Blog Archives - Everest Group

Unpacking the Low Code/No Code Opportunity in BFSI | Blog

September 30, 2022

Low code/no code development holds promise for banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) firms to gain agility and cost-effectively build innovative technology solutions – without needing professional developers who are in short supply. Learn about the market potential and provider landscape in this blog.

Digital consumption demand in the (BFSI) industry has seen a heavy uptick in the past year, driven by customer expectations for enhanced experience and the adoption of flexible work options to run businesses.

BFSI firms are under pressure to achieve profitability in an already volatile market and need to be more agile, collaborative, and responsive. These firms have to build stronger ecosystems and overcome the obstacles created by legacy systems.

This has increased demand for professional developers to manage complex technology stacks. But the fast digitization pace has caused enterprises to focus their limited development talent on workflow customization and business-as-usual activities instead of innovation and core product engineering.

Low code/no code technology answers these issues.

Tapping into low code/no code technology

Low code/no code technology has paved its way through these circumstances, easing operations and optimizing costs. This approach provides a visual modeling development tool that business teams can easily use in collaboration with the IT department, reducing the need to hire professional developers who are in short supply.

The exhibit below illustrates the drivers for low code/no code adoption.

BFSI firms are successfully using this method. Let’s look at some examples:

Marex, a tech-enabled liquidity hub for participants in global commodities and financial markets, selected Genesis to fully digitize middle office workflows for its new equities market-making business
Unqork, an enterprise software company with a transformational no-code platform for financial services and insurance organizations, secured $73 million in two investment rounds from Goldman Sachs, demonstrating the shifting industry views on building enterprise technology

Low code/no code benefits

Benefits of low code/no code technology for BFSI firms include:

Reduced internal workflow processing time due to easier integrations, leading to increased efficiency
Decreased product time-to-market brought about by the simplicity of development
Increased ease to upgrade or introduce technology without affecting normal business operations because of the microservice architecture offering
Reduced cost by having internal teams for development and maintenance
Improved solutions resulting from the business-oriented development focus that combines business knowledge and IT skills

BFSI enterprises also have enhanced customer satisfaction by using low code/no code to quickly and effectively establish digital omnichannel experiences. This has satisfied customers’ appetites for remote consumption and also enabled the ability to personalize services by easily integrating other technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Internet of Things (IoT.) Self-service applications for 24/7 support can be set up with less time and cost using low code/no code.

See common use cases across the BFSI in the image below.

Evolving the low code/no code ecosystem

The low code/no code technology provider landscape is made up of many players as, illustrated below. These include:

Generalist low code/no code vendors who provide solutions that can be offered to any industry
BFSI specialist low code/no code providers who offer technology products for BFSI workloads and out-of-the-box accelerators for reusability and quick access
Big tech companies and core BFSI technology providers who are investing in low code/no code through partnerships, acquisitions, or developing the technology to provide standalone and bundled solutions to their customers

Grabbing the opportunity

Many BFSI firms who have adopted low code/no code technology are reaping the benefits, while others have experienced roadblocks such as limited options to scale the technology across the organization. To achieve success, the right procedures must be set up to avoid any pitfalls. Understanding the internal and external capabilities and challenges while moving along the path is critical.

BFSI enterprises should follow our CASE framework and have a clear vision, assess internal resources, select technology, and execute their roadmap as illustrated below:

For a detailed view, read our report, BFSI Enterprise Adoption Guide for Low-Code/No-Code Technology – Market Trends and Provider Landscape, which covers the market challenges, drivers, and way forward in the low code/no code ecosystem from a BFSI perspective. To discuss this topic, please reach out to [email protected], and [email protected].

Read more about low-code adoption in our blog, Selecting the Right Low-code Platform: An Enterprise Guide to Investment Decision Making.

Why Metaverse Growth Will Put Trust and Safety (T&S) Center Stage

September 20, 2022

With Metaverse growth expected to surge to US$679 billion by 2030, its influence and possibilities seem endless. But with great power comes great responsibility. Read on to learn why and how organizations must ensure Trust and Safety (T&S) for metaverse to realize its potential.

The metaverse’s arrival is inevitable and will, for better or worse, be part of our future lives. The metaverse could rival massive shifts in history like the telephone and the internet and, in the next few decades, bring together people in ways we never imagined.

Metaverse growth is expected to increase internet data use by 20 times from sharing personal and financial data, social interactions enhanced by Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR), and the evolution of video and live streaming content.

But jumping on the metaverse bandwagon won’t be the difficult part – how to keep it secure will be.

Why now is the time to think through the risks of metaverse growth

Organizations that use or provide metaverse services will need to think hard about the implications and work to align with T&S policies, laws, and regulations in parallel to metaverse initiatives to inspire a safe, privacy-sensitive, and regulated environment.

The metaverse promises opportunities for innovation and growth. It could allow companies to reinvent the user experience through an immersive environment and create deeper engagement.

But, if the metaverse is a place where users are meant to communicate, collaborate, co-create, and share ideas, then shouldn’t we expect it to be safe? However, there are incidences already emerging of users being put at risk of security breaches, increased abuse, exposure to the proliferation of objectionable content, and financial fraud.

It will take a village to regulate the metaverse

Organizations will need to align with T&S providers and stakeholders, such as governments, academia, civil society, and possibly others, to identify loopholes and take measures to address gaps before any wrongdoing occurs. Organizations will have to put T&S policies, technologies, and processes in place and think through how they will moderate the metaverse at scale and how it can be done in real time to keep up with the complex forms of interactive live streaming. They will also need to consider how to ensure the well-being of their human moderators, who can be exposed to egregious content over long periods of time. This could mean initiating full teams that work in parallel to the development, deployment, and enrichment of metaverse.

What does this mean for the T&S services industry?

Enterprises across industries are already relying on third-party T&S services to make their current engagement platforms safe for their users. Over the next decade, the demand for T&S services to help maintain metaverse growth and safety will be immense and likely produce an ecosystem of T&S providers and partnerships from various entities. Utilizing T&S service providers, and even specialized service providers, is one-way enterprises can access expertise in risk mitigation and gain guidance and resources for safer metaverse deployments.

The T&S services market is already growing at a blinding speed of 35-38% and is estimated to reach US$15-20 billion by 2024. However, it can see additional 25-30% growth as metaverse scales.

See the exhibit below.

Learn more about the current market surrounding the metaverse and how partnering with third parties can keep the public safe and aligned with legal and regulatory T&S requirements in our report, Taming the Hydra: Trust and Safety (T&S) in the Metaverse. And discover how organizations are addressing the possibilities and challenges of metaverse growth in our upcoming LinkedIn Live session, Trust and Safety (T&S) in the Metaverse – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

Adobe Acquires Figma – Showcasing Its Intent to Be at the Forefront of the Design and Prototyping Economy

September 16, 2022

In what can be termed as the biggest deal in the emerging design and prototyping market, Adobe announced on September 15 that it will buy Figma for $20 billion. Adobe, which has a market capitalization of $144.67 billion as of that date, will complete the deal in half cash and half stock. Read on for our analysis of what this means for these players and the segment.

Did we see this coming?

With the adoption of design and prototyping tools in software development picking up immensely post-pandemic, we anticipated mergers and acquisitions in this space. But seeing a design pioneer acquire the game changer in the design space was unexpected.

Adobe was one of the first movers to identify the design space demand and build products such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and XD for designers, helping them gain significant market share. The pandemic changed the needs, demand patterns, and design stakeholders’ ways of work. Adobe could not keep up with this change which led to a slowdown in its growth. Figma – a relatively late entrant in the design space – came in as a game changer and emerged as a major competitor for Adobe.

This acquisition reminds us of Meta’s acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014, which enabled Meta to cement its unshakable dominant presence in the instant messaging space by acquiring its biggest competitor.

Figma’s growth story

Figma’s rise to the top has been nothing short of marvelous. This rocket ship launched in 2012 and had its public release in September 2016. Fast forward six years, Figma will now join forces with another major player in this space – Adobe.

Analyzing the details reveals the following three strengths that led to Figma’s rise:

Leadership – Figma’s leadership understood design and designers’ associated pain points. They had a vision for making design accessible to all.
Addressing evolving customer needs – To make design collaborative, Figma created all the functionalities needed to build an interface design and packed it into a browser-based user interface. Designers now could be based anywhere and work on the same project.
Freemium model – Figma’s core functionalities remained free to use, attracting thousands of early adopters to the platform. Good feedback coupled with Figma’s user-centricity ensured a sharp rise in users.

Why we think Figma is the missing piece of the puzzle for Adobe

This acquisition offers several areas for synergy that can propel the combined entity’s growth in the design space.

What’s in this for Adobe

The deal will provide the following benefits for Adobe:

Access to Figma’s customer base: Figma has seen immense growth in its user base in the last two years with roughly 4 million users at present, including tech majors such as Github, Dropbox, and Twitter. Adobe can leverage these connections to augment the growth of its other offerings
Expansion of designer and developer community: Adobe has built a very strong designer community over the years to strengthen the design knowledge base to facilitate peer learning. The addition of Figma’s designer and developer community will further boost the collaborative mindset for design advancements
Access to innovative pool of talent: Figma as a brand has revolutionized the ways of working for all stakeholders in the design process. Adobe can collaborate with the innovative minds behind this revolution to take its design portfolio to the next level
Coverage of end-to-end functionality in design lifecycle: Figma’s special focus on the brainstorming and whiteboarding phase of the design lifecycle with the launch of FigJam will add to Adobe’s capabilities to address product ideation activities. Figma’s offerings will augment Adobe’s design capabilities as well

Implications for the design and prototyping market

Competing design tool vendors – This acquisition puts Adobe and Figma at the front of the pack. They can now boast functionalities spanning across the entire value chain along with a significant user base and customer list. What this means for competitors is that they will have to rely on strong differentiation propositions to create a niche for themselves. We anticipate that the competitors will focus on small and medium enterprises to drive differentiation.

Enterprises – In their quest to standardize and scale design processes across all product teams, enterprises tend to opt for tools that offer end-to-end design lifecycle functionality. This acquisition seems to be in the right direction as enterprises will now have a one-stop design solution.

Service providers – This move will unquestionably facilitate creating the largest base of designers operating in the Adobe plus Figma ecosystem. Demand for these skill sets will only go up from here. We anticipate service providers will ramp up their designer arsenal inorganically and step up on their partnership with Adobe plus Figma to offer design services for enterprises.

Things to look out for

While Dylan Field, CEO and co-founder of Figma, has stressed that Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously, seeing how the integration shapes up will be interesting. Adobe can take lessons from Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub which shows that large technology companies can successfully acquire smaller players but still retain the core value proposition.

In line with this, we will also watch for potential changes in the following areas:

Product strategies: Adobe has similar offerings such as Adobe XD that overlap with Figma in many aspects. They will need to make alterations and updates in their value proposition and go-to-market approach to avoid cannibalization.
Commercial model: The freemium model is one of the prime contributors to Figma’s large user base but the Adobe suite has limited freemium models. We will look for any commercial model changes that may result from having the two under the same umbrella.

As the market evolves, competitors will need to make strong moves to create spaces for themselves. Adobe’s acquisition of Figma may set the stage for additional mergers and acquisitions to pay attention to.

Stay tuned for our updates on this fast-growing space of design and prototyping tools. To share your thoughts, please contact Swati Ganesh, [email protected], and Ankit Nath, [email protected].

Metaverse Trends that Can Redefine the Hybrid Work Model | Blog

September 13, 2022

The metaverse offers promise to reinvent hybrid models by balancing remote work with social connections formed between avatar versions of employees in a virtual world. This emerging model holds the potential to enhance team collaboration, accelerate learning, and spark creativity. Learn the latest metaverse trends to watch in this blog.

Hybrid work environments – the answer to many of the issues of remote working experienced during the pandemic – have increasingly been adopted by global enterprises in all industries to offer work flexibility along with in-person collaboration employees desire.

Now the metaverse can take hybrid work into its next evolution – bringing together the advantages of the work-from-home environment with the social connections, teamwork, and fun of the virtual world.

In this exciting next phase, employees will work in a persistent immersive mega virtual smart space akin to a universe where people have seamless digital experiences that can extend to the real world.

Employees with 3D avatars of themselves will inhabit virtual office spaces to meet and collaborate with their teams remotely without feeling distant. Many metaverse solutions for the workplace, like Microsoft Mesh, NextMeet, and Meta’s Horizon Workrooms are already gaining popularity for work meetings.

Metaverse advantages in a hybrid work model

When operating in the metaverse, organizations reap all the benefits of remote work, including reduced operational costs for real estate and facility maintenance. Here are some of the other key benefits:

Enhanced learning and development – Through virtual learning, the metaverse can enable better collaboration, enhance learning outcomes, and improve employee training
Improved attrition and talent – The metaverse can reverse the rising attrition rates many companies experience when returning to in-office work by employees who leave because they prefer remote work. With metaverse, companies can differentiate their employee value proposition around collaboration and relaxation activities, resulting in better retention.

Organizations can deploy metaverse applications throughout the employee lifecycle, including attracting talent by distinguishing themselves, developing skills through virtual training, and engaging employees so they stay with the company

Better collaboration across geographies – As metaverse adoption increases, organizations will be able to further distribute employees geographically. Tasks like design work, planning, and strategizing that require teamwork and are difficult to perform in regular virtual modes can be done more effectively with creative virtual tools within the metaverse. This will enable increased talent sourcing for strategic roles from tier-2 and tier-3 cities as the metaverse diminishes the barriers to effective collaboration across geographies
Greater work-life boundaries – Metaverse can overcome remote workers’ top concerns of feeling isolated, having limited social interactions with coworkers, and lacking boundaries between work and personal time.

A fully immersive metaverse environment functions exactly like an office space where employees can have the impromptu interactions needed to build a shared organizational culture. When working in the metaverse, employees work in different environments than their homes, providing a barrier between jobs and leisure

Challenges to the metaverse in hybrid work

The metaverse will have some challenges to overcome and these include:

Higher initial investment – Operating within the metaverse requires a high initial investment for developing metaverse platforms and procuring hardware. The low maturity of technology and hardware required is an obstacle to large-scale commercial adoption
Employee stress – Working in the metaverse for long hours is strenuous for employees who can feel fatigued and lose their sense of reality. Another employee concern is digital privacy and security
Graphic limitations – The metaverse technology available today only supports cartoonish avatars that do not look realistic or show human emotions, significantly limiting the effective expression of thoughts and non-verbal cues

Metaverse outlook

Most organizations are following a wait-and-watch approach when formulating internal and external metaverse strategies as most metaverse solutions offered today are in their initial development stages.

Widespread metaverse platform adoption is likely to take a few years because the infrastructure, applications, and computing power requirements for a very immersive metaverse experience are not yet available on a deployable scale. However, the metaverse offers an enticing value proposition that should be closely watched.

To discuss metaverse trends and their impact on the hybrid work model, contact [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

You can also view our LinkedIn Live event, Trust and Safety (T&S) in the Metaverse | With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.

Three CRM Insights to Prepare for the Future of Customer Experience | Blog

September 13, 2022

Despite the overall growth in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) industry, the CRM platform market remains static. To achieve the business value enterprises desire, changes need to be made. In this blog, we share our CRM insights and three recommendations for CRM platform evaluation.

With the rapid proliferation of channels, products, and customer personas, the industrialization of personalized experience delivery poses the biggest challenge for all enterprises across industries. CRM is integral to enabling this experience transformation.

According to Everest Group research, the overall CRM market has increased approximately 15% year-over-year, primarily driven by the growth of Salesforce and other SaaS applications of SAP, Microsoft, and Adobe.

But let’s not confuse the industry’s top-line growth with customer success. The Solow paradox or productivity slowdown is still here. The bottom line: today’s CRM platform market is oversold and underdelivered. In a frenzy to meet YOY linear growth targets and bigger deal sizes, almost 30% of the licenses sold go unutilized by enterprises.

Three key CRM insights to watch

As we enter Dreamforce’s 20^th year, below are our recommendations on fundamental changes that are needed in the CRM industry.

1- Bridge the customer experience and customer success disconnect: While most cloud CRM platforms are growing in high double digits, they are not achieving the same business value growth. Most customer success metrics are defined and managed by vendors and continue to have a singular focus on customer satisfaction. While an enterprise IT organization may be happy with completing implementations on time and within budget, our research suggests that almost 50% of enterprises are not satisfied with the business value realized from their platform investments.

Recommendation: CRM platform players need to evolve the definition of customer satisfaction (CSAT) and their customer success programs. These should be managed independently of the organization’s sales and marketing functions. Service providers must work closely with platform vendors and customers to proactively define and track IT-business metrics. Niche platform players such as Qualtrics stand to make a significant dent by putting experience and operational data side by side to wholistically define customer experience.

2 – Create data-driven and connected operations: Industry-specific cloud applications are a key investment area for most CRM vendors. However, our ongoing Salesforce industry cloud services PEAK Matrix assessment found CRM vendors are pushing these products rather than enterprises pulling for them. This is because these products need high customization and fail to make a dent in managing and integrating data for specific micro industries. Each micro-industry has a unique operating model that requires data architecture tailored to the context. These industry products need to get the data strategy right for each industry-specific operation and bring in the openness for ecosystem integration. Platform investments by Salesforce, Adobe, and others in the Customer Data Platform (CDP) space are a silver lining for the commerce industry. But these CDPs should eventually evolve into intelligent data hubs and provide a platform for enterprises to create dynamic and contextual applications.

Recommendation: Industry-specific cloud solutions need to be built by keeping data architecture and integration for the micro-industry at the core. Making such fundamental changes is difficult for platform giants, which creates opportunities for emerging platform vendors to compete and differentiate. Vendors such as Zoho have differentiated themselves in an almost monopolistic industry by taking a long-game strategy and changing products at the architectural level.

Service partners need to use their industry expertise and prioritize micro industries to closely innovate with both emerging and large platform vendors. Together, they need to build meaningful products for their customers rather than being caught up in the frenzy to fulfill license sale Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

3- Expand and further simplify platform native workflow automation and low-code capabilities: As many as 60% of new application development engagements consider low-code platforms, according to Everest Group’s recent market study. Present workflow-building tools and low-code capabilities that are native to CRM platforms are still immature. This is pushing enterprises to spend hefty dollars on workflow and low-code platforms and then invest additional money on customization to integrate them with their CRM platform.

Recommendation: Salesforce has been a pioneer in this space and continues to lead the market, which has resonated well with its customers. Other CRM vendors who lack capabilities and focus here may give Salesforce inroads into their existing accounts. Service partners need to educate the market about low-code and workflow automation’s potential to transform industry-specific customer experiences.

We will be attending Dreamforce this September to share our CRM insights and would welcome hearing your views on CRM platform evaluation. To schedule a meeting, please reach out to [email protected] and [email protected].

Attend our webinar, How are Leading Organizations Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience?, to learn more about customer experience today.

Change Involved in Moving to Software-defined Platform Operations | Blog

September 12, 2022

Companies in every industry are moving down the path of software-defined platform operations. It’s happening across the board, especially at the functional level. And for good reason: companies realize they can achieve their objectives much quicker and more effectively than with the previous model of process-driven operations. This inevitably creates enormous change throughout an organization.

The Mess of DevOps and SRE: The Rise of Platform Engineering and Product Managers | Blog

September 5, 2022

Platform engineering and product managers appear to offer a solution to some DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) woes. But technology service providers need to morph to meet the changing requirements in this new environment. Learn five actions service providers can take to succeed with the platform engineering and product management model in this blog.

Since we made an argument that DevOps would eventually face problems in a blog half a decade ago, the issue persists. While enterprises assumed they had found a panacea with engineering teams (developers) and operations increasingly collaborating as they learned more about DevOps, this has not been the case. Let’s explore what has happened.

As the infrastructure and development landscape has become more complex, enterprises are demanding more value from software. With developers in short supply, engineering and operations both believe they are working more and end up taking on the other teams’ workloads.

This lack of work demarcation is causing meaningful friction. Enterprises erroneously assume that by having developers at least partially run operations, they can make everyone do everything. This does not work. Rising tech talent attrition, cloud engineering complexity, and the perception of SRE being a euphemism for next-gen ops have only worsened the situation.

In addition to engineering headaches, operations teams’ workloads have gone through the roof. Not only are they continuing their regular tasks, but they also are building and maintaining system pipelines and common platform capabilities and cross-training and upskilling talent in a budget-tightening environment. This cannot be sustained.

Enter product managers or owners

Some enterprises are attempting to build platform engineering teams that make common services within organization guardrails available to developers. Platform teams run and manage the platform, and the work between devs and ops seems to be demarked.

Product owners or managers own these teams and are responsible for setting their platform agenda and providing needed application programming interfaces (APIs), microservices, and other out-of-the-box services such as knowledge management to developers.

Impact on technology service providers

This approach seems to have worked for some enterprises, but the jury is still out. Technology service providers need to take the following actions to succeed under this model:

Better understand the new world: Technology service leaders lack the expertise to engage this new world of product managers. Although DevOps pushed them to view technology as a stack rather than silos of application, infrastructure, and data, they continue to contract and serve in siloes. Service providers need to rehaul their go-to-market (GTM), partnership, talent, and solution-building approach to serve this reality. We already see many service providers restructuring, but that may not be enough. Not only do they need to continue to deliver end-to-end (E2E) capabilities, but they also must be more proactive, cohesive, and prioritize strategic clients

Augment talent retraining: As business teams leverage product management leaders, the ask from service partners will be very different. Technology service leaders have often relied on retraining and stretching their teams to serve newer business realities. This will no longer work. Building the “pi or comb” skill set has increasingly become a mirage, especially in engineering organizations. They need to build deep technical depth in select cloud platforms to communicate their value to product managers. This cannot be done just by in-house retraining. Service providers need to hire from the industry and pay top dollars. In addition to getting technical resources certified, they need to give them project experience and somehow convince these product managers of their capabilities. They also need to continue to retain their talent and holistically address this challenge across the various dimensions described here

Engage newer client stakeholders: Technology service leaders need to have access to product managers who are often hired from outside and may not value long-term service relationships. Service leaders also should have a ready pool of talent and assets to demonstrate how they can enhance reliability, security, and time-to-market for these product managers. They should realize these product managers are more focused on building the foundation for applications than on engineering applications themselves. Depending on the organization structure, these functions may roll into other product owners who take care of the entire application stack. Therefore, demonstrating end-to-end capabilities will take a different notion in this new reality

Uplift the brand perception: Many service providers are scrambling to build platform engineering teams in their operations practices. They realize they don’t know how to do it and can’t afford this type of talent because their clients have bucketed service providers in a specific price range. The investment in building such talent is not commensurate to the pricing service providers receive from clients. Successful service providers will have to break through this shackle and change their brand perception to be seen as innovative engineering and operations partners

Change the operating model: Many large service providers do not get invited to such discussions because they are considered more suitable for commodity work than strategic initiatives. In addition, most enterprises plan to engage in a time and material (T&M) model for such initiatives. This is not aligned with most large service providers’ strategic visions. Therefore, enterprises are increasingly working with cutting-edge service providers on platform and engineering initiatives. Large service providers need to reexamine their obsession with managed service engagement to serve this new reality. They will also have to relook their expectations of margin from infrastructure services, talent compensation, and various similar aspects that hinder their capabilities to serve clients

Eventually, technology service providers will understand this newer market and learn how to effectively serve it. However, much like any competitive industry, there will be winners and losers. We have already seen some infrastructure heritage service providers struggling due to cloud adoption.

Service providers who embrace these changes, invest proactively, better understand clients, and enhance their brand positioning will most likely succeed. With the platform engineering and product management model gaining traction in enterprises, now is the time for other service providers to proactively prepare.

What has your experience been like with platform engineering and the product management model? Please write to us at [email protected] or [email protected].

The Top GBS Employers™ in India, The Philippines, and Poland – Discover Why They Are the Top Global Business Services Companies for Talent | Blog

August 30, 2022

Everest Group’s Top GBS Employers™ across India, Poland, and the Philippines report illustrates the top global business services companies selected for best work environment and job satisfaction rating by employees. Read on to discover what the workforce looks for when choosing an employer and view the complete list.

See the Report

As the battle to find the right talent and skillsets resumes, GBS employers must build an exemplary brand to stand out among their peers to attract and retain top talent. The talent shortage worldwide is here for the foreseeable future and is a constraint against growth goals. Developing and implementing a talent strategy should be at the top of any employer’s priority list. One tactic that many are turning to is closely tracking and honing their brand, or how talent perceives them in their local market.

Developing a solid brand perception will not only address the talent shortage challenge but also help draw in a strong and resilient workforce, so organizations will survive uncertainty and thrive in intensely competitive environments. The top global business services companies are incorporating the key components and top requirements that talent are gravitating towards – work environment, compensation, career development, and diversity – and are critical in building employer brand perceptions and meeting evolving workforce expectations.

The top global business services companies selected across India, The Philippines, and Poland

Everest Group analyzed the employer brand perceptions of 200+ leading GBS organizations across India, Poland, and the Philippines to discover what a top employer brand perception encompasses, view the full report. The study examined multiple dimensions, including compensation, career progression, senior management, work-life balance, culture and values, and diversity.

This first-of-its-kind study also analyzes the performance of each of the top global business services companies in the local talent markets based on attrition rates, joiner-exit ratio, and overall employee satisfaction ratings.

Finally, we assessed what top global business services companies are doing to differentiate themselves in talent markets, targeting the most desired themes from talent: work environment, compensation, career development, and diversity.

Why GBS organizations need this information today

Workforce expectations have transformed dramatically over the past few years, and organizations have to evolve their employer brands to meet those expectations. The pandemic brought about the work-from-home (WFH) era, dispelling many negative notions around WFH, and set a standard of work-life balance, flexibility, and autonomy that employers must deliver. Our research shows that over half of today’s organizations expect over 40% of their employees to continue working from home or in a hybrid style over the next two years or so.

More and more employees today are also choosing to work for companies that not only have sustainability goals and strong culture and values but adhere to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) practices, which ensures employees have equal opportunities and ultimately feel more valued.

And at the top of the list, employees want to work for organizations that offer career paths, opportunities for upskilling, and fair compensation.

The Top GBS Employers™ rankings provide an outside-in proxy on how prospective candidates pursuing tech and ops careers perceive employer companies – helping firms baseline their employee value propositions (EVP) effectiveness vs. their immediate peers.

How are the top global business services companies being ranked?

Recent employer perception studies have been too broad, with no specific view capturing tech talent’s concerns. This analysis is based on publicly available information, including Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn, and the latest feedback capturing prospective employees’ perceptions about top GBS organizations. The rankings from the report provide a comparative snapshot of leading firms’ market perceptions among the tech and ops workforce. We ranked each GBS employer on employee satisfaction grade, compensation and benefits, work environment, career opportunities, and diversity and inclusion focus and investment.

The top ten across India, the Philippines, and Poland

By assessing the ratings and feedback from popular public sites and critical sources for employees conducting employer research, we narrowed down the top ten in India, the Philippines, and Poland:

Across India, the overall top GBS employers are Google, Mondelez, Microsoft, Bank of America, SAP, JPMC, P&G, Target, American Express, and Novartis
In the Philippines, the overall top GBS employers are Henkel, SAP, JPMC, Telstra, P&G, SunLife, Wells Fargo, American Express, Chevron, and 3M
And in Poland, we saw Mondelez, Microsoft, SAP, Standard Chartered, Google, Cisco, Bayer, AstraZeneca, ING Group, and P&G come through as the top GBS employers

See the full report for a complete view into the rankings in the different regions.

Key takeaways from the research

Throughout every market assessed, it’s clear that compensation, work environment, and career development are among the top sought-after aspects when choosing a new employer and have the most impact on employer brand perception.

Employers with the highest rankings offer relatively high entry-level compensations and robust training, set benchmarks to allow for pay increases, perform salary corrections, and have opportunities for fast-track promotions, especially at lower experience levels. High-ranking companies also offer flexibility and options for remote work and the chance to work across teams for cross-functional exposure. Other perks among the highest ranked employers are opportunities to work on the latest tech stacks and develop techno-functional and behavioral skills, along with good 401K matching and health insurance options, market-competitive benefits, and decent paid time off.

Employers that incorporate these practices will significantly increase their overall employer brand perception and discover more success in finding and retaining talent.

Top global business services companies can also leverage Everest Group’s Talent Performance Framework to optimize their talent management strategies and build future-proof talent models.

Exhibit one: Everest Group’s Talent Performance Framework

To learn more about Everest Group’s Top GBS Employers or to discuss the Talent Performance Framework, reach out to [email protected] or Contact us.

Also, join us for our Conversations with Leaders LinkedIn Live series, a part of Everest Group’s GBS Leadership Exchange, Episode 3 | Who Are the Top GBS Employers?, featuring GBS executives who have shown significant leadership and innovation in GBS. In this session, Rohitashwa Aggarwal, VP of GBS Research and Advisory at Everest Group, and Shweta Mohanty, VP and Head of HR for SAP, India, will discuss the Top GBS Employers, and what they are doing to set themselves apart.

Six Common Challenges Customer Experience (CX) Leaders Face | Blog

August 29, 2022

Delivering exceptional customer experience has become essential to meet changing expectations post-pandemic. But various challenges – from data analytics to talent – can prevent companies from delivering the highly personalized interactions consumers crave. Learn what issues keep customer experience officers (CXOs) up at night in this blog.

The outsourced customer experience management (CXM) market has seen historic growth in recent years, rising about 12% to 14% last year to more than USD$100 billion, according to Everest Group estimates.

While COVID-19 increased demand for CX-related services, it was not the only driver. Senior business leaders now realize delivering exceptional customer experience is no longer a “nice to have” but a “must have” to grow their businesses and thrive in an increasingly competitive market, especially with tough economic times forecast.

As a result, greater focus is being put on customer experience (CX) and customer service (CS) leaders to deliver an exceptional experience. From our conversations with senior business leaders, they all face the following six similar challenges:

Using data to improve CX – With data security being critical to running a CX operation, leaders want to better understand all their data, such as contact reasons. They realize data will help them identify ways to improve the experience and lower contact volumes, ultimately improving customer satisfaction and reducing cost. To capitalize on this opportunity, data analytics use within outsourced contracts has grown significantly over the past few years, and our recent research shows that analytics is now present in 30% to 35% of CXM deals

Navigating the talent crisis – Much of North America and Europe, as well as other locations across the globe, are experiencing a talent shortage. CX leaders find either their in-house operations or outsourced service providers are struggling to attract and retain talent or that they have to pay premium wages. While this challenge may subside if the economic situation worsens, forward-thinking CX leaders are actively working to address this by evaluating alternative talent sources (such as using gig workers or impact sourcing) as well as exploring emerging locations (Sub-Saharan Africa, for example). They also are focusing on improving the employee experience (EX) to retain the talent they find

Optimising delivery and location models – CX leaders have to think about the right delivery and location models to support their business. Using Work at Home Agents (WAHA) in either full or hybrid models is a key consideration in finding and retaining talent. Delivery locations have also come into focus not only in the talent search but also for business continuity planning (BCP), as mitigating risks is now more top of mind than ever. CX leaders are increasingly demanding insights and analysis on emerging delivery models and locations to support their strategies

Increasing value while reducing cost – CX leaders feel pressure to deliver value to the business, whether through increased sales, higher retention rates, or better Net Promoter Scores (NPS)/Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT.) However, this responsibility does not come with a blank check, and leaders are still challenged to reduce support costs. Leaders need to balance high-value interactions served by humans and then identify low-value contacts (to the business and end customer) to eliminate or automate

Modernising the CX infrastructure – The customer experience infrastructure can be modernized and improved at any stage. CX leaders should avoid rushing into a solution because it seems to be the latest hot topic and should understand how the digital solution will integrate into the business and deliver the desired experience

Anticipating future customer, industry, and technology trends – As we know from our discussions and experiences, busy executives find it hard to look outside their organisations to understand broader trends when working hard to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Competitors are unlikely to share their plans, and opportunities to collaborate with peer CX leaders in non-competing firms are scarce. CX leaders are seeking an unbiased external industry lens that advisors can provide

The CX or CS leadership role has gained greater significance in recent years as the world has awoken to the importance of delivering great customer experiences. While challenging, the obstacles these leaders face are not insurmountable with the right insights, data, and teamwork.

To discuss CX trends further, contact David Rickard at [email protected]

Learn more about how to optimize your customer experience strategy in our LinkedIn Live session, “How are Leading Organizations Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience?”

The Era of “Industrialization of Experience” Is Heralding the Metaverse and Web 3.0 Revolution: Are You Embracing It? | Blog

August 29, 2022

The advent of Web 3.0 is creating exciting new opportunities for Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) firms who invest in digital technologies to deliver next-generation customer engagement and enter the metaverse. To learn more about enterprises taking the lead in piloting metaverse and Web 3.0, read on.

With Web 2.0 laying the foundation for unique customer interactions, BFSI firms are increasingly adopting an omnichannel approach as industry trends indicate consumer mindshare often translates into wallet share. Driven by consumer demand for newer experiences as well as the limited potential for further innovation in Web 2.0, industry leaders are looking at Web 3.0 as the future.

Let’s explore how Web 3.0 is enabling firms to evolve from customer interactions to engaging customer experiences in a connected ecosystem.

Defining Web 3.0 and metaverse

Web 3.0 is the next phase of web hyperscale systems built on decentralized, autonomous, and distributed technologies. It enables decentralized protocols and technology stacks that can be used to build new communities and economies such as metaverse.

Movement over the past seven years toward Web 3.0 stalled because of the lack of superior computing power availability and supporting systems to drive sustained momentum. Now, with changing consumer behavior following the pandemic, the rush toward digitalization has taken off.

The need to build differentiated experiences backed by the rapid maturity of cloud-based processes and overall sophistication of systems supporting the digital agenda are healthy signs for the next wave of innovation based on Web 3.0 – metaverse.

Metaverse is a persistent immersive mega virtual smart space, akin to a universe, where people have seamless digital experiences that can extend to the real world.

Metaverse creates a virtual community that can provide immersive client experiences, collaborations, and employee trainings. To meet this demand, technology and services providers need to invest in next-generation technologies such as cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and blockchain to extract the best out of Web 3.0.

Today’s metaverse is focused on allowing users to build a digital imitation of the physical world, leverage mixed reality devices to engage in various activities, conduct commercial transactions using digital assets, and drive collaboration and engagement through virtual events.

Web 3.0 and metaverse will enable next-generation experiences and alter economic and business models. Excitement about the potential significantly outweighs concerns.

Exhibit 1: Everest Group

Pioneers piloting Web 3.0

Leading financial services players have started piloting Web 3.0 concepts and experimenting with metaverse to test the market response. We believe this marks the start of an evolutionary change that will undergo multiple refinements rather than be revolutionary.

Exhibit 2: Everest Group

Most use cases we see are capitalizing on the following modular demand themes:

Banking:

Financial products and asset classes in the metaverse
Customer management through immersive technologies
Virtual branch inception
Affiliates and partnerships in the digital world

Financial services:

Portfolio management and client enablement
Front, middle, and back-office efficiency
Trade lifecycle management in the metaverse
Digital asset custody services
Decentralized brokerage systems

Insurance:

Decentralized insurance services
Risk profiling
Claim processing
Restructured underwriting services

Where is the market moving with regulations?

Despite the recent efforts, policymakers still need to be convinced to embrace the new possibilities of Web 3.0 to make it real for banking consumers and investors. Web 3.0 and allied technologies, such as metaverse, require a novel approach to regulatory thinking. Many governing bodies grapple with the nuances around Web 3.0 and the challenges it manifests. Governance and interoperability are critical elements to successfully scale Web 3.0 and metaverse.

Addressing these three regulatory areas can kickstart the formal growth of Web 3.0:

Investor protection – With blockchain-based transactions picking up pace, preventing fraudulent actions and safeguarding investors’ interests has become a priority for organizations such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
Privacy and disclosures – The intricacies around the nature and type of disclosures and the effect these may have on individual privacy could have serious implications as this technology gains momentum
Jurisdictional concerns – The key concerns around decentralized internet are around control, individual laws applied, and interpretations across different markets

The new computing possibilities of Web 3.0 has the potential to dynamically impact the BFSI industry structure. Data decentralization and democratization can bring investment opportunities to enterprises as well as IT providers. To seize this potential, technology and services providers must invest in cloud, AI, and blockchain to realize the many benefits Web 3.0 can deliver.

At Everest Group, we are closely tracking the developments in BFSI based on metaverse – both from the demand and supply side. For more insights, see our report, Future of Financial Services – Web 3.0, Metaverse, and Decentralized Finance, which sheds light on the future of financial services in the Web 3.0 and metaverse era.

We would like to hear your thoughts on Web 3.0 and metaverse and its growing adoption in the BFSI industry. Please reach out to us with your inputs at [email protected], or [email protected]

Category: Blog