Category: Press Releases

Enterprises Hungry for Automation Solutions Will Drive 40-50% Growth in Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) through 2022 | Press Release

COVID-19 has showcased to enterprises the importance of digital transformation and the need to accelerate automation journeys to ensure business resilience, agility, and growth.

Business adversity can teach important lessons. According to Everest Group, enterprises that were well along their digital transformation journey when the COVID-19 pandemic began have fared far better than others in navigating the challenges of demand fluctuations, remote work, and addressing new customer experience expectations.

This realization is driving organizations to accelerate their automation journeys to not only ensure they are prepared for the next crisis but also to successfully adjust to the new normal. As a result, Everest Group predicts that the Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) market will achieve a compound annual growth rate of 40-50% through 2022, driven by the pent-up enterprise demand for automation.

Everest Group defines IPA as intelligent automation in business processes achieved through any combination of automation technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA) and cognitive/artificial intelligence (AI) based technologies (including natural language processing, machine learning and computer vision). The global IPA market, comprising the sourcing of IPA solutions and services*, surpassed US$4.5 billion at the end of 2020, a year in which growth was subdued due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initial adoption of IPA was already underway prior to COVID-19. With widespread adoption of RPA and successful pilots of AI-based solutions such as Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), enterprises started to use RPA in conjunction with AI-based solutions and other ancillary technologies such as process mining and analytics. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises have increased focus on digital transformation and are moving toward widespread IPA adoption, looking to reduce reliance on manual processing in critical business functions.

In addition to pent-up demand, several other factors are contributing to rapid IPA market growth:

• Rising sophistication of IPA technologies, such as process mining and IDP.
• Higher availability of pre-packaged solutions and accelerators that provide quick time-to-value for enterprises.
• Increasing number of solution provider- and vendor-led initiatives to drive improvements in efficiency.

These findings and more are shared in Everest Group’s recently published report, “Powering Business Processes with Intelligent Automation–IPA State of the Market Report 2021.” This report provides comprehensive coverage of the IPA market and analyzes it across various dimensions, such as market overview, adoption trends, solution characteristics, services characteristics, and solution provider landscape, challenges, best practices and future outlook.

Selected Highlights from the IPA State of the Market Report 2021

• Implementation services account for around half of the IPA revenue; revenue from licensing proprietary and third-party solutions is increasing at a good rate.
• Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) continues to be the largest adopter of IPA solutions and services, followed by healthcare and pharma, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail, and telecom.
• North America is the largest adopter of IPA with 50% of the market share, followed by Continental Europe and the UK.
• IPA solution providers’ attention is split almost equally between RPA and cognitive automation.
• Solution providers are offering solutions across RPA, IDP, conversational AI, etc., while rolling out innovative offerings, such as RPA-as-a-service, to address emerging needs in the IPA market.
• Packaged solutions are gaining traction due to their ease of implementation and quick return on investment.
• As the demand for holistic automation solutions increases, strategic partnerships between service providers and technology vendors are expected to increase.
• Because of the travel restrictions imposed due to COVID-19, solution providers are expected to focus more on digital training by developing more self-paced training modules and certifications.

***Download a complimentary abstract of the report here.***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global companies, service providers, and investors. Clients use our services to guide their journeys to achieve heightened operational and financial performance, accelerated value delivery, and high-impact business outcomes. Details and in-depth content are available at http://www.everestgrp.com

*This report does not cover IPA technology products that are licensed independently or embedded within broader BPO deals.

Cloud Services Market Will Accelerate to 24% Growth Rate Through 2024 as Hyperscalers and Non-Hyperscalers Battle for Market Share | Press Release

Hyperscalers will seize more of enterprise IT spend, but other infrastructure vendors will continue to be relevant

Hyperscale public cloud providers have experienced growth rates exceeding 30% for the past few years, and their appetite for enterprise IT spend remains insatiable. Everest Group predicts hyperscalers—namely Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure—will seize more of enterprise IT spend as the cloud services market accelerates to 24% compound annual growth rate through 2024. However, enterprises will continue to demand a diverse vendor portfolio to avoid lock-in, address data security and governance concerns, build innovative consumption and commercial models, and take advantage of vendors’ unique strengths.

More than 90% of enterprises already leverage one or more public clouds in their enterprise environment. COVID-19 has further accelerated enterprise migration to the public cloud, with most enterprises reaping business continuity benefits during the pandemic. Hyperscalers plan to capitalize on this growth and dominate the enterprise IT spend by expanding their offerings beyond infrastructure services to full-stack capabilities.

To sweeten their appeal, hyperscalers are offering next-generation services including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), natural language processing (NLP), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), blockchain, and more. In addition, leading hyperscalers are evolving their operating models to attract enterprises, for example by adding financial and technical support, offering A-team talent for professional services, and providing deep resources for enterprise training.

However, enterprise willingness to engage not only with hyperscalers but also with non-hyperscalers indicates the strategic importance of private cloud, multicloud and traditional infrastructure in running their end-to-end enterprise IT landscape. Non-hyperscalers will continue to be relevant with enterprises often choosing non-hyperscalers for their unique capabilities.

These findings and more are shared in Everest Group’s recently published report, “Cloud Hyperscalers: A Critical—But Not the Only—Building Block of Enterprise IT.” This State of the Market report deep dives into the global IT cloud services market, providing data-driven perspectives on the market at large. The report evaluates cloud services trends and demand drivers, analyzes hyperscaler offerings, and describes how hyperscalers have moved beyond providing infrastructure services to now cater to the entire enterprise IT stack, making consuming technology easier.

**Enterprises also need non-hyperscale cloud vendors to run their digital businesses**
Enterprises believe hyperscalers have their sweet spots but other options are also needed to run their end-to-end enterprise IT landscape, according to Everest Group research. Non-hyperscale cloud vendors and IT service providers can capitalize on the advantages they have to offer enterprises, including the following:

• Innovative commercial models: Most non-hyperscale vendors have transformed their pricing models for on-premise deployments. This change has made enterprises reevaluate their infrastructure sourcing strategy and consider these vendors as an important and viable partner.
• Easier consumption models: Vendors have learned from cloud hyperscalers to make “as-a-service” consumption a key part of their strategy. Therefore, clients are open to the idea of a “local cloud” that can run independently or extend to form a hybrid edge-to-local distributed cloud architecture.
• Product innovation: Infrastructure vendors are bringing in innovative service offerings, not to compete with cloud hyperscalers but to demonstrate their capabilities to help clients in building a digital business. These innovations vary and include enterprise-grade security, workload-specific compute, single pane of management, and transparent invoicing. Some non-hyperscalers are also building “software only” platforms that are not tied to their infrastructure but can be deployed on any hosting environment to give flexibility to clients. In addition, many are significantly increasing open source adoption to not only reduce cost of solution but also provide a market standard offering.
• Enterprise context and consulting skills: Enterprise technology transformation projects are highly complex, require advanced consulting skills and need a combination of technical skills with vertical expertise. IT service providers have developed this skill set, whereas hyperscalers, comparatively, have a lesser understanding of the enterprise IT landscape.
• Deep industry knowledge: Service providers possess deep industry knowledge and better understand industry-specific challenges, allowing them to cater well to specific enterprise demands.
• Strategic client relationships: Service providers are viewed as trusted partners by enterprises. Their relationship over the years has witnessed multiple technology transformations. Service providers have proved their execution competency.

***Download a complimentary abstract of the report here.***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global companies, service providers, and investors. Clients use our services to guide their journeys to achieve heightened operational and financial performance, accelerated value delivery, and high-impact business outcomes. Details and in-depth content are available at http://www.everestgrp.com

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) Adoption Swells as Enterprises Seek to Lower Costs Through Automation; IDP Market to Grow 55-65% in Next Year | Press Release

IDP vendors are expected to offer more out-of-the-box, pre-trained IDP solutions to meet the demand for faster ROI and quicker deployment

The global market for Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), estimated at US$700-750 million in 2020, is expected to grow at a rate of 55-65% over the next year, according to Everest Group. Cost impact is now the key driver for IDP adoption as enterprises seek to realize tangible benefits from the technology, closely followed by improving operational efficiency and productivity.

IDP solutions automate the processing of complex documents with accuracy. These solutions blend the power of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to efficiently process all types of documents and feed the output into downstream applications. Optical character recognition (OCR), computer vision, machine learning (ML) and deep learning models, and natural language processing (NLP) are the key core technologies powering IDP capabilities. The most common use cases of IDP solutions are invoice processing, Know-Your-Customer (KYC) information, insurance claims, patient onboarding, patient records, proof of delivery and order forms.

Enterprises seeking to leverage IDP technology should seek an enterprise-grade IDP solution comprising the following capabilities:

• 1.    Training the software: The underlying AI/ML model of an IDP solution has to be trained with sample documents to accurately extract data.
• 2.    Data extraction and classification: Core IDP capabilities include techniques to extract data from structured, semi-structured and unstructured documents; classification of documents; support for a range of languages; and product configurability.
• 3.    Interoperability: Integration with enterprise applications—such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems—and complementary technologies, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and cloud, are needed for data ingestion and enabling broader automation.
• 4.    Monitoring and security: Key capabilities include monitoring the performance of the software and users; assessing the accuracy of algorithms for various document types and drawing insights; and ensuring confidentiality of sensitive data.

IDP solution vendors are heavily investing in technology capabilities as well as expansion of their partner ecosystem. Development trends in IDP products that are delivering benefits to enterprises include the following:

• Extraction capability for a large set of languages, including Asian and Middle Eastern languages.
• Increasing maturity for processing unstructured documents.
• Vertical- and horizontal-specific pre-trained solutions out-of-the-box; app store-like channels for easy access.
• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings of the solution to lower Total Cost of Ownership for enterprises and increase accessibility.
• Increased configurability of platforms to provide greater control to enterprise users.
• Enhanced integration with complementary technology solutions, including RPA, Business Process Management (BPM), and process mining.
• Dedicated mobile applications to facilitate document processing through handheld devices.
• Advanced image recognition and processing capabilities using a combination of computer vision and deep learning algorithms.
• Availability of benchmarking analytics for particular processes such as invoice processing.

These findings and more are shared in Everest Group’s recently published report, “Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) State of the Market Report 2021 – Key to Unlocking Value in Documents.” This report provides comprehensive coverage of the IDP market and analyzes it across various dimensions, such as market size and adoption trends, solution characteristics, product capabilities and trends, buyer satisfaction, vendor landscape, challenges to adoption and future outlook.

IDP Market Adoption Trends

• Banking and insurance continue to be the largest adopters of IDP solutions and account for approximately 30% and 13% of the IDP market, respectively.
• Government and the public sector have shown significant growth in 2020, driven mainly by an increased need to improve efficiency and compliance and reduce dependence on manual processing.
• North America continues to be the largest market for IDP software solutions with over 50% market share, while the Asia Pacific (APAC) market is growing rapidly.
• Adoption of IDP solutions in industry-specific processes, especially in Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) and healthcare, observed significant growth.
• Large buyers continue to have the highest adoption; however, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are showing the highest growth rate in the adoption of IDP solutions.

***Download a complimentary abstract of the report here.***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global companies, service providers, and investors. Clients use our services to guide their journeys to achieve heightened operational and financial performance, accelerated value delivery, and high-impact business outcomes. Details and in-depth content are available at http://www.everestgrp.com

Traditional Banks Take Heed: The Future of Money Is Digital | Press Release

The cryptocurrency and digital assets market experienced more than seven-fold growth in the last 12-18 months, making it a key area of focus for global financial systems

Everest Group reports the year 2020 and Q1 2021 produced a seven-fold surge in retail and institutional investments in cryptocurrencies and related crypto assets, driven by increased investor demand, pandemic-fostered digitalization and clarity in regulatory tenets. The cryptocurrency market hovered around US$2 trillion through April 2021 and is projected to reach US$24 trillion by 2027. This growth is forcing traditional banks to realize that digital assets are the future of money. Banks need to invest early to capture high-growth pockets and investor mindshare in this market, according to Everest Group.

Several players within the banking and financial services (BFS) industry are already active in the growing crypto market, which is a thriving ecosystem comprising several digital assets including privacy coins, stablecoins, cryptocurrencies, security tokens, utility tokens and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). IT service providers are developing in-house solutions to help financial institutions use Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) for their digital asset needs. FinTechs are at the forefront of innovating products and services but operate in an unregulated environment, posing high risks for investors. Larger investments have increased the safety, security, and accountability requirements to invest in these assets. Thus, there is an urgent need for regulatory bodies globally to bring in practical frameworks and regulations for digital asset trade at the earliest.

These findings and more are shared in Everest Group’s recently published “Deconstructing the Digital Assets Revolution – What Financial Institutions Can Learn from the Meteoric Rise of Coinbase.” This State of the Market Report analyzes the rise of retail and institutional investments in digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, other crypto assets and crypto technology. The report examines crypto financial service offerings and their impact on the BFS market. Everest Group also recommends a transformation plan for traditional banking systems through a hybrid model, which seamlessly integrates value-added processes and operational functions for both traditional and digital assets being serviced on a digital-native platform.

Key trends and imperatives in the digital assets revolution:

• Venture funding is at an all-time high for blockchain-based market infrastructure platforms, which indicates a rising threat to existing financial systems.
• Banks must follow a three-pronged strategy to build, partner and acquire digital assets skillsets in the market to stay ahead of the curve.
• Traditional financial institutions will face several issues in developing in-house solutions to adapt new financial technologies, such as updating legacy systems, regularly innovating solutions, and keeping up with regulations globally. These institutions can partner with FinTechs that specialize in developing and servicing such solutions at global scale in a plug-and-play model.
• Large financial services firms are developing capabilities and skillsets to stay ahead of the competition in the crypto asset services market. For example, Wells Fargo has introduced a cryptocurrency fund focused on HNIs; a consortium of 15 major institutions have developed a Utility Settlement Coin (USC) for peer-to-peer digital cash settlement; BNY Mellon built expertise as a crypto ETF service provider; JPMorgan Chase & Co. has invested in building its own cryptocurrency; and Anchorage and Silvergate, new players in the banking sector, cater only to crypto assets.
• Technology vendors (such as AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Oracle and R3) and IT service providers (such as Accenture, Infosys, IBM and Tata Consultancy Services) are developing in-house solutions to help financial institutions use Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) for their digital assets needs.
• Several financial technology platforms and services players have entered the digital assets space in core and value-added services, including cryptocurrency mining pools, custodians and banks, crypto assets development tools, crypto asset and portfolio managers, crypto assets analytics platforms, crypto over-the-counter desks and trading spaces for market whales, and crypto credit providers.
• Banks face numerous challenges as they strive to stay ahead of the curve, including regulations, disaster management, private key recovery, insurance-backed custody, and systems for fraud prevention.

***Download a complimentary abstract of the report here.***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global companies, service providers, and investors. Clients use our services to guide their journeys to achieve heightened operational and financial performance, accelerated value delivery, and high-impact business outcomes. Details and in-depth content are available at http://www.everestgrp.com

Rewards & Recognition (R&R) Solutions Market to Grow Up to 20% by 2022 | Press Release

COVID-19 has ushered in a new era in human resources that is focused on enhancing employee experience and modernizing employee engagement with digitally enabled solutions.

Everest Group reports that the rewards-and-recognition (R&R) solutions market grew at a rate of 9-11% in 2020 as enterprises globally grappled with COVID-19. COVID-19 brought uncertainty and change to many organizations with respect to managing and motivating their workforces. The pandemic challenged organizations to align culture and values, offer engagements valued by employees, and provide face-to-face interactions and feedback. In the midst of these challenges, Human Resource (HR) personnel tasked with enhancing employee experience and building more resilient organizations looked to third-party support in the form of R&R solutions, a market which Everest Group estimates is currently valued at US$2.7 to $2.9 billion worldwide.

Although enterprises took measures to save on their rewards budgets in 2020 and decision making slowed down, recognition platforms were still seen by senior stakeholders to be one of the key ways to solve issues pertaining to employee productivity, motivation and engagement. Going forward, Everest Group predicts the R&R solution market will grow at 18-20%, reaching a US$3.3 to $3.5 billion valuation by 2022.

These findings and more are shared in Everest Group’s recently published “Rewards and Recognition (R&R) State of the Market Report 2021: The Era of Modernizing Employee Engagement.” This report provides comprehensive coverage of the R&R market and analyzes it across various dimensions, such as buyer objectives, market overview, evolving solution characteristics, and solution provider landscape.

Highlights from the R&R State of the Market Report 2021

• COVID-19 brought unprecedented uncertainty in many organizations and now buyers are seeking holistic solutions to build employee resilience and future-proof their HR strategies.
• The majority of enterprises adopting R&R solutions were small- or mid-sized enterprises. Buyers from manufacturing, financial services, and healthcare industries have led the adoption of R&R solutions, while newer industries have experienced a rise in demand.
• North America continues to constitute the largest market and has the highest revenue contribution, whereas the UK and Asia Pacific are on a growth trajectory.
• Buyers of R&R solutions prefer flexible solutions that cater to their company-specific requirements. To improve overall buyer satisfaction levels, solution providers need to bring in next-generation technology solutions, expand their existing offerings, and increase the flexibility of their solutions.
• R&R providers are adopting a multi-prong approach to revamp their present capabilities:
• – Developing smarter platform capabilities. R&R solution providers are infusing artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation and analytics into their solutions to develop more intelligent, intuitive and user-friendly platforms.
• – Expanding beyond R&R capabilities. R&R solution providers are integrating their solutions with other collaboration and HR tools, unifying with social engagement platforms, and offering fitness and wellness platforms.
• – Diversifying rewards catalog. R&R solution providers are offering extensive catalogs based on the evolving needs of buyers. Rewards may comprise merchandise, gift cards and e-cards, discounts and perks, experiences and donations to favorite charities.
• – Exploring new and innovative commercial models, such as more transparent and less complex pricing models.
• Four companies are considered leading solution providers in the space, and these four contributed more than 50% of the market share in terms of revenue in 2020: O.C. Tanner, Engage2Excel, Madison PG, and Workhuman.
• Challenges faced by enterprises due to the pandemic will have a long-term impact on the way they engage with the employees. They will continue to explore new strategies

to deliver a superior employee experience. Enterprises will focus on employees’ mental and physical well-being and will ramp up post-implementation support and internal communication initiatives to promote R&R practices.

***Download a complimentary abstract of the report here.***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global companies, service providers, and investors. Clients use our services to guide their journeys to achieve heightened operational and financial performance, accelerated value delivery, and high-impact business outcomes. Details and in-depth content are available at http://www.everestgrp.com

Everest Group Reports Q1 Uptick in Global Outsourcing Transactions | Press Release

Market activity saw a recovery in offshore/nearshore setups driven by Asia.

As the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, several key demand themes are gaining prominence in the sourcing industry, driving deal growth and deal wins for service providers. According to Everest Group, the uptick in global sourcing transactions in Q1 2021 over Q4 2020 was driven by demand for cloud services, cybersecurity, digital engineering and support for the modern workplace.

Demand for system integration services witnessed an increase in recent quarters. One of the major contributors to this trend is the adoption of advanced technologies such as big data, cloud-based services, Software-as-a-Service and numerous others.

These findings and more are shared in Everest Group’s recently published Market Vista: Q2 2021 report. The Market Vista™ report highlights the key trends and developments in the fast-evolving global outsourcing and offshoring market. The study captures the key developments across outsourcing transaction trends, the health of Global Business Services (GBS) centers, location risks and opportunities, and service provider developments.

Highlights from the Market Vista: Q2 2021 Report

• Outsourcing demand witnessed an increase quarter on quarter, with 436 outsourcing transactions completed in Q1 2021 compared to 422 in Q4 2020.
• Deals for government and Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) were the highest among all industry verticals, although BFSI saw a decline quarter on quarter due to fewer deals across banking and capital markets.
• The share of digital services in these transactions increased significantly as well, with 59% of Q1 2021 deals have digital components whereas only 54% of Q4 2020 deals featured digital components.
• Digital services continued to dominate transaction activity, driven by an increase in cloud-based deals. Cloud-based services were a component of 50% of all outsourcing transactions completed in the last year (Q2 2020 to Q1 2021).
• Advanced automation—including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and cognitive technologies—were included in 16% of those deals, robotic process automation (RPA) in 13% and analytics in 11%.
• Offshore center setup activity (comprising both service provider and GBS) increased from Q4 2020 (41 setups and expansions) to Q1 2021 (59), but onshore setups declined (from 37 to 26).
• Total center setups in Asia jumped from 19 in Q4 2020 to 28 in Q1 2021.
• On average, the 30 service providers profiled in the report witnessed an increase in revenues on a sequential basis but a decline in operating margins.

***Download a complimentary abstract of the report here.***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global companies, service providers, and investors. Clients use our services to guide their journeys to achieve heightened operational and financial performance, accelerated value delivery, and high-impact business outcomes. Details and in-depth content are available at http://www.everestgrp.com