2020 Location Predictions: Confronting the Impending Slowdown

Everest Group’s predictions that the global services market would experience slightly lower growth in 2019 over 2018, both in terms of revenue and headcount, have been proven correct. Enterprises have been increasingly leveraging their locations strategies – based on talent quality and availability, rather than cost – as a tool to achieve service delivery transformation.

Given these developments, what does 2020 hold for the global services industry?

At an overall level, we believe the market will continue to expand, but at a slower pace than 2019, due to multiple factors: the global economic slowdown following COVID-19, apprehensions regarding an economic recession, uncertainties related to US trade conflicts with China and the EU, and reduced demand for traditional services due to digitalization and automation. While enterprises will continue to rebalance their portfolios to bring more critical pieces of work in-house, we foresee that the outsourcing market will grow as organizations outsource non-core and niche next-generation services.