When it comes to big stonking change and the new meshing of business and IT disciplines, let’s talk to the ultimate wave-spotter: Mark Foster. I met Mark a few decades ago when I was wearing button-downs and he was one of the key Group Chief Executives at Accenture. I’ve been very curious to catch up and see for myself what enticed Mark out of (what he dubs) “blissful semi-retirement” to lead the 250,000-strong services business at IBM. So let’s dive in…
Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HFS Research: It’s great to get some time with you, Mark. You’ve been a well-known figure in strategy consulting for many, many years. I met you during your Accenture days, but not so much recently. I’d love to know a bit more about you, where you came from, and were you always intending on going into the services industry? Was this your goal when you were at university?
Mark Foster, Senior Vice President, IBM Services: Well, probably not. My background is rather strange, insofar as I have a degree in Ancient Greek, Latin, and Ancient History. So, I spent the best part of all my school and university career studying languages that are now largely dead, and only readable in ancient texts. (Laughs)
Very early on, though, I had a sense that there was something happening around technology; it was going to be a really important thing to get involved with. My first job was joining Accenture back in 1983, what was then Arthur Andersen management consulting, where the first thing that happened was to be sent off to St. Charles to learn to code in COBOL. That was really the start of an involvement with technology that’s carried me through for a very long period of time.
“I had a grounding in technology, a grounding in what it can do to transform industries and business, and then also a career that evolved away from core technology…”
When I came here to IBM, I remembered that I learned to code in RPG III on the AS/400 back in a dim, distant day as well. I had a grounding in technology, a grounding in what it can do to transform industries and business, and then also a career that evolved away from core technology and into areas of business strategy, management, industry transformation, digitalization, and over time, all the areas around the BPO marketplace that we got into, as well as all of the ERP worlds that the world got into. So, actually, I’ve had a very broad-based background across all these different areas of services over time.
Phil: So, you’ve had a very colorful career, Mark. IBM must have been a very interesting change for you… experiencing several years at the height of Ginni’s reign, and now Arvind, and some new blood in the company with a lot of change going on. I can’t help feeling that we’re going through a great big reset in the world of technology, and it might not be a bad thing for IBM considering the brand and the strength that you have. I’d love to hear a bit more from your perspective on what the experience has been like, and a bit about where you hope to take the GBS and the services business as things evolve.
“I could see another wave of change that was about to take place around digital technology. We were getting to a state, again, where technology was about to be transformative…”
Mark: First of all, Phil, I was actually lured… After 27 years of Accenture, I had five and a half years of what I like to call blissful semi-retirement, where I was working on various things and different boards, and I was really lured back by Ginni, to IBM, because I could see another wave of change that was about to take place around digital technology. We were getting to a state, again, where technology was about to be transformative, as opposed to living around the edges of companies.
I saw the coming together of the worlds of AI, automation, blockchain, etc., as being the big opportunity to be involved in something new again, and an opportunity to also refresh and transform GBS as a critical part of the IBM ecosystem. That was something that Ginni was very keen for me to do, and I think we’ve made some decent progress on that over the last four or five years.
“The strategy of IBM has evolved even more clearly around the whole world of hybrid multicloud, data, and AI. This has helped me to lean into the role that GBS can play in transformational journeys.”
The strategy of IBM has evolved even more clearly around the whole world of hybrid multi-cloud, data, and AI. This has helped me to lean into the role that GBS can play in transformational journeys that include those solutions as part of the business change that’s being driven and the thought processes around a cognitive enterprise, which is the new kind of enterprise we’re imagining where all of this comes together. It is very much in line with your OneOffice thinking, in terms of what an organization looks like when it has the power of these technologies applied at scale.
Phil: We had the days leading up to 2020, where we envisioned what the technology could potentially become, without really knowing what that burning platform would be to drive us rapidly down this channel of change that we’ve been through. It’s been an incredible shock to the system for some businesses.
What has it been like within IBM? How much has it changed you as a company?
Mark: Well, it’s changed all of us. I’ve got 240,000 people working for me around the world right now, 90% of whom are still working from home and have moved themselves seamlessly into that environment. They have had to deliver on projects, programs, and operations for clients, as well as doing other things to continue to sell and develop new work, all of that taking place in a virtual environment. We’ve had to leap to what that looks like. Fortunately, that was something in the background of how our global delivery was operating already, but it just accelerated even further and put it on steroids.
For many clients, there has been a massive acceleration of the digitalization of their businesses. It has also put technology at the forefront of people’s minds and the role it plays in enabling employees to do their jobs and connect to customers.
“CTOs and CIOs have had a good crisis in a way, because they have proven that the role that their technologies play is fundamental for enabling companies to keep going and to sustain operations. We’re going to see the shift… of these technologies moving into the mainstream and the replacement of legacy by new technology at scale.
It’s been highly accelerated.”
We did some research, just recently, in terms of talking to various C-suite executives about what digitalization had done, in terms of who is now playing a bigger role. Not surprisingly, the CTOs and CIOs have had a good crisis in a way, because they have proven that the role that their technologies play is fundamental for enabling companies to keep going and to sustain operations. I think we’re going to see the shift we have already seen, of these technologies moving into the mainstream and the replacement of legacy by new technology at scale. It’s been highly accelerated, and I think we’ll see a lot more of that coming along. And that’s the path we plan to play – helping clients take those new, faster journeys.
Phil: Yeah, when you think about it, you’ve got 90% of the Global 2000 with fairly expansive shared service organizations, and, of those, they all have varying levels of outsourcing relationships. Now we’re at this point where only a third actually want to go back to the model they had before, the physical model, the packing of people back into their service centres, etc.. A lot of them have declared that they’re work-from-anywhere organizations now. I get the feeling that not a lot of the traditional middle-to-back-office workers are going to be asked to return to a physical environment. At the same time, clients are figuring out how to do a lot of this work remotely, they’re judging more on outcomes. It’s getting a bit less personal. In a way, the work environment has gotten slightly harsher.
How do you see this playing out, Mark? If we’re going into a new model where things are much more disparate and much more remote, even when we’re fully vaccinated, is this the end of shared services as we know it, from a client perspective, and a whole new birth of a final phase of outsourcing? Is that how you see things playing out?
Mark: I don’t think it is, actually. The empowered, remote, anywhere workforce is something that people are obviously talking about. This also came up from the recent C-suite study that we did, the focus on [remote work] as being one of the most important things C-suite executives are worried about. Within that, there was an awful lot of focus about the ongoing humanity of those relationships, about empathy, and the way we’re actually going to make sure that we stay connected in this world.
“It’s been an interesting duality to show how virtual you can be, but it’s also made people a bit more aware of what they lack when they’re not connecting together. …All of that still has to find a place.”
It’s been an interesting duality, Phil, to show how virtual you can be, but it’s also made people a bit more aware of what they lack when they’re not connecting together. I think that we’re going to start seeing models where people will have to combine the ability to bring people together for creativity, for empathy, for connecting with each other, for networking, and spontaneity. All of that still has to find a place. It will make us think much more about the journey of talent being accessible from around the world.
The virtual garage model we have developed is very much a model for co-creation with our clients from anywhere around the world and for being able to bring expertise from ourselves and ecosystem partners to help transform a process with a client. That potential is very real, and I think it is quite exciting. It’s what we call our Dynamic Delivery model, powered by the Garage. We can see that becoming very powerful.
“We’ve seen a big focus from clients on this idea of uplifting skills, “Can you work with us in a way that actually means we also uplift our skills as well, and not simply take the skills off our hands?”
There has very much been a shift in that space going on.”
I think the clients will go on, reinventing their shared services and relationship with their strategic partners. We’ve seen an uplift in interest around aspects of core process outsourcing, or “co-sourcing.” We’ve seen a big focus from clients on this idea of uplifting skills, “Can you work with us in a way that actually means we also uplift our skills as well, and not simply take the skills off our hands?” There has very much been a shift in that space going on. I think we’re in for a very interesting period of more opportunity for disaggregation of processes, the power of extreme automation, and higher levels of AI coming into the mix as part of the transformation. But I also believe we need to be a bit more thoughtful on the role of the human in that machine.
Phil: I love that answer, Mark! You know, everything starts with data. Data is the strategy of the business. What data do we need to be more effective than our competitors, fix our supply chains, get products on the market faster? Everything starts with data.
Then you have to design your processes in a way to get to that data, to get to the outcomes you need. Right? You’ve got to realize as a work-from-anywhere organization, you have to move those processes into the cloud, so then you have to automate in the cloud. That’s something that we haven’t been educating people enough on, which is the next phase.
Automation is not the strategy; it’s the native DNA. Automation is the essence of making it happen; it’s the attitude, right? Data is the strategy, automation is the attitude and then we can run AI off automated processes in the cloud to get different types of data views, different types of ways of predicting things. We’ve got this cycle that we’re talking about, and so much of this is about redesigning process.
“We need people to actually help design businesses in the way they should have always been designed. Too many companies today hadn’t touched a process until they were forced to go into a remote environment.”
Isn’t this where the human element comes in? We’re a decade away from the singularity, apparently, so we need people to actually help design businesses in the way they should have always been designed. Too many companies today hadn’t touched a process until they were forced to go into a remote environment. And now…
Mark: I totally, agree, Phil. I totally agree. You need to have people who are really looking for pain points, looking for value pools, and working out where the opportunities are to make it better, but you also now have so many different tools to go after those value pools and drive out that value. That’s where we see the power of AI at scale, the power of automation, using IoT for massive sensing, the 5G enablement of some of these processes as well – we see all of that coming together.
We then find that, yes, we can do all of that, but we do need to make sure that the robustness of the data that is going to be used in this automation has a good base and is trusted. I need to understand and be transparent about how it is actually applying itself into these new workflows. It’s a bringing of all that together as part of an execution journey for a client that will take them from where they are now to where they’re going to be. That is the complexity.
“We’re talking about very big companies trying to do very big change, …the change management and reskilling agendas for people who sit along these new workflows becomes critically important.”
We’re talking about very big companies trying to do very big change, which, to me, harks back to past eras where thinking about the change management and reskilling agendas for people who sit along these new workflows becomes critically important.
Phil: Yeah, it’s interesting. In all your years in this industry, you’ve had to keep your own staff motivated, ahead of your clients, ahead of the curve, and now in a remote setting. What has that been like? Has this been like anything you’ve seen before?
Mark: Well, I think this is certainly up there, Phil, in terms of something I haven’t seen before. Let’s be clear, I’ve been managing large, global teams for a very long time, and I’ve always believed that you manage, engage, and lead by being with your teams, being with your clients, and spending time together. I literally like to get around the world many times a year to see as many people as I can and lead that way. The lack of that has been something that I have certainly personally felt.
We try to replace it. Every day, I’m sending a video somewhere; every day, I’m doing a virtual townhall with some slice or cut of my teams. I’m trying to spend time with as many of my leaders as I possibly can, reaching out to speak to people, but not in a planned way because one of the problems of Webex-land is that we’re all scheduled into our interactions with each other as opposed to bumping into each other. Trying to find ways to connect with people in a way that’s not so programmed is important.
These are things that I think are pretty fundamental to trying to work through this time, while also recognizing that many people are doing their day-to-day work in very difficult circumstances, with home circumstances, or children, etc. We’re trying to be empathetic leaders right now, but also trying to provide people with a vision of where we’re trying to go.
“Can you see where you fit in? Can you see where you could fit in if you built up a new skillset?”
Arvind has set a very clear strategy around hybrid cloud, data, and AI. We’re lining up our GBS business very strongly in support of that. That sets a North Star for us, which we can lay out into the marketplace, and a lot of my energy right now is making sure the teams understand what that new North Star is, and that we’re moving ourselves towards these two big value pools of intelligent workflows enabled by the hybrid multi-cloud.
And that’s our fundamental vision.
Therefore, if you are any one of those thousands of people out there in the world, the question is, can you see where you fit in? Can you see where you could fit in if you built up a new skillset? It is a very dynamic skills environment right now for our people, and you can do a lot more skills training, but you really need to make sure that you create the space in their time to do that.
Phil: Interesting. Do you feel you’ve spent a lot more time internally than externally for the last 12 months?
Mark: I’ve spent a lot more time internally in my kitchen.
Phil: [Laughs]
Mark:[Laughs]. In fact, today is one of the first days I’ve been out of my kitchen in a long while. I spend a lot more time internally. But, actually, I am also spending a lot of time with clients. One of the good things about this world is that clients are in their kitchens somewhere in the world as well, and I can get to clients in Australia, in India, in Latin America in a moment, as opposed to having to get on a plane and fly to see them.
Half my day, at least, is still spent interacting with clients, and then the other part of the day is a balance between the management of a very large, complex enterprise. You’re trying to make sure you’re keeping busy and economically successful, and then the rest of the time is with the people – the people and the teams – trying to make sure that they are motivated, and inspired, and know where they fit in.
Phil: Very good. We have a final question, Mark. When you look at the next 12 months, we’re not quite through a pandemic yet; we’re hoping a vaccine is going to bail us out of that; we have a booming stock market; we have booming unemployment; and we have a very, very confused and volatile outlook as to the economy and how things are going to shake out. Beyond answering me with the word “chaos” [Laughs]…
Mark:[Laughs].
Phil: …what do you think the world’s going to be like in a year’s time?
Mark: Well, Phil, I’m actually more optimistic than pessimistic about that picture, Phil. I mean, I think that the world will actually be in a better place than it was at the end of last year. There’ll be a little bit more certainty, I hope. Clearly, we are still in an environment of stop-start in many parts of the world, but I think each time we’re doing it, we are gaining a bit more muscle memory about how to deal with it.
At the same time, we shouldn’t walk past the fact that there’ll be a degree of fatigue of this world as well, which starts to have other implications for how people feel about how they can cope with it. Overall, my feeling is that we’ll have a choppiness in the first half of the year. We are going to be in a world where we’re likely going to have a lot of remote working still going on, for a very big part of that, but then I think we’re going to start to see some version of a new normal emerging in the second half of the year. We’re seeing clients who are using this moment to reset their business strategies; they are accelerating their digital journeys. All of that is goodness for us, if we can help them with that transformation.
The critical thing for us is to make sure that we’re well positioned in our relationships with our clients with the right skills in the right place, and that we can then help with that co-creation, which I think will be in a more benign environment towards the back end of the year.
Phil: What do you think services are going to look like in two years’ time? When you look out, we get beyond the pandemic and to some type of economic rebound; it’s going to be very different…
Mark: There are lots of what-ifs in there, aren’t there, in terms of what the world’s going to be like. I would say that if you just look at the amount of change that’s going to be spooled up – pent up demand, and, more importantly, thought up demand – I believe people have been thinking about new things in different ways. As they start to now execute on that, we’ll see big enterprises executing quite substantive change. A well-positioned services capability that can help with those journeys has an opportunity to thrive, so I’m optimistic about that.
“There is a changed relationship between the world of services and clients; it is very much more a co-creational world and very much more a co-skilling world.”
There is a changed relationship between the world of services and clients; it is very much more a co-creational world and very much more a co-skilling world. There’s going to be much more desire for an ability to have self-reliance and adaptability built into the client organisations through their experiences of this transformation, so that, to me, is exciting. I think there will be a lot of opportunity. We have to make sure we’re well positioned for it; that’s something I’m very much looking forward to.
Phil: Excellent. Well, thank you very much, Mark. That was a wonderful discussion which I know our avid readers will appreciate.
Still grappling with moving your operations into the Cloud? Click here to grab your spot at the HFS Cloud Native digital roundtable on 21st April 10.00am-1.00pm ET
Nigel Edwards is Chief Client Officer, HFS. Click for LinkedIn and Bio
While we can speculate all day long about what businesses can do when they are given the huge amounts of someone else’s money to burn, how about those that are employee-owned and make their own investments using the hard-earned money they actually earned themselves?
When you look at the growth and success of HFS over the past 11 years to tackle competitors hundreds of times our size, there is one constant throughout the whole experience – the collective array of people who’ve made it all possible. While you can buy successful brands, IP, methodologies, APIs, and algorithms, the most important asset you can accumulate is your people.
One such individual, whom I have known since the days just prior to founding HFS, is Nigel Edwards – an enthusiastic and affable character who’s weathered the best of the Indian-heritage service providers namely Cognizant. Wipro and EXL, after earning his business and IT services stripes at Accenture in his earlier career. It was time for “Nige” to take nearly three decades of blood, sweat, BPO and captives and lend it to HFS’ long-suffering clients, crying out for a sense of reality and to exploit the current market turbulence. Now there isn’t too much to say about Nigel beyond the fact he’s a lifelong Foxes fan (Leicester City), has played cricket with David Gower and gets beaten up in a boxing ring by his son almost daily… so let’s hear a bit more from HFS’ Chief Client Officer, Nigel Edwards:
Phil Fersht (CEO, HFS): Before we get to all the work stuff, Nigel, can you share a little bit about yourself… your background, what gets you up in the morning?
The honest answer is that it’s a combination of my 6-year-old (the youngest of my 3 boys), the dog, or the sound of the refuse collection folk reminding me that I did not put out the recycling…
Seriously though, it’s the opportunity to do something creative. My dad was in the construction industry for many years and he doubled up as a highly accomplished artist, sculptor, and writer. Even at 78 he is still pushing out new ideas each day in his quiet, unassuming but engaging manner. I guess this appetite for creativity has continued throughout my career as I have always been interested in what is coming along next: from buying outsourcing services to BPO, to automation and now digital. I love nothing more than launching a new service, entering a new market, or initiating a large new client engagement.
Nigel Edwards (Chief Client Officer, HFS): How did you end up in the process services industry as a solution leader across the likes of Accenture, Cognizant, Wipro, and EXL? Did the industry change a lot during these times, or is it really only going through real change now?
Honestly, I never set out with a plan. I wanted to be a professional cricketer or a rock star, failed at both, so I logically settled on a career spanning technology and banking /& insurance! But like many things, if you keep an open mind, and look for opportunities, then door after door opens. I remember when, around 31 years old, I was asked to lead a major £250m account – probably as there was no-one else available! But I grabbed it with both hands while secretly being scared to death of failure – I’m pleased to say that we had a great team and I think we managed to pull it off.
But wow the industry has changed in the last 30 years. When I was with PwC, BPO was all about capex-heavy SI (SAP, Siebel), followed up by onshore shared service operations before setting up in Netherlands and Poland – real transformational stuff for those days. Then along came offshoring with a Leanops approach and the market grew significantly. Consequently, we made hay with the big wave of BPO and I moved into the world of deal-making as a Partner within Accenture’s Market Maker team. And quick as a flash, the Indian heritage players caught up and I spent some amazing years with Cognizant where we looked to combine the core IT strengths with BPO and leverage into key vertical segments in BFS and Insurance, Pharma, and Healthcare. More recently I ran the UK/European Business Process Services teams in EXL and Wipro where the industry and CX focus was critical to profitable growth.
What did you love and hate about those times?
It’s tough to polarise because they are often both sides of the same coin! On the plus side, the chance to meet amazing clients, to travel, and work with people from all over the globe has been something that I will always be thankful for. The more you travel, the more you see what unites us. Seeing a deal or a project come to fruition is one of the most rewarding things, not just because of the outcome, but also because of the deep knowledge and relationships we have built.
The downside? The time away from friends and family, and the quarterly cadence of large corporates take its toll, and for that I thankful to work in a privately-owned research business.
That said, lockdown has left me with a deep yearning to travel again!
So what, Nigel, drove you to look at the analyst industry at this point of your career? What are you hoping to achieve?
A couple of things. First, the intellectual challenge of deciphering a truly complex and rich marketplace. And second, the opportunity to leverage my experience working with some great minds and great people.
HFS really leads the way in forward-looking research, unafraid to call the big plays, so it really was a no-brainer to sign up.
What role do you see analysts playing as we emerge from this pandemic? Same old game, or is something new brewing?
Oh look, the world has already turned and the pace of digital feels exponential. The last 9 months have seen change on a seismic scale that we have delivered and never thought possible. Who would have thought that we can work, learn, consume and create from home on such an unprecedented scale?
But the challenge is how to navigate and retain engagement while assuring our mental health. What is our purpose? Where do we start? Who do we start with? How do we differentiate? What skills do we need? And do I make, buy, partner, or acquire? Mostly, we need to have the courage to leave behind old practices, old comfort zones, and address the change management agenda seriously for once.
From the discussions I am already having with our clients, this is how we can help.
What do you think we’ll be talking about 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?
I studied European Political History at University – I had the pleasure of standing on (the remains of) the Berlin Wall when it came down in 1989! And if there is one thing I l have earned is that life has a way of course-correcting. As a natural optimist, I am sure that life will emerge richer. We will find ways to engage digitally on our own terms, to work in jobs that are fulfilling, and to lead a life where work and pleasure exist in harmony – they are by no means mutually exclusive. Yes, it’s a little cheesy, but I think it’s a good goal to have, and I truly believe that our role as analysts will help pave the way for this correction.
It’s terrific having you as part of this great team, Nige!
This injection of money is intended to expand HFS’ cutting-edge research coverage across all core geographic locations, plugging the gaps the firm missed in recent years. “Thank God we got the extra cash”, exclaimed the firm’s President for Research and Business Operations, Saurabh Gupta. “With the recent pandemic, not being able to cover dynamics in emerging countries like Turkmenistan and Laos was holding us back. Now we can really hit Gartner where it hurts most…”.
HFS is most famous for inventing the industry known as RPA in 2012, before famously killing it off in 2019, only to see its memory kept alive by Gartner and Forrester, which persisted in believing the revenue numbers of firms that were eking out the last of their PR cash. “I am so excited to fully restart the RPA myth now we have enough cash to throw at it,” stated the HFS Founder and CEO Phil Fersht in a recent press conference that was barely audible over Webex. “Without RPA, we had to pretend technologies like Cloud were making a comeback, and even our sustainability analyst has been trying to muscle in on the action.” Later on, Fersht managed to resume the discussion over Zoom, where he added, “All we had to do was promise Hoden we’d bring RPA back to life and we’d get a sizeable check to invest pretty much anywhere we wanted. I’ve convinced my head of research the next wave can be found in Turkmenistan and am funding a trip to escort him out there to view it first-hand. Apparently, they scraped the government’s mainframe green screen and managed to get a script to reproduce the content in a Windows app. Now they’re just waiting for Microsoft to give them a free bot to share it over their cloud network”.
Details of the investment plans will be available soon when the firm applies for its long-awaited IPO, where it’s rumored to claim it is worth at least $10 billion. There is no reason why HFS will ever be worth anything close to that amount, but at least it gets PE firms excited enough to throw them more money and put out more meaningless press releases.
It’s been quite the year hasn’t it, folks! I don’t know about you, but this has proven to be a voyage of self-discovery for me personally as we build businesses that can thrive in a world where it doesn’t matter where you are anymore, where the rules of the game are being re-written in a way we could never have imagined a year ago.
If you’d told me we’d be doing multi-million dollar deals over Zoom and holding the attention of a global industry captive for an entire day online while we shared experiences of vaccine brands, I would seriously try and shake myself out of this bizarre dream. Not to mention the spate of billion-dollar-plus deals being constructed on the back of an envelope…
In fact, I may still be having the same bizarre dream while I sleep-write this, and will wake up shortly to check my seat and meal-selection on my next trans-Atlantic flight, so I hope my ten learnings from the past imaginary year of bizarreness are worth a read:
Take control of your career. Whomever you are in today’s corporate world, the playing field has been leveled – however, almost everyone you know relies on the same vehicles to get things done. You have more time than you’ve ever had to focus on covering all the bases of your professional and personal lives, so make this time count and prepare for the future with a new attitude of self-assurance and confidence.
Be a great communicator. During his career heyday, my father was a world-famous scientist in protein science and biochemistry. His one (career) piece of advice to me was “always assume stupidity in your audience”. People love to hear you talk about the basics of what we do and build from there. I have never veered from this advice and it always serves me well… and those who engage in my narrative have proven to be anything but stupid!
Make a concerted effort to develop your relationships. While nothing beats a great dinner or a few glasses of good wine, beer, or whisky, the people you knew before the big change are still as important as ever, and you need to do what you can to keep them close and keep the camaraderie moving along. Relationships got you where you are, and during these new times, it’s even more important to keep the dialog going. Make time for the people who matter, and develop deeper relationships where you can. Also, focus on more one-to-one dialogs with people than sitting through hours of turgid discussions with too many people… nothing beats the intimacy of a direct conversation where you can see each other and share your genuine thoughts, ideas and feelings.
Keep learning new things. No one has any excuse to keep doing the same old things the same way, and in today’s environment, you really don’t want to become a dinosaur… post-covid world is definitely not dinosaur-friendly! If you are in sales, learn to sell over Zoom; if you’re in marketing… learn cool new apps to run promos, get familiar with analytics that help you understand your market, and make publications look awesome; if you’re in finance, put yourself on some data science courses; if you’re in IT learn how to cloudify business functions and understand the context. And if you’re ready to break free of the corporate treadmill, there is no better time to start your own business and reel in some clients.
Show your emotions more freely. Don’t you prefer to know how people really feel about things? Or if you’re pissing someone off? And doesn’t it feel good to get things off your chest, instead of letting them simmer for a long time until you blow up like a pressure-cooker? We have no choice but to preserve/build digital relationships with people, so be more expressive, and people will know you better, and maybe they’ll be more expressive in return.
Demonstrate your true values. We can peek into each others’ homes, hear our kids screaming and dogs barking… so why not peer a bit deeper into what makes us think the way we do? There are just too many issues conflicting our world these days, and it helps to share some of our views and beliefs – when it is appropriate. While it’s wise to avoid politics (unless it’s plainly apparent you’re with like-minded people), it’s healthy to discuss how to manage people better, the culture in which we like to work, how to cope better with stress, how to get a better balance between work life, health and family life. It’s also healthy to discuss how to balance diversity issues in the workplace, ensure equal opportunities for candidates when we are hiring for roles, respect our planet more, and what we can do collectively as an organization to address sustainability issues. Because if we never share our values, we can never learn from each other, and we can never evolve with how we think and act. This also means we need to avoid public shaming of people for behaviors that some people may construe as racist or sexist. That only creates deeper divisions between people and does nothing to promote better attitudes.
Make peace with people you value. It’s so easy to fall out with people these days when tensions and stress levels are running high… but it’s also just as easy to smooth things over and get relationships in a better place. It’s also easy to reconnect with folks you’d fallen out with years ago and find new areas of common value – bury that hatchet! The modern business culture is so relationship-driven these days, so drop the ego and cultivate relationships with people who matter.
Move on from people who don’t appreciate you. And on the flip side, those people who just use you when they need something… aren’t you just sick and tired of the take, take, take, and never getting anything back? These people are already getting left behind, and you need to move on from them. It’s all about valuing each other, listening to each other, sharing ideas, and mutually helping each other out.
Take the higher ground. How many times do you get pulled into petty squabbles, and you suddenly realize “why am I bothering? This really isn’t important to me”. Always take a deep breath and think about your higher goals and consider whether you need to fight every battle and distract yourself from the war you need to win? This isn’t being “political”, it’s simply smart about how you handle yourself.
Don’t forget those who got you here. One of my most important rules is never to forget the helping hands you’ve had during your quest for greatness. People who supported you know what they did and really appreciate it when you recognize them for it. I have lost count of all the favors I have done for people over the years, but I do remember when someone mentions they appreciated it – even if it’s years later. However, those who just “take, take, take” get struck off my list pretty fast these days – who has time for the entitled liberty-takers who want whatever they can get when they ask for it?
I spoke with HFS Research CEO Phil Fersht for his thoughts on gender diversity and building inclusive organizations, why we need women at the workplace, how the industry has evolved over the past decade, and ideas for the future to make significant progress for the case and cause of #womenatwork. A one of its kind and exclusive interview in which Phil shares unfiltered reflections and intriguing insights.
Nischala:So Phil, firstly, thanks for your time to do this interview with me. As you know, the topic of #WomenAtWork is very close to my heart.
I’d like to start with a basic question – Why do you think we should have more women in the workplace?
Phil: Thanks for doing this, Nischala. Appreciate all your initiatives around women at the workplace.
Coming to your question – Firstly, I think that there’s a shortage of talent in the workplace, particularly creative talent. I work in a knowledge industry, where we need creative people – good writers, thinkers, and communicators. In many cases, women are outstanding in these areas, especially writing and communicating.
If women aren’t an active part of the workforce, I do feel that we’re missing out on a lot of talent, which is critical for business growth. I do recognize that many women disappear from the workplace when they have kids or caring for the needs of the family – and they don’t come back. Some women come back, and a minimal number are tremendously successful, but not nearly enough.
Now having a stimulating, rewarding career is essential for many, many people, and they should have a choice on whether they want to continue that or not. So I think we’re in a world where people need to make their own choices, we need to have more talent available within our businesses and companies so we can be successful, and when we look at the availability of talent – it tends to be, often, predominantly on the male side, particularly in technology areas, because of the way these industries have evolved, and the way society has almost dictated how people should run their lives.
Nischala: Thanks Phil for that perspective.You’ve been in the industry for more than two decades. What are some of the differences you see around women at work when you started off to where we are today?
Phil: It’s an excellent question. I don’t think this topic itself was talked about in the public domain when I started working. I think it was more of a private debate.
But when I look back and reflect on the stories I have heard – like the women’s toilets on the top floor and fewer of them in a building, and men’s restrooms on every floor – it sort of blows your mind on how we were back then.
In the early 90s – the sexism that went on was unbelievable; and this is for all industries and in all parts of the world. And so I think the most significant change today is that these issues are much more on the table, up for debate. People understand what is correct and what isn’t correct.There is a lot more awareness, openness, and sensitivity to talk about them. But most importantly, I see a genuine desire to make this a fairer and more equal society and workplace – which is the good news.
Nischala:That’s good to hear Phil. Coming to the company HFS Research, I was pleasantly surprised when I joined to see the such amazing women in the team – across all functions like Research, Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Finance. Can you talk a little bit about how we ended up here?
Phil: Honestly, it’s more by luck than design. I don’t go out of my way in thinking, “I’m going to build a company which is going to be as represented by men and women as possible.” I’ve always been merit-based – with analysts, and salespeople, and marketing people. I want to bring into the company the best talent – whether they’re male or female.
It’s been more recently that you become more conscious of the ratios because it’s more discussed. Right? Also, we do a lot of industry-facing conferences – so when you’ve got half your company on display in front of hundreds of your clients, and hundreds of your network, you suddenly realize, “Ooh, everyone can see what we look like”. And yes, we do want to have a good array of different races, genders and personalities. The underlying value is that we want to be as equal and fair as possible. And that’s how things have evolved!
Looking back, I grew up in the analyst industry where there’s always been a healthy proportion of women than many other industries. In general – the best analysts I’ve worked with happen to be female. If I could list out the best ten analysts in our industry right now, probably seven of them are women. I’m not going to do it, as I don’t want to upset anybody J. And some of them are in this company. So they do make good analysts and good communicators and good writers and I’m very proud of all of them.
Nischala:That’s great, Phil. What I personally like about you is that you are very vocal about expressing appreciation, and giving credit to both men and women when they deserve it. I was ecstatic when you send me a personal message saying, “I am proud of you” a few days back for the work I did. I think that’s truly remarkable as a leader.
You work with women leaders across the globe – from different backgrounds, roles, cultures and power profiles. What, in your view, are some of the critical skills that make a difference, especially for women leaders to get to the top?
Phil:. What are the skills for women leaders to get to the top?
I don’t think they’re any different from the skills that men need to get to the top, to be honest with you. I think it’s an ability to communicate well, to be socially and empathetically intelligent – so social intelligence is vital these days – an ability to demonstrate drive and hard work and leadership are really the traits that we look for.
At least in our industry – like research and analysis. So a lot of this might depend on industry, and industry makeup, and the way these have evolved, and inherent traditional biases that have come from the past.
Nischala:Sure. That’s an interesting perspective. So what, in your view are some things which organisations can do to forward the case and cause of women in leadership more effectively?
Phil: Well, many things.
So, firstly – let’s start with hiring. There has to be a clear focus on consciously ensuring that women are applying for these positions or want these positions. And if not, understand why? Don’t these women exist? Don’t they know about these jobs? Or don’t they want them?
So one way of doing this could be in the way we shortlist candidates. So let’s say we want to shortlist 4, can we make two of them women, two of them men. Then if they can get some form of racial equality, that’s even better. But just keeping it down to gender means maybe spending a bit more time trying to dig out the gold from the minority of women who applied for that job. And then making sure you’re getting your catchment of hiring working effectively. So if you’re getting all your recruiting off LinkedIn and it’s giving you a very skewed view of men to women, then look for other avenues to get your candidates from as well. There are many, many other recruitment businesses and sites and things that you can source profiles from. So, address your recruiting.
Make sure there’s an equally distributed set of folks who are applying for the jobs. But also there has to be some element of meritocracy. So don’t just give a job to a person because she’s a woman; she also needs to be the best candidate. You just need to make sure you have a balance of candidates that get it right, and then, on the whole you’ll get a better balance of men to women in your business. It may not always be completely 50/50, but you’ll have a balance, and I think getting that balance and consciously trying to get that balance, is how to do this.
The next thing is to care deeply. I honestly will tell you that the reason why a lot of firms in the technology industry are struggling to get their gender diversity ratios right – it’s because they don’t really care. Because their clients don’t care either.
It’s only going to change when the clients actually say, “I’m going to go with this provider or this technology software company because I like how they handle diversity. When a provider is being down selected on a billion-dollar deal, the client needs to look at their diversity policy. I’ve never seen once a client make a decision on a provider that includes diversity as part of the inputs. So people look to leadership’s beliefs and values, and part of those values need to be diversity. Now, if the customers don’t care and they’re still going with providers who don’t have a fair and equitable gender representation, then that’s an inherent problem in our industry and not just the providers who are serving them.
Nischala:I am waiting for a day when this becomes a news headline. That a company lost business because of how they handle diversity. Phil, I would like to ask you – As a powerful voice in the industry, what are some of the ideas and programs you are thinking about and planning around gender diversity.
Phil: As analysts and advisors and consultants, we have a place in this industry to make this point more prominent and important and relevant.
Some of the key ideas and programs we are driving at HFS Research are below
One, in 2021 we have started a dedicated focus on “Diversity and Inclusion”; and a part of your role is to champion this agenda. We will start publishing a lot more data-based insights around this subject for the industry!
Two, we are including diversity quotient in some of our research work. This means a company’s policies and actions around gender diversity will directly impact the HFS assessment of a company
Three, we are launching a podcast series, “The Shero Diaries”. As part of this, we talk with influential and powerful women leaders across the world. In this series, we present ideas that matter, real-world insights and positive inspiration based on stories from corporate sheros. All this and more with leaders like Anita Mohan ( Executive Vice President & Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at EXL), Allison Sagraves ( Senior Vice President, The New Normal, M&T Bank), Eva Sage Gavin (Senior MD – Talent and Organization Human potential practice).
Four, I firmly believe that we have a unique opportunity in the industry to put the spotlight on women. So for all our events we actively and consciously identify women who can be invited to speak. Many times, when the opportunity presents itself – women lap it up. Interestingly, last year we did a panel on emerging technology with only women. It was not planned or designed that way, but ended up that way because the best speakers for the topic were women. Giving women more confidence to get up, take the lea and speak up is what we have to do here.
Five, we have just announced our first event HFS One Office Symposium this year; which is an exclusive digital conference for industry leaders in business and technology to gain access to the most expansive global community of pioneers, practitioners and peers. We commit that 20% of the proceeds from this event will be used to support two causes we believe in – the BLM (Black Lives Matter) movement and the importance of college education
Nischala: As you know, 2020 has been the year of change and chaos, and crisis for many of us. If you had to give career advice to young women professionals who are starting off their careers, what would you say to them?
Phil:
Be competitive.
Have no fear.
Follow your passion.
Don’t get swayed from areas because you feel you are disadvantaged as a woman. If a company is going to hire somebody because they’re a man, then that company isn’t worth working for in the first place. Many businesses out there are very fair and equal with their hiring procedures, and they hire the best. They’re not hiring on race, or gender; they’re hiring on the best. So make sure you’re the best.
Make sure you’re in there, your voice is counted, make sure your views and values are shared as well, and be proud of being a woman in the workplace.
I think this is a good time for women to be more recognized for their contributions. I think smart companies are actively looking for more women because they want to get a better balance and its just better business!
We’ve been pushing our concept of Native Automation hard these past few weeks, where it’s imperative for organizations to embed an attitude to automation workflows deep into their operations. So what better to promote this native adoption, than to get it for free from the world’s juggernaut desktop software institution, Microsoft? And does this spell trouble for the likes of UiPath and AutomationAnywhere’s desire to IPO… now RPA is practically free for all? They now have little choice but to prove their value beyond RPA.
RPA is not dead, as previously stated. Thanks to Microsoft, it’s going mainstream.
In line with day one of its annual Ignite events, Microsoft announced that it would immediately offer a free version of its Power Automate Desktop robotic process automation (RPA) application. This is available for complimentary download starting today. Additionally, it will become a standard part of Windows 10 and subsequent versions on a go-forward basis. This seemingly modest announcement baked into a sea of other Ignite news has the potential to drive RPA mainstream through a bottom-up approach of democratized use.
Here’s a quick RPA history lesson on how we got here and why this announcement matters:
2012 – “Greetings from Robotistan” – HFS picked up on the RPA trend when we learned about a company called Blue Prism and how it was primed to shake up the offshoring outsourcing model with “robotic automation.” HFS, in fact, put the “P” in RPA.
2103 – 2016 – A market is born – Vendors proliferate such as Automation Anywhere (AA), OpenSpan (acquired by Pega), WorkFusion, Softomotive, Kapow, UiPath, and Blue Prism goes public
2017 – 2018 – The hype years – adoption but lots of unsubstantiated value claims and insane UiPath and AA valuations
2019 – RPA is dead – frustrated with the lack of transformation and scale, HFS declared RPA dead and advocated for the Triple-A Trifecta approach of integrating AI, Automation, and analytics to drive value.
2020 – The burning platform for Automation has arrived. The pandemic forced digital change and a ‘work-from-anywhere economy’. Automation is recognized as a critical value lever for those enterprises willing to change.
2021 – Native Automation supported by cloud-first. As we emerge from the pandemic, we have a once in an era opportunity to reinvent how we do work. The reinvention plan must embrace the skill of the cloud, the elevation in value of data, and the everyday use of automation technologies to power how work is done natively.
Based on the above timeline, Microsoft was decidedly late to the RPA market. By their own admission, this was entirely intentional as it waited to see how the hype played out. It first announced its entry into the RPA market in 2019 with Power Automate, its Power Platform rebrand of Flow with newly added UI Flow for RPA. It hit general availability (GA) in April 2020. And then, suggesting it did not quite have what it needed, Microsoft acquired RPA firm Softomotive in May 2020. Our view of the acquisition was that it would strengthen the legitimacy of the RPA industry and that if any vendor was going to achieve UiPath’s vision of a bot for every worker, it would be Microsoft. Perhaps the inherent RPA scale issue could be solved by making RPA the world’s next standard desktop application.
Softomotive integration ensued, and then in December 2020, Microsoft announced the general availability of Power Automate Desktop, the native integration of Softomotive’s WinAutomation technology into Power Automate. The GA announcement heralded the expansion of Microsoft’s RPA capabilities with added features such as a drag and dropped no-code visual designer, embedded web and desktop recorders (to record your work and automate automation builds), and a host of connectors to various systems. The resulting PowerAutomate product as it stands today is a hybrid of cloud-based API automation (flows in Microsoft vernacular) and on-premise user-interface (UI)-based Automation (aka RPA) with the availability of enterprise collaboration, governance, reporting, and integration capabilities – with the rest of the Power Platform (Power Apps, Power BI, and power Virtual Agents) as well as Teams at the top of the integration list. Its primary form is attended Automation – which is Automation triggered by a user.
The resulting impact has been a rapid uptake in enterprise tinkering with the Microsoft tools, as 23% of automation decision-makers now view them as one of their primary automation suppliers, which our recent survey across 400 of the Global 2000 demonstrates:
With so many enterprises under pressure from their leaderships to align all desktop software onto the plethora of Microsoft applications, it’s no surprise that interest and adoption in the PowerAutomate platform to be on a sharp increase.
So what is actually “free”, folks?
The PowerAutomate pricing you’ll find on Microsoft’s website shows a tiered approach going from $15 to $40 per user per month. This pricing stands, and Microsoft has essentially added a new, freemium option as the entry-level. The freemium provides access to Power Automate Desktop, the desktop-based attended RPA functionality – essentially the Microsoft version of the former Softomotive WinAutomation. The $15 price point is for cloud-based API automation (unlimited flows). The $40 price point is the combination of RPA functionality plus cloud-based API automation flows with an added enterprise governance and management functionality. Other enterprise options exist for unlimited users as well as an unattended offering.
Notably, this freemium version will be offered as part of Windows 10 and subsequent versions going forward. Microsoft is literally offering RPA to the world as part of its evolving standard toolset to get work done. With Microsoft’s reach, we may actually make some progress with business user adoption.
Bottom line: Native automation is not “Hyper”, it’s a must-have attitude and mindset, and we now have broad access to the tools to make this happen
Automation is not your strategy; it’s a necessary competency ensuring your processes provide data to deliver your business outcomes. If your processes are not automated, you will struggle to run a work-from-anywhere business where front and back offices are blended to create OneOffice. Automation must be native to organizations giving it the ability to apply AI to orchestrate these processes, It is not “hyper” or even “intelligent”; it just needs to be native. Your strategy is to have data to drive smart decisions to stay ahead of your competitors and refine your supply chain impact.
However, despite the business-led automation revolution that has been the hallmark of RPA, it continues to suffer from a fundamental adoption issue: no one knows how to use it and has not been incentivized to use it. Enterprises that have set up RPA programs, particularly those in the formative years, learned the hard way that trying to run and scale RPA without IT was a road to nowhere and/or required expensive perpetual use of external service partners. Initiatives to create “citizen developers” – essentially business users who could develop and manage RPA programs were lackluster at best. Seriously, “developer” is in the description, foretelling the skill set actually required to do anything more than build a simple task bot to answer email or do data entry.
In the process of setting up RPA programs, the people whose work was being automated realized that their jobs may actually be at risk based on the hyped promises made by RPA vendors to transform business processes and eliminate manual work. Toss in a shocking array of images of physical robots and then sprinkle in confusing RPA licensing and you’ve basically created a product doomed to be implemented by IT, who don’t really respect it, and managed by a select group of MENSA business users who have dedicated their lives to its proliferation and talking incessantly about it. Maybe we’ve succeeded in “democratizing” business-led Automation, but we certainly have NOT brought Automation to the workers. Centers of Excellence have co-opted the revolution.
What if we tried the Microsoft approach – free and easy – native Automation for everyone using Windows (we’ll save our views on how Apple did this ages ago with workflows for another time). If it’s free, it becomes less about how the RPA vendors pay back their investors and more about how we actually improve how we do work.
Many of you saw we recently hired the analyst industry’s first “storyteller”… and do we have some stories to tell! Nischala Murthy Kaushik has joined us to drive a crisp and enticing narrative for our industry during these turbulent times of change, which she will attempt to fit between her yoga and meditation sessions, and her amazing dinners with hubby Saurabh and young ladies Naisha and Tanishka.
Nischala will curate the HFS 2025 vision and values to the industry using her substantial social media presence – she was recently named among the Top 20 LinkedIn Voices for India. In addition to working closely with our research team, she is a blogger, thinker, and provocateur in her own right including bylines in Huffington Post and The Economic Times, with a strong focus on inclusion and diversity. So let’s find out a bit more about HFS’ latest acquisition…
Phil Fersht: Hi Nischala – we are extremely happy you have chosen to focus the next phase of your career with us. But taking a step back, can you talk about your early years and why you chose a career in the IT services industry? Was this the career you always wanted?
Nischala Murthy Kaushik – Phil – Firstly, Thank you for being instrumental in my career shift. I look forward to working with you and the HFS team for the next phase of my career.
Time travel into the past is always a nostalgic experience. As a kid, I aspired to walk down a new career path in line with the seasons – from a genetic researcher to a doctor, to starting my own business venture (my extended family has lots of doctors, entrepreneurs, and some both!), to being part of the fashion industry to competitive sports!
However, the reality was that I have always excelled in Math and Science at school, and in India, one of the preferred career paths for kids who do well in these subjects tends to be around Engineering and Technology. In my case, there was a strong influence and a role model in my father – who studied at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) and went on to do his Ph.D. in the US. When he returned to India, he chose to work with TCS as one of its initial set of employees! And since I had seen him walk down that career path, I naturally gravitated towards it.
So my Engineering degree paved the way for a career in the IT services industry. Once I started my professional journey, the penchant for ‘new and diverse experiences’ has fuelled my career taking me across the world to exciting and interesting destinations (US, Europe, India) for work assignments in strategy consulting, technology solution development and leading innovations. Over the past two decades, exposure to global companies, diverse cultures and work environments, different world views, and ways of working have shaped my career and outlook – giving me a holistic understanding of the IT industry.
After more than two decades with Wipro, what do you feel have been your greatest accomplishments, Nischala, and how do you hope to take these experiences into the analyst industry with HFS?
I have been fortunate to play many varied and exciting roles, Phil, and each has been a great learning experience. I strongly subscribe to the mantra – After every 3 years, one should change your role, boss, team, or company! Along the way, I experienced many leadership shifts at the C-suite, multiple organization re-structuring, M&A (Merger & Acquisitions), financial/economic lows to a global pandemic in 2020. Every experience has left me wiser with a lesson and two, and left a mark by leaving a white hair or two.
Looking back, my top 3 favorite work assignments are below:
Top on the list was the strategic consulting work I did at a global payments and technology company. This was exciting as I had the opportunity to create the roadmap around next-generation payment solutions and strategy. It is particularly memorable as the success of the program was pivoted on an executive leadership connect, which I anchored independently for a multi-million dollar engagement! At the end of my recommendation, the business leader looked me straight in the eye and said, “Where should I sign the cheque?” J
Two is around blockchain market positioning – an emerging technology area, new to the industry and the company at the time. The opportunity to create and execute the GTM strategy and an integrated marketing campaign to create mind-share in the global ecosystem was challenging and exciting. From defining the solution offerings to winning the first customer deal to all the media/press coverage to getting industry awards and analyst accolades, the entire journey has been memorable.
Three is being part of a successful corporate intrapreneurship initiative. Being part of the innovation life cycle was a unique experience! It is terrific to start with a small nebulous idea and see the metamorphosis and emergence into a tangible solution. The process of creating something new is always unparalleled.
So tell us, how do these experiences apply to the analyst industry, Nischala?
One – these experiences help me understand how customers think, prioritize and make choices; and what factors and variables influence business decisions.
Two, they help me understand how organizations work – in terms of people, process, policy, politics, technology, and governance.
Three, having been on the client side of research – I also understand what kind of analyst insights and perspectives are valued.
The other exciting aspect about you has been observing your prolific writing and social media presence, despite having a full-time corporate career. How did that come about?
That’s a great question, Phil! I always say that I gave birth to my daughter, and she gave birth to the writer in me. I started publishing actively about a decade ago when on my first maternity break, and there has been no looking back. The sheer love for the written word has kept me going!
Over time, I have gained a deep understanding of my own writing process and the content life cycle process – both from the content creator and the content consumer perspective. And of course, experiencing the real-time global reach of words and the power of words to influence and make a difference is empowering and enjoyable.
I am particularly proud of my achievements as a writer and on social media as I started from Ground Zero. I have systematically, creatively, and consciously grown it to where it is.
As you get settled into your role with HFS, Nischala, how do you want to embrace the platform you have to make a difference?
It’s been just a few weeks at HFS – and I slowly and surely understanding the power of the platform – in terms of depth of research, breadth of reach, executive leadership mind-share and nature of influence.
One would be to create and anchor leadership dialogues, especially around what it takes to be a leader in this new decade, how leaders are looking at long-term strategic growth, short-term survival and what leaders can do to leave a strong leadership legacy. Conversations around the future of work, innovation, technology, and digital transformation would be interesting!
Two is around skills for the next generation of the workforce, a topic dear to me. How can we leverage our perspectives as we envision the future, especially to prepare the next generation talent for industry? Actionable insights on what students and young professionals can do to plan and prepare for meaningful careers and the kind of learning programs corporates and universities can design as they nurture the talent of tomorrow.
Three is definitely around moving the needle on the issues surrounding diversity and inclusion. Specifically, if we look at gender diversity – 2020 has been a particularly tough year for women at the workplace, so any ideas, insights, and inspiration to help women survive and thrive as we forge ahead would make a difference.
Four is an opportunity based on my industry experience. Creating research and insights for the CMO / Marketing function around strategy, technology, and storytelling.
Lastly, Phil, looking at research and insights around corporate innovation for enterprises – simply because as we move in 2021 and beyond, sustainable innovation is going to be critical for enterprises across the globe.
And do you believe the analyst community can do more to promote the future path for the technology industry than it does today?
I have been a consumer of analyst services for more than a decade. Fundamentally, to me an analyst is a blend of an ideapreneur, a horizon gazer, and a change catalyst. In general, analysts are fantastic in seeding new ideas and concepts which most industry professionals can’t even think of (sometimes because of the lack of time, or focus or the mind-set), and crystal ball gazing into the future. However, in reality – most organizations struggle with the realization of these ideas into business reality to drive meaningful impact.
I do think there is an opportunity for analysts to collaborate and co-partner with industry to accelerate the pace of change – especially since there is a view on both the supply and demand side. The progressive next step could be for the analyst community to take a couple of steps forward to help realize the change. For example: If we talk about blockchain as an emerging technology area, the question to ask is, “Is there a way that analysts can partner with large enterprises in the strategic planning and realization of blockchain projects?”
Finally, Nischala – what do you hope we’ll all be talking about this time next year – and what do you think we’ll be talking about…
I hope we will all be talking about the post COVID world in January 2022, and hopefully living it too! And in that paradigm, I think we will be talking about 3 Is – new Ideas, sustainable Innovation, and positive Impact to individuals, businesses, communities, societies, and the world at large.
Meet the Kaushiks: Saurabh, Nischala, Naisha and Tanishka
It’s been quite the year hasn’t it, folks! I don’t know about you, but this has proven to be a voyage of self-discovery for me personally as we build businesses that can thrive in a world where it doesn’t matter where you are anymore, where the rules of the game are being re-written in a way we could never have imagined a year ago. 
