects our accounts and our business lines. [We] really have a very strong order-to-cash system which, by the way, also can be flexible as we integrate many of the acquired companies into our system. So, if company A has a particular rhythm, which is different from company B, we should be able to offer that through the flexibility in our system.
We have a program called Quantum, Phil, which is being led from the top of the company, and that is the fabric that will now connect us in this new organization.
Phil: Excellent, Rajan. So, what about the conversations we are having now? I mean, there was so much focus on digital before the pandemic hit, in terms of a lot of focus around design, interface, and almost advertising-type businesses, as we were taking enterprises through that journey. But has that conversation shifted, in the last year, in terms of what the top priority is now? Is it maybe not quite as important as it was?
Rajan: Well, there are things that probably have become more important now that were not as important in the past. Modernization is one of them.
In the past, modernization was seen as IT’s requirement. It was not seen as a business requirement, because the functionality did not change. Business always worried about paying for modernization, because they paid for features and benefits, and modernization is more speed. They did not see the importance of it. Post-COVID, I think they have realized the need for speed, and hence the modernization, so that has changed.
“What has changed is Cloud. Pre-COVID, cloud was still important, but people were looking at cloud as more of an infrastructure-as-a-service play, a cost reduction play, or a flexibility play. Post-COVID, it is a play for speed as well.”
Second, what has changed is Cloud. Pre-COVID, cloud was still important, but people were looking at cloud as more of an infrastructure-as-a-service play, a cost reduction play, or a flexibility play. Post-COVID, it is a play for speed as well. We see clients realizing that a cloud-based environment offers them the ability to go live faster and better with their new features to market. I think that cloud has become a lot more application and domain-centric, compared to just pure infrastructure-centric, and we are seeing that shift, post-COVID.
And last but not least, in the immediate aftermath of COVID, everything was about access, “I need to reach my employees; I need to reach my customers; how do I do that?” A lot of spend went in that direction, but now it is about a sustained performance. I think that journey obviously was always going to be a little short-lived, because people have achieved what they needed to achieve in the first six months, and now they are looking for more sustainable differentiation, post-COVID.
Phil: As we look at this great return-to-work that is going to hopefully unfold in the next few months, maybe six to nine months, how do you see that taking shape? Are you seeing us going back to similar office-based scenarios as before, or something very different happening? We have seen Unilever, we have seen Amazon, and Microsoft,… a lot of companies come out and declare that they are now work-from-anywhere/work-from-home businesses and that they are relying less on real estate and things like that. Do you see a different scenario unfolding as we watch a return-to-work happening?
Rajan: Yes, I do not expect us to go back completely to the pre-COVID scenario. I believe this is one of the positive effects of COVID, and a lot of that will stay. Just think about it today. You know, over the last nine months, almost 90% of our workforce has been working from home, yet we are delivering on our SLAs, clients are happy with us, and they are giving us more business. You saw our results over the last quarter – we are growing. I believe a lot of this will stay.
But we are in a services business, which means that a lot of our ability to work from home is also dependent on our clients’ decision-making, so to that extent, we will be dependent on what decisions they make. I have absolutely seen many of our clients that have made long-term announcements around not doing more than 50% from the office, so we will stay connected to that.
On our shared staff, or back-office staff, who are either not directly managed by the client or not directly delivering work for our clients, we expect a vast majority of them to continue to work from home partially. So, they will work a week from home, come to the office a couple of days, then work a week from home, etc. I think it will evolve, but it will not come back to where it was in the past.
Phil: Yes, I think our data is telling us something similar. I think only a third are looking at a complete return, and most are looking at, as you said, a different, more phased, hybrid model as we evolve. Does that change how you look for talent, the types of people that you are looking for, in your own organization, your own areas, and maybe your client areas as well? Are your needs shifting now? Are you looking for a different profile of people than you were?
Rajan: Yes, we are looking for a different profile of people. It is not just to do with post-COVID work from home, but over a period, this shift has been happening. Hence, we are looking for people who have greater learnability. Very clearly, we cannot define where technology will go two, three, four years down the line. People need to be responsible for their own destiny, so they also need to have learnability; they need to be able to pick up new skills.
The second is collaboration, and that part is now even more important. Because we are working from home, remotely, via video conferencing, the skills that you require to engage with people and collaborate are a little bit different, and even more relevant than in the past. Collaboration is thus important.
“Diversity has always been important, but one thing that both COVID and the movement in the US have brought forward, particularly over the last six to nine months, is the fact that diverse teams are necessary. Within Wipro, we have doubled down on diversity with very, very specific initiatives to drive diversity at the leadership level.”
Third, diversity. Diversity has always been important, but one thing that both COVID and the social justice movement in the US have brought forward, particularly over the last six to nine months, is the fact that diverse teams are necessary. Within Wipro, we have doubled down on diversity with very, very specific initiatives to drive diversity at the leadership level. Even if you see some of the recent hires we have made at level one, which is CEO minus one, and level two, CEO minus two, they come from all walks, and bringing more women into leadership is very important.
Phil: Yes. And you see this return to work evolving, and maybe the removal of borders in businesses now. They are far more globalized.
You made an acquisition recently of Capco, Rajan, which is the largest acquisition I think Wipro has made. There seems to be a lot of focus around building out more client-side onshore competency now in the system, as well. Is that part of the thinking, globalizing the model?
Rajan: Yes, globalization of the model was a journey we were on over the last couple of years, especially as you move upstream. As you move more into the consulting and the design phase, we needed more globalization.
“Capco, which is the largest acquisition Wipro has ever made, helps us… fill the continuum of think it, design it, build it, done it – that end-to-end continuum. We will continue to move and localize, and not just in these countries but also other delivery locations globally, outside of India.”
Capco, which is the largest acquisition Wipro has ever made, helps us do that, and helps us fill the continuum of think it, design it, build it, done it – that end-to-end continuum. We will continue to move and localize, and not just in these countries but also other delivery locations globally, outside of India. Eastern Europe, for example, is of interest to us, and other [areas]. Mexico has been growing for us. We will continue to do that.
Phil: Right. So at a personal level, who have been the big influences in your life and career, as you have evolved? You have had a successful rise, Rajan, particularly in the last few years. Who would you credit for that, in terms of influencing your motivation or your viewpoints? Or, just in general, who helps drive your thinking?
Rajan:Yes, I would say two people. One, of course, my mother. My mother was a teacher. She really focused on imparting the right values in me, and I saw that in how she operated day-to-day.
“I have had the great privilege of working very closely with Mr. Azim H. Premji, Wipro’s founder, and seeing him in action. Anybody who has worked with him, even for a very short duration, would tell you that there is so much to learn from the great person he is,… and how willing he is to ask any question if he believes that can make him better and make the company perform better.”
And the second [influence], having spent 25 years in Wipro, I have had the great privilege of working very closely with Mr. Azim H. Premji, Wipro’s founder and seeing him in action. Anybody who has worked with him, even for a very short duration, would tell you that there is so much to learn from the great person he is, from how he carries himself, how humble he is, how he challenges himself, and how willing he is to ask any question if he believes that can make him better and make the company perform better.
Phil: Absolutely. And I was absolutely amazed at the level of personal investment he has made in India, its infrastructure, and also even in COVID relief. He has donated more money than many of the richest people in the world like Jack Dorsey at Twitter. They have not actually sacrificed as much investment in this as Azim Premji has.
I was quite amazed at how he runs a tight ship, both as a business and personally. He is an incredibly generous man, and I think a lot of that has gone unnoticed for a long time. He has done a lot to be very proud of, and his contributions to India, so I am not surprised to hear you say that he has been one of your influences there.
This has been really nice to catch up and see your personal successes, as well as Wipro finding itself with some good energy and direction coming out of this pandemic economy. I look forward to catching up with you in the not-too-distant future to see how the new acquisition, and maybe more acquisitions, are embedding, and how this global model is treating the company.
Rohan Kulkarni is Research Vice President, Healthcare, at HFS
We’re firmly on our path to view the world through industry lenses at HFS research, as we see value chains across sectors merge, and the needs to be hyper-connected changing before our eyes – with suppliers, customers, partners, governments, etc grouping into new value ecosystems as the world finds its feet post-pandemic.
Who could have predicted the reinvention and emergence of food services as a whole new industry, such as the complete digitization of banking and retail, the shift in insurance to becoming a sales/marketing-driven industry, and the reemergence of the travel industry in this pandemic and post-pandemic eta? But perhaps there have been no more fundamental changes to an industry value chain than what has transpired – and continues to evolve – in healthcare. The need for rapid, quality patient data, economic data, cloud migration, and supply-chain reinvention has never been so critical to driving government, enterprise, and individual decision-making in the world of health, life sciences, and pharmaceutical production.
Without further ado, let’s delve into the views, ideas, and plans being driven by our latest analyst addition, Rohan Kulkarni, fresh from his accolades as a master of perfect pints…
Phil Fersht, Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst, HFS. Before we get to all the work stuff, Rohan, can you share a little bit about yourself….your background, what gets you up in the morning?
Rohan Kulkarni, Research VP Healthcare, HFS. The opportunity to participate in the healthcare ecosystem is personal to me. Recognizing that US healthcare is sub-optimal across the key dimensions of cost, health outcomes, and experiences will impact me and most of us in the most personal ways as we grow older requires us to lean in and help make it better. I want to influence drivers that could make the care construct better in some meaningful manner.
I have been in the industry, getting on a decade and a half, leading strategy at multiple fortune 500 companies, being a product management executive & CIO at 2 different health plans while having consulted across the ecosystem. These opportunities have highlighted that the health & healthcare industry is unique in its ability to only get better in a participatory fashion. It’s not just a doctor and patient equation, but rather needs all of us to do our part to stay healthy, be good patients when sick and when we get better, to stay that way. Its ongoing work for all of us all the time.
Phil – You’ve had a diverse career spanning several roles aligned to the healthcare industry… can you share some of your experiences over the years… what would you do all over again, and what would you definitely avoid?
Rohan – Yes, Phil, I have been lucky to traverse this path through the healthcare ecosystem as a journeyman. I am amazed at the paradoxes in the industry; on one end, the amount of money that is in the system is mind-boggling and sufficient to solve all our healthcare challenges with plenty leftover, yet on the other hand, it represents the only industrialized nation without universal health insurance. This pandemic has exposed the level of empathy the industry has, particularly the nurses and doctors whose altruism knows no bounds, yet our society today is challenged with misinformation and trust impacting care & its delivery. My point is that the healthcare industry is meant to solve a polymathic problem and we are still scratching the surface in so many ways despite all the advances.
As I indicated earlier, I have been privileged to journey through the ecosystem, meeting some wonderful people, accomplishing things that made me proud, contributing to helping reduce costs & optimize resources, and most importantly finding platforms to drive awareness to draw in more people to participate in the improvement of the ecosystem.
Phil – How critical is the role of services and technology in the healthcare industry during this time – has it changed significantly?
Rohan – I think technology and its enablement through services as we know it has been a cornerstone of healthcare’s evolution for the better part of 2 decades. As the population grows, particularly the seniors, and the prevalence of chronic conditions worsens without any evidence to suggest a radical change in behaviors, I would say that the role of technology and services in healthcare is critical, perhaps only next to what clinicians can do.
Yes, I think it has changed significantly from how data is captured and analyzed and used in diagnosis and care protocols, how it can keep patients connected to clinicians for real-time interventions, how fast we can develop vaccines, and much more. The speed from identification to solution to post solution maintenance, in my view, has been the hallmark of the last decades’ extreme technology focus on healthcare.
Phil – What role do you see analysts playing as we emerge from this pandemic? Same old game, or is something new brewing? How do you intend to cover the healthcare sector?
Rohan – Health & healthcare’s success, in my view, is defined by the quality of life attributes, which will require democratization of the ecosystem and the broad participation of everyone. A key focus of that is driving awareness and engagement to help people, communities, enterprises, and governments appreciate different perspectives. To be able to bring various stakeholders together, drive robust debates and influence good sustainable solutions. I think this next chapter for analysts will differentiate between the good ones who will challenge the status quo and raise the bar, collaborate and influence industry solutions and those that will be critics.
My approach is going to include a few dimensions;
coverage expansion to include the entire ecosystem beyond the health plans and life science that we currently cover to healthcare providers;
a focus on digital health through the intersection of Healthcare & Triple-A Trifecta change agents – AI, automation, and smart analytics as well as mobility and virtualization
Healthcare is a polymathic problem and will require a polymathic solution; as such, I will cover healthcare’s intersections with climate change, societal changes, the food we eat, the impact of the way we work (e.g., OneOffice), and more that impact the social determinants of health.
While I do have faith in my fellow humans, I do suspect that at some point here shortly, the pandemic will be history, albeit a painful one for many. It will likely get people to go back to their old habits with perhaps a few non-material changes to their lives. As such, it is critical to driving awareness in more meaningful, personal, and even in your face ways so that together we can chart a better path forward.
Phil – What do you think we’ll be talking about in healthcare when we gradually revert to a world beyond our screens? Will we get a resurgence of energy and excitement, or will we crawl out of our caves blinded by the sunlight?
Rohan – I think that depends on where in the world you are. In the US, we were already down the path of being virtual in healthcare, and the pandemic certainly accelerated it. I suspect that momentum will continue where physical interventions are not necessary, such as primary care, nonsurgical specialist visits, etc. I believe after the initial surge of visits to the dentist, ophthalmologist, gynecologist, etc., human behavior will likely reverse to the mean, to return to most pre-pandemic behaviors. Now given the fact that we are unlikely to be at herd immunity any time soon and will likely need a booster vaccine come fall, I think a true post-pandemic scenario is still evolving.
Phil – Thanks for sharing your plans with us, Rohan. Excited to learn more from you as you get bedded in with us!
How many of you even knew Earth Day was on 22nd April? And even if you did, did you care?
If there is one lesson we will eventually take from Covid, it’s the paranoia that government and business leaders’ now live with: a constant fear of being caught cold by a crisis like this, ever again. This paranoia must spur them to preventative action rather than a reliance on their ability to deliver rapid treatments. Those treatments of the symptoms simply paper over the deepest cracks of the causes – problems that remain unsolved despite all the debt we’ve incurred.
Barring future pandemics and world wars, which seemingly can be treated by throwing extraordinary amounts of money into science and military coffers, the next looming crisis is that of a climate meltdown. This offers the opposite problem – where the only cure is through smart and painful prevention, not quick-fire, after-the-crisis inoculation.
Sustainability must become a native part of businesses, policy, and our day-to-day lives
This means people need to be educated, they actually have to listen and then change their behaviors. No-one really took the threat of nuclear war seriously until the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were experienced. The world was able to recover from the horrors of ‘limited’ nuclear war, the experiences, hopefully, proving to be preventative for many more decades to come. But there is no second chance if we continue to destroy our planet. There can be no “lessons-learned” when the world runs out of water…. Sadly, our recent study of 150 C-suite executives across the global 2000 shows us that sustainability only ranks fifteenth as a “fit-for-purpose” measure – no change at all from pre-Covid times:
In this vein, we had our roaming story-teller Nischala Murthy Kaushik spend time with analyst Josh Matthews, who spends a lot of time thinking through how we tackle sustainability and climate change, in addition to spending his spare time as a counsellor on Cambridge City Council in the UK…
Nischala Murthy Kaushik (CMO, HFS): Let’s start with the basics, Josh… What is the definition of ‘sustainability,’ and why is it important in 2021?
Josh Matthews (Assoc Research Director, HFS): The best place to start by checking out the UN Sustainable Goals. These 17 Goals cover all the ambitions we should have as a planet, whether its tackling climate change, lifting people out of poverty, restoring and protecting biodiversity, or eliminating inequality. These challenges don’t stand alone—they’re heavily interconnected. These are all challenges we still face in 2021. These are all challenges we’re likely to face for decades to come. There’s so much under the sustainability umbrella—but can broadly be split into environmental, social, and governance (with a financial sustainability element) factors; many (businesses especially) refer to “ESG” as a way of indicating that sustainability is about more than just climate change, and how tightly intertwined all 17 Sustainable Development Goals are.
Nischala: The theme for 2021’s Earth Day (22 April) was “Restore our Earth”. How does the theme of sustainability really help in restoring our Earth?
Josh: There’s a scientific and internationally agreed need (The Paris Agreement) to reach net-zero globally by 2050 to have a chance of avoiding further irreversible global warming and climate and ecosystem breakdown. If we don’t reduce our emissions to net-zero by 2050, we’ll have lost any chance of avoiding global warming above 1.5 degrees (since pre-industrial times). This will not only cause extreme and erratic weather and make more of the planet uninhabitable, but it will also continue to break down natural ecosystems: oceans and reefs, polar regions, jungles and forests, and so many more. Biodiversity will disappear as habitats, and food chains will collapse. Restoring our Earth means avoiding this. But it also means actively improving biodiversity (and the planet in general) from where we are now—not just stopping the harm.
Nischala: Do discussions around sustainability come up in your interactions with clients? what are their top-of-the-mind questions and challenges?
Josh: Yes they do, Nischala, Many enterprises across the globe are committed to sustainability in various forms (for example, become net-zero carbon or committing to a target like 2030) and some demonstrate it through company policy or corporate level programs with a dedicated leader to drive this charter. As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic – sustainability and achieving more than just shareholder profit are becoming critically important for enterprise leaders (see Exhibit 1). Many, however, are struggling to translate their intent to action and impact. Many know that their customers are looking for sustainability in the products and services they buy—but still manage to stick with the status quo or not go far enough.
Our conversations with service providers do not fill us with a whole lot of confidence that the majority of enterprises are making the changes they need to make—despite marquee use cases and headline enterprises who have seized the sustainability narrative (Unilever is a good example). There is hope, however, as these same service providers hold the keys to making sustainable transformations happen – as they do in digital transformations. They can bring the strategy and design consulting, implementation, managed services, and technology to help businesses move along a pathway to sustainability.
Nischala: Has the election of Joe Biden as President of the U.S. made an impact, Josh?
Josh: Absolutely. And this is apparent in our service provider and enterprise conversations. There has been progressive regulation promised for some time across the world – and a desire for this from service providers and enterprises who are trying to be leaders in tackling climate change and pioneering all forms of sustainability. Investment in green technologies, infrastructure, jobs, and all manner of routes is beyond welcome – and other countries need to see this as a defining moment – where things change – and sustainability is no longer a future problem. Like enterprises, governments need to nail down roadmaps to decarbonize and reach net-zero. They also need to do the same in tackling all forms of sustainability. Technology and strategy, combined with implementation, need to come together.
Nischala: What trends around technology and innovation are you seeing in the world of sustainability?
Josh: Technology and innovation have two sustainability angles:
Firstly, they can both help businesses, governments, and individuals be more sustainable: AI and analytics (including in consumer apps) can improve decision making and optimization (of energy use, for example, which has a cost and carbon emissions benefit) and combinations of the internet of things (IoT) and cloud platforms can help measuring, monitoring, reporting, and optimizing of emissions. There are so many more examples.
Secondly, technology and innovation come with an associated carbon footprint which must be addressed. The electricity that powers computing and data storage must be decarbonized, and its consumption must be reduced. To address this, companies are sourcing more and more renewable energy to power their datacenters (or even producing it themselves) alongside improving their efficiencies. The supply chains which create technology products must also become more environmentally friendly (the mining of metals for batteries, for example), socially responsible (by eradicating modern slavery, to name only one challenge), and transparent (so that customers can have confidence that the first two points have been met, alongside their other requirements).
Nischala: What is it that large organizations can do to support the case and cause of sustainability actively?
Josh: Sustainability must become native to businesses. It must be an integral part of every decision from the shopfloor up to the CEO’s office. If there’s one concrete action to take away from this, it should be building a roadmap to decarbonize their carbon footprints. Measure your current footprint, and then plan how you’ll reach net-zero by 2050 at the ABSOLUTE LATEST (as far in advance as possible!). This includes your own direct and indirect emissions, but also those throughout your supply chains (often ). For example, direct emissions can be reduced via process optimization and redesign, indirect emissions could be decarbonized by sourcing more renewable electricity, and procurement processes can be adapted to ensure suppliers meet the highest sustainability standards to improve scope 3 supply chain emissions.
Nischala: Are there any specific initiatives that you are doing at HFS towards this cause?
Josh: HFS has been talking about sustainability, and importantly the sustainability services ecosystem, for some time. Businesses and governments know they need to become sustainable—but many don’t know where to start or how to put plans into action. Service providers are the ones who’ll make this change happen—as we’ve seen them do through digital transformation work—through consulting and design, implementation, ongoing management of operations, and technology. The sustainability services ecosystem, however, remains fragmented and poorly understood by providers and enterprises (and governments). Keep watching the HFS Research space as we change this throughout 2021. The sustainability ecosystem needs to be mapped, defined, understood, and coordinated. This must happen soon so that service providers can bring their enterprise clients and partners along on their journeys.
Nischala: What is it that we can do as individuals to support this cause, Josh?
Josh: There’s so much, Nischala – and even small changes aren’t wasted. Some of the most important would be: walking, cycling, and using public transport to cut down on car use (and if possible switching to an electric car, or car-sharing); reducing meat consumption and generally shopping for the most sustainable options (locally sourced, low plastic, etc.); reduce, reuse, and recycle as much as possible; retrofitting homes (although expensive) lowers heating/cooling costs as well as carbon emissions.
Nischala: What are some of the best global online resources for anyone to read if they want to understand more?
Josh: We’ve been sharing plenty of our favorite resources and research over the last week or so (and HFS’ own research, of course!), and obviously so much more is out there. But my top 2 picks would be:
United Nations (including the Sustainable Development Goals)
Cambridge Zero (a new policy unit within the University of Cambridge)
Nischala: Thanks for sharing your views and knowledge on this critical topic, Josh! We’re all eager to see our industry taking more action to drive sustainable actions.
Enterprise data businesses Syniti and Data Migration Resources have joined forces in a move they believe makes them the biggest data software platform and services pureplay in this, or any other, town. And we see no reason to doubt their claim. With the thirst for quality data at a pandemic-driven all-time-high to base critical enterprise decisions, this merger is perfectly timed.
Under the Syniti banner – and with Syniti CEO Kevin Campbell remaining at the helm – the new company has the resources and global footprint to answer the ‘Are these guys big enough?’ question when it comes to tackling the most complex data requirements of the top echelons of the global 2000. The Newco claims it offers the largest collection of data specialists and an AI-driven platform converging capabilities across data management, analytics, and governance. With Campbell energized and back in his element, who drove one of the first BPO pureplays Exult, before he inspired the multi-billion dollar BPO and technology growth trajectories in Accenture (see blog), you have to believe the newly re-invented king of data services is taking his new company somewhere very interesting…
Tie up comes after record growth for SAP-certified Syniti
Both parties share a common focus on people and intend that the new scale of the organization will give their prized data specialists the opportunity and desire to stick around to build long careers and the culture to attract more.
Syniti enjoyed record growth in 2020 (with some regions reporting more than 275% growth YoY). It reported the best Q1 results in its 23-year history at the end of April 2021. It’s riding a wave of rapidly increasing investment in smart analytics (Exhibit 1). Almost three-quarters see investments rising either significantly, or moderately.
Exhibit 1:Do you see investments increasing, decreasing, or staying the same for smart analytics in the next 12 to 18 months?
Syniti has been expanding from its SAP heartland (where it now holds SAP Certified Gold Enterprise Support Integration) to introduce real-time data replication with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
It is also an SAP platinum partner when it comes to helping businesses move to SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP Ariba. SAP resells data migration software from Syniti as SAP Advanced Data Migration by Syniti. Deloitte, IBM and DXC have been Syniti’s leading SI partners to date.
Joining together offers a global footprint and platform for acceleration
Syniti and DMR have been competitors in the North American market – each with facilities in India. Syniti has expanded to Europe and Asia-Pacific and DMR has gone into Latin America. The plan is to scale up globally, making use of the combined power of their India operations and sharing sales teams and the best of the products, tools, ideas, methods and techniques applied by each business. The aim is to accelerate their individual growth through combination – staking a bigger claim to the rapidly expanding demand for enterprise data management than either could alone.
The combined solution portfolio – comprised of the Syniti Knowledge Platform, DMR CONCENTO, Rapid Data Governance (RDG), and other software solutions, offers customers and partners aggregated, integrated capabilities to address a wide range of data-led business and IT requirements.
DMR products will remain supported into the foreseeable future and the combined might of the organizations will be applied to accelerate the ongoing development of DMR’s CONCENTO RDG – a potentially powerful differentiator if it delivers on its promise of cutting implementation costs by up to 50%.
Bridge Growth Partners are the majority owner of the new enterprise with DMR CEO Ryan Rodenburg joining the executive board with a ‘CEO of the Americas’ remit.
Bottom Line: Effective combination of assets holds the key to long term success
Thousands of hours of teaming ahead of the official merger proved the two parties can work together well. But the long-term success of the deal is likely to reside in how effective the new organization can be in making 1 + 1 = 3 when linking up its assets in a range of client-value-creating combinations. The new organization makes for a more balanced products/services company going forward, something the market is starting to reward. What is critical now is to encourage Syniti’s energized service provider partners, especially Deloitte, IBM, Accenture and DXC to increase their focus and staff training on the bigger, badder Syniti.
In short, we need to understand that data is the strategy to get us ahead of our markets. Here are five steps we must take:
Get The Data to Win In your Market. This is where you must align your data needs to deliver on business strategy. This is where you clarify your vision and purpose.
Re-think processes to get the data, Then you must re-think what should be added, eliminated, simplified across your workflows to source this critical data.
Design your new operational workflows in the cloud. There is simply no option but to have a plan to design processes in the cloud over three-tier web-architected applications. In the Work-from-Anywhere Economy, our global talent has to come together to create our borderless, completely digital business. This is the true environment for real digital transformation in action.
Automate processes and data. Automation is not your strategy. It is the necessary discipline to ensure your processes provide the data – at speed – to achieve your business outcomes. Hence you have to approach all future automation in the cloud if you want your processes to run effectively end-to-end.
Apply AI to data flows to anticipate at speed. Once you have successfully automated processes in the cloud, it is easy to administer AI solutions to deliver at speed in self-improving feedback loops. This is where you apply digital assistants, computer vision, machine learning, and other techniques to refine the efficacy of your data. AI is how we engage with our data to refine ourselves as digital organizations where we only want a single office to operate with agility to do things faster, cheaper, and more streamlined than we ever thought possible. AI helps us predict and anticipate how to beat our competitors and delight our customers, reaching both outside and inside of our organizations to pull the data we need to make critical decisions at speed.
