Category: Press Releases

RPOA and Everest Group Forge a Strategic Partnership | Press Release

The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association (RPOA) is proud to announce that it has partnered with Everest Group to bring deeper industry insights to the RPO community.

RPOA, the place to go for RPO, is committed to educating the marketplace about RPO trends and best practices in collaboration with its industry partners.

Everest Group, a leading consulting and research firm, produces multiple annual research reports highlighting recent trends and data-driven insights on the state of the RPO industry.

The new partnership brings a powerful combination of industry analysis with practitioners’ insights, providing a more rounded view of the state and outlook of the RPO industry, which is critically important in the dynamic and rapidly evolving post-COVID world. As part of the partnership, RPOA corporate members will have access to Everest Group’s Statue of the RPO Market Report, as well as special discounts on RPO reports and 60 minutes of inquiry time with Everest Group analysts.

Jason Krumwiede, Senior Vice President of Client Delivery at Broadleaf Results and RPOA advisory board member commented on the partnership: “Everest Group’s industry expertise and insights will be pivotal in helping our RPOA members customize optimal solutions for their clients. This important strategic alliance with Everest Group furthers RPOA’s strategy and establishes our commitment to innovation and data analytics in the RPO industry.”

“We are pleased to have this opportunity to share our insights and analysis with RPOA members. In turn, the partnership will add to the depth of insights in Everest Group’s industry-leading and fact-based reports with a more-well rounded view gleaned from senior industry practitioners,” said Arkadev “Arko” Basak, Vice President at Everest Group. “This partnership, especially in our current disruptive post-COVID world, will be beneficial to all readers of Everest Group reports, including RPOA members.”

About the RPOA

The Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association (RPOA) is a professional membership association serving the global RPO community. We are committed to advancing, elevating, and promoting recruitment process outsourcing as a strategic talent solution for organizations seeking to reach their highest potential through their people. We pursue our great purpose by nurturing a collaborative community where thought leadership can be created and curated to educate the marketplace about recruitment process outsourcing. For more information about the RPOA, visit our website at www.rpoassociation.org.

75% of Enterprises Bracing for Widening IT & Analytics Talent Shortage, Despite Recession | Press Release

Everest Group unveils enterprise battle strategy for winning the war for talent

An IT talent shortage already beleaguers 69% of enterprises, and the COVID-19 pandemic and global recession will exacerbate the problem. According to Everest Group, 75% of enterprises believe there will be a talent shortage for key roles in IT, analytics and special skills areas post-COVID-19 and that the current recession will not create a surplus of technology talent. In fact, 67% of enterprises think new skills gaps will emerge as a result of the structural changes in business occurring in response to the pandemic.

A recent Everest Group survey revealed that 86% of enterprises consider talent shortage to be a key barrier to achieving their desired outcomes, citing:

• An acute shortage of qualified applicants with requisite skills
• A lack of technical skills in the existing workforce, especially given the pace of technology change
• Poor project readiness (for example, proficiency levels and industry contexts)
• High attrition, particularly in niche skills areas such as artificial intelligence and data analytics.

In its recently published report, “Winning the War for Talent: An Enterprise Guide to Building a Sustainable Workforce Strategy,” Everest Group proposes how enterprises can future-proof their workforce strategy to ensure that their current workforce development efforts will bridge future gaps in IT talent availability. Featured components of the report are Everest Group’s proprietary Talent Performance Framework and a detailed skills taxonomy, compiled by tracking industry demand for 1,150+ hard skills across the IT services stack. The report also sheds light on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on enterprise talent models and workforce strategy.

“Because of COVID-19, enterprises are being forced to shift to work-from-home models, accommodate a more distributed workforce, and be more flexible and empathetic to sustain workforce productivity,” said Ronak Doshi, vice president at Everest Group. “We believe this new approach to workforce management—which has been borne out of necessity—will remain with us post-pandemic as an integral part of our new normal. As the war for talent becomes more intense, enterprises need to evolve their people practices; make demand management a science; embrace technology to attract, train and nurture talent; and broaden both their recruiting pools and their partnerships to ensure talent readiness.”

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

Selected Highlights

• Although a mismatch between education curriculum and industry needs is a strong contributing factor to the talent gap, enterprises themselves also shoulder some of the blame. The talent management strategies of most enterprises have not witnessed a significant shift despite the changing needs of the workforce. Enterprises also contribute to the mismatch between business objectives and current workforce skills by failing to focus on competency mapping, workforce planning, skill gap assessment and needs of the future workforce.
• The shift in working models is presenting a new set of opportunities and challenges, such as remote working, digitally augmented delivery and flexible staffing.
• New working models will see the emergence of roles across functions to ensure business continuity and healthy employee morale. New roles may include connectivity detectives to ensure optimal performance of the network, distributed agile team coaches to train agile teams and ensure Day Zero productivity, fatigue managers to carry out mental health assessments, and work-from-home administrators to ensure work continuity.
• To meet talent needs in the future, organizations will need a sustainable talent strategy that includes building a skills taxonomy aligned to business imperatives, establishing well-researched demand-supply forecasts and plans, and carefully reconsidering sourcing models and location portfolios to build a next-generation skills pipeline.

***Read about the full scope and content of the report here.***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global enterprises, service providers, and investors. Through our research-informed insights and deep experience, we guide clients in 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 Automation in Business Processes (IABP) Market Grew 65% Pre-COVID-19, Remains One of the Most Potent Levers for Digital Transformation—Everest Group | Press Release

Accenture, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro command nearly 40% of the global IABP market by deployments.

One of the most potent levers enabling digital transformation today is Intelligent Automation in Business Processes (IABP), which encompasses solutions that use a combination of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and advanced analytics to improve business processes. According to Everest Group, the IABP market, which grew 65% in 2019, will endure muted growth in 2020 due to COVID-19 but experience a strong resurgence when global economies emerge out of the pandemic crisis.

“While the current COVID-19 crisis has certainly tempered on-ground business activity and consequently IABP deals, the period after recovery is likely to witness accelerated demand,” said Anil Vijayan, vice president at Everest Group. “Clearly, enterprises who were further ahead in their digital journeys are doing considerably better than their peers in weathering the pandemic. This realization is likely to lead to a frenetic pace of transformation and consequently IABP activity post-COVID-19.”

IABP growth is driven primarily by a desire to reduce costs. Other key drivers include improving operational efficiency and accuracy, governance and compliance. Increasingly, IABP is also being used to enhance customer experience by enabling shorter response time for handling requests, round-the-clock availability, and reduced need to manually bridge gaps in technology (for instance, through repeated data entry). When done well and even at a small scale, IABP can also lead to top-line growth through the ability to serve new groups of customers and through enabling the building of new products.

In its recently published report, “Intelligent Automation Business Processes (IABP) – State of the Market Report 2020,” Everest Group analyzes the dynamics of the IABP space and examines 24 providers, consulting firms and specialist system integrators who comprise the IABP supplier ecosystem. On Everest Group’s PEAK Matrix®, IABP solution providers Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, IBM, TCS and Wipro are identified as Leaders, based on their ability to deliver solutions and their impact in the market.

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

Market Highlights

• There is tremendous potential for IABP, given the penetration as well as the scale of deployment of IABP is relatively low today. Barely a fifth of IABP deployments have an AI component; the majority are RPA-only deployments. However, scaling up adoption is still a key challenge.
• Intelligent automation adoption is highest among large enterprises as they have more avenues to deploy these solutions and gain efficiency and cost benefits. They are also more willing to spend on intelligent automation as compared with small and mid-sized enterprises.
• Adoption of IABP is the highest in North America, followed by Continental Europe, the UK and Asia Pacific.
• Finance and accounting (F&A), procurement, and contact center emerged as the leading areas for IABP application, followed by healthcare, banking and insurance business process services segments.
• Industry-specific use cases, especially in regulated industries such as Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) and healthcare, see the highest IABP adoption, followed closely by F&A.

Everest Group predicts that, while there will be secular uptick in IABP adoption, BFSI, healthcare and pharma industries will drive a big chunk of growth in the IABP market, due to increased pressure in these industries to meet high levels of accuracy, speed and regulatory compliance, thus rendering IABP an attractive solution.

***Read about the full scope and content of the report here***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global enterprises, service providers, and investors. Through our research-informed insights and deep experience, we guide clients in 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 Projects -6% Growth, Loss of Up to Nearly $50B in Potential Revenue for Global IT Infrastructure Services in 2020 Due to COVID-19 | Press Release

New report describes how pandemic has reshaped enterprise IT priorities, offers strategies for combatting crisis and emerging stronger than before

Everest Group now predicts the 2020 growth rate of IT infrastructure services market will be as low as -4% to -6%, which represents lost revenues ranging from US$33 billion to nearly $50 billion. In the pre-COVID-19 world, the IT infrastructure services market was slated to grow at a modest rate of 2-3%; however, the pandemic has led to uncertainties across the globe. Recovery of the market will depend on the COVID-19 recovery curve across different countries, which remains uncertain.

The severe demand slump being experienced in the IT services industry is reflective of the strains the COVID-19 pandemic has placed upon enterprises, including:

• Demand reduction
• Supply chain disruption
• Business and service continuity challenges
• Cybersecurity risks

Going forward, organizations that can rapidly prioritize or quickly re-energize their infrastructure transformation efforts stand the best chance of surviving the crisis and emerging stronger than before. Everest Group urges enterprises to identify relevant infrastructure transformation opportunities across workplace, cloud, network and security.

“A well-planned transformation will not only rescue enterprises in the short-term, but also revitalize them for future growth,” said Ashwin Venkatesan, vice president at Everest Group. “While infrastructure will play a key role in rescuing enterprises from this crisis, they will have to take a holistic view and focus on evolving the services delivery model, seek efficiency and optimization measures, push toward modernization and digitalization, pivot to new business models, and invest in talent of the future.

“As we emerge from this pandemic, we will enter a world of the ‘next normal’ rather than ‘return to the normal,’” continued Venkatesan. “We believe that COVID-19 will act as an inflection point, giving way to structural changes in the global services industry such as ushering in new models of delivery, enabling enterprises to pivot to ‘newer’ business models, and increasing the appetite for modernization and digital transformation.”

Everest Group provides an in-depth analysis of these new, COVID-19 inspired enterprise priorities in its recently published State of the Market Report on cloud and infrastructure services, “Combatting COVID-19 Through Infrastructure-led Transformation.” The report also provides an analysis of the IT services market; IS buyer adoption trends across geographies, industry verticals and revenue sizes; and key trends shaping the cloud and IS market. In addition, the report offers Everest Group’s outlook for the market for 2020-2021.

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

IT Infrastructure Services Market Highlights

• The United States takes the lion’s share (90%) of the deal volume emanating from North America. The United Kingdom dominates the European deals landscape with typically 30-35% of the volume, followed by Germany at 10-15%. Australia and New Zealand captured 30-35% of the deals in the Asia Pacific region.
• Banking, Financial Services and Insurance continues to be the early adopter of technology innovation, but this market segment has witnessed growth in recent times primarily due to regulatory pressures.
• COVID-19 has accelerated the modernization journey of enterprises to cloud.
• Work from home has become the next normal and will be an integral part of the workplace of the future.
• Networks are finally getting due recognition, and software-defined networking is driving growth.

***Read about the full scope and content of the report here***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global enterprises, service providers, and investors. Through our research-informed insights and deep experience, we guide clients in 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/.

IAOP Announces Everest Group as Its Research Partner to Serve Sourcing Professionals | Press Release

IAOP’s sourcing practitioners, providers, and advisors to benefit from Everest Group’s key research, including the 2021 Key Issues in Global Sourcing study.

Everest Group—a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing—today announced it has been named a research partner to IAOP, an international professional association that brings together business services providers, advisors and customers in a collaborative effort to improve business service models and outcomes.

Everest Group helps its clients solve their toughest sourcing and digital transformation challenges. The firm offers a unique depth of sourcing knowledge and decades of insight gleaned from working alongside leading organizations tackling challenging transformation agendas.

For well over a decade, IAOP has been the association that sourcing professionals count on to keep them informed, educated, and, above all, connected to the resources and people they need to succeed.

In partnership, Everest Group and IAOP will collaborate on key research, including the 2021 Key Issues in Global Sourcing study. In addition, Everest Group will offer IAOP members key insights and offerings at special pricing.

Michel Janssen, chief research officer at Everest Group, will serve on the IAOP Strategic Advisory Board. He and other Everest Group experts will regularly contribute to IAOP conferences, webinars and podcasts, sharing insights to help executives tackle outsourcing challenges and make data-informed decisions for the future.

“Everest Group is honored to partner with IAOP, an organization that is committed to provide the resources, tools and networking opportunities that its members need to succeed,” said Michel Janssen, chief research officer at Everest Group. “We are excited to be part of IAOP’s effort by providing the research-informed insights to help the industry continue to evolve and rapidly respond to today’s ever changing normal – whether that be Work From Home issues, digital transformation, changing sourcing portfolios, or evolving talent profiles.”

“We are thrilled to announce Everest Group as our new Research Partner,” said Debi Hamill, CEO of IAOP. “Our collaboration will offer IAOP members unprecedented, research-informed insights into the market and the most pressing issues keeping them up at night. Empowering our members to not only prepare for the future but also make smarter decisions along the way is key. We look forward to leveraging each of our unique capabilities to do just that.”

About IAOP
IAOP is the global association that brings together customers, providers, and advisors in a collaborative, knowledge-based environment that promotes professional and organizational development, recognition, certification, and excellence to improve business service models and outcomes. IAOP connects you and your organization to our growing global community and to the resources you need be successful. For more information, visit IAOP.org.

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global enterprises, service providers, and investors. Through our research-informed insights and deep experience, we guide clients in 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/.

Both Capital Markets IT Spend and Outsourcing Will Fall in Wake of COVID-19—Everest Group | Press Release

New report from Everest Group examines how IT investment priorities in Capital Markets industry will vary by line of business and health of organization post-pandemic.

The capital markets industry will be under stress in 2020 as the ongoing COVID-19 global health crisis adds cost and profitability pressures. Growing regulatory requirements and changing customer demand themes will lead to a further decline. As a result, Everest Group predicts that the spend on IT services in the capital markets industry will decline 2.1% in 2020, with outsourcing spend seeing a dip of -3.7% as firms reallocate resources and cost transformation initiatives are prioritized.

Learning from and looking beyond the pandemic, capital market firms are focusing IT spend on resiliency of systems, revitalizing core to drive growth, and undertaking cost control measures. Specific IT spend priorities vary by line of business. Three examples follow:

1. Asset management firms are investing in cloud and platforms to keep overall expenses down and make up for lower fees.

• Vanguard, for example, migrated monolithic applications away from managed data centers to Amazon Web Services. The firm has been able to reduce the cost of compute by at least 30% and also reduce time to market by building and deploying software faster.
• Fidelity leveraged a cloud foundry platform-as-a-Service to further develop its agile software delivery strategy. Fidelity teams used automated Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines extensively and were able to reduce the time to market for several new low-commission products designed for the mass affluent customer segment.
• Madison Investment Advisors chose a Charles River enterprise platform to replace multiple, disparate systems running across the business. The platform enables Madison to have integrated data, analytics and benchmarks across global equities, mutual funds, options and fixed income, with comprehensive compliance monitoring across the entire investment process.

2. Wealth management firms are investing in new channels to adapt to increasing regulations, shrinking margins and an evolving investor demographic. As aging investors are being replaced by Millennials and Gen Zs, asset and wealth managers are adapting to new-age investors who generally prefer using hybrid advisory services, value socially responsible investing, expect fee transparency and demand personalized experiences. In response, asset and wealth management firms are establishing new technology priorities, such as:

• Using machine learning, artificial intelligence and analytics for better assessment of portfolios
• Accelerating the use of digital channels and robo-advisors
• Adopting agile development models to be more responsive to customer needs
• Managing compliance and security considerations via private cloud
• Using virtual tools for customer interaction management
• Using Distributed Ledger Technology to improve efficiency and transparency

3. Pension funds have high exposure to market volatility and are currently experiencing a rise in withdrawal requests from pension holders to withstand the economic shock of the pandemic and recession. Pension funds are increasing their investments in big data and analytics for portfolio analysis, correlations, risk management and long-term cash flow projections. They are also investing in robust fraud detection mechanisms to minimize data breaches.

These findings are discussed in more detail in Everest Group’s recently published report “Capital Markets State of the Market Report 2020: Automation, Data, and Cloud Trends for Buy-side Firms.”  The report includes a detailed analysis of the buy-side firms in the capital markets industry, analyzing the forces shaping the industry’s future, especially in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As capital market firms strive to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ll see them take one of four different approaches to their IT investments, depending upon how deeply they were impacted by the crisis,” explained Ronak Doshi, vice president of Everest Group. “Those most heavily impacted by the pandemic will be forced to either modernize quickly, tapping the resources of third-party platforms and service providers, or pursue aggressive cost take out, possibly even selling off legacy platforms to vendors.

“Among those more fortunate firms that are only moderately impacted by the pandemic, we’ll see some invest in longer-term transformation, taking the time to go for best-of-breed or custom solutions. Those firms with the healthiest balance sheets will pursue aggressive growth strategies, correspondingly focusing their IT spend on customer experience, the agility to rapidly launch new products, and scaling operations in the face of mergers and acquisitions.”

*** Download a complimentary report abstract ***

About Everest Group
Everest Group is a consulting and research firm focused on strategic IT, business services, engineering services, and sourcing. Our clients include leading global enterprises, service providers, and investors. Through our research-informed insights and deep experience, we guide clients in 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/.