Tag: ITS

Key Issues for 2023: Rise Above Economic Uncertainty and Succeed | Webinar

December 13, 2022
on-demand webinar

Key Issues for 2023: Rise Above Economic Uncertainty and Succeed

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As we look toward 2023, economic uncertainty is prime and center. Rising inflation, interest rate hikes, and GDP contraction – matched with low unemployment rates and high talent demand – have left business leaders unsure of what to expect and how to prepare for 2023.

Join Everest Group’s Key Issues 2023 webinar as our experts provide insights into the outlook of the global IT-BP industry and discuss major concerns, expectations, and key trends expected to amplify in 2023.

All the data is based on input from global leaders across enterprises, Global Business Services (GBS), and service providers.

Our speakers will discuss expectations for 2023, including:

  • The outlook for global services
  • Top business challenges and priorities
  • Changes in sourcing spend and service delivery costs
  • In-demand digital services and next-generation capabilities
  • The evolving strategy for talent, locations, and the workplace

Who should attend?

  • CIOs, CDOs, CTOs, CFOs, CPOs
  • Service providers
  • GBS / Shared services center heads
  • Global services leaders
  • Locations heads
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Hrishi Agarwalla
Practice Director
Everest Group
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Bhanushee Malhotra
Practice Director
Everest Group
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Rajesh Ranjan
Partner
Everest Group
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Prashant Shukla
Vice President
Everest Group

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Building Web 3.0 Business for Clients: Opportunities for Strategy, Technology, and Consulting Providers | Blog

November 16, 2022

The next-generation exponential technology of Web 3.0 holds promising opportunities for brand, technology, marketing, and business strategy providers to partner with enterprises in five key service areas. To learn more about the opportunities in this emerging market, read on.  

Multiple consumer and business brands have taken the first steps in experimenting with Web 3.0 business by building non-fungible tokens (NFTs), purchasing virtual lands in metaverse platforms, organizing virtual events, and creating enabling platforms.

But building a Web 3.0 business goes beyond just creating NFTs for a company and requires embracing the concepts of Web 3.0 business, the creator economy, decentralization, social commerce, immersive experience, trust, and sustainability.

As enterprises like Ferrari, Starbucks, JP Morgan, McDonald’s, Samsung, NBA, Walmart, Disney, Google, Nike, Oracle, EY, and Stripe begin to see traction in this space, they will seek to partner with brand, technology, marketing, and business strategy providers who understand this ecosystem to scale initiatives and drive newer ones.

Let’s explore the following five key demand areas where providers can offer their expertise.

Business strategy services: Web 3.0 business needs to be conceptualized and aligned with the enterprise strategy. Beyond that, service partners should also be bold enough to push clients to adopt Web 3.0 business models that may not be entirely related to their existing businesses. This has already started to happen and has blurred the boundaries between industries and company classifications.

Normally enterprises start with building NFT offerings for their brand to engage consumers. NFT design and implementation can create short-term demand and may eventually become a small part of overall Web 3.0 initiatives. Many enterprises use celebrities, while others use crowd contributions, technology, and various other models to build NFTs. Professional service partners need to understand this complex landscape and advise clients accordingly. With an estimated 15,000 Web 3.0 start-ups, making the correct selection is important.

At the beginning of a Web 3.0 journey, clients will seek services tailored to their specific industry, such as an automotive company creating a virtual showroom in metaverse; an apparel company using NFTs to trade for physical goods; a bank building a Web 3.0-enabled payment system; or an energy company incentivizing customers to sustainably consume power with crypto assets. In addition, many clients may want finance, procurement, and Human Resources to leverage Web 3.0 principles. Service providers who support such enterprise functions need to be at the forefront to serve this demand or risk near-term losses.

Architecture and platform services: Recently, leading cloud vendors such as Google and AWS launched blockchain node services. In addition, start-ups are focusing on Web 3.0 infrastructure services to enable out-of-the-box offerings. Start-ups such as InfStones, ChainSafe, and Alchemy collectively raised US$300 million to enhance their blockchain infrastructure offerings.

Service providers need to work with these vendors to build enabling infrastructure for clients’ Web 3.0 journey. Even for seemingly simpler initiatives such as building NFTs, clients have multiple platform decisions to make, such as NFT marketplaces, wallets, and underlying blockchain. Not only do service providers need to understand these complex technologies and work with an extended ecosystem, but these firms also need to be thought partners to guide clients in the right direction and drive initiatives.

In addition, the core offerings for edge, network, and pervasive computing must be delivered. Unlike cloud-based workloads, the Web 3.0 ecosystem will heavily rely on edge processing. Materially high network bandwidth and resiliency will be required. Therefore, ongoing hyper-automated technology operations services will need to be amplified using next-gen observability, resiliency, and predictive maintenance. Service partners will have to focus on the right messaging infrastructure, decide between off/on-chain computing, build digital simulations, and create the underlying Web 3.0 core for their clients, much like they did for cloud services.

Brand and experience services: At the core of Web 3.0 businesses is the experience it can create for end consumers. Branding and experience service providers such as Dentsu and Publicis are already investing in the Web 3.0 ecosystem. Moreover, technology providers such as Adobe and Salesforce have also launched offerings to address this client need. Although “user centricity” has gained pace in recent years, Web 3.0 businesses need to take this even further. Brands such as Adidas have already experimented with token-gated communities and provide exclusive access to assets.

The enabling technologies, platforms, and environments now available to build such experience offerings are powerful but complex. Socially distributed networks, creator platforms, crypto payments, generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), enhanced reality, and various other solutions have the power to create previously unimagined customer experiences. Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) have to become extremely tech-savvy to explore the potential Web 3.0 business has for their brand strategies.

Software and integration services: Web 3.0 business requires thousands of software to work together. Enterprises will build many of these internally to drive differentiation. However, many back-end software will be SaaS-based and bought through vendors that will need integration. In addition, numerous Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) will be built and purchased that will need to work in unison.

This will not just be the software we see today but will have AI/Machine Learning (ML) and other advanced data technologies as their core. These context-aware software will need to leverage advanced auto-development, auto-tuning, and auto-management concepts to be more efficient and sustainable. Rather than being cloud-first, these software will have to be edge-first and compatible across various hardware, unlike browser-based systems. Building lightweight yet rich workloads will be a complex engineering problem to solve for.

Governance, risk, and cyber security services: The legalities of Web 3.0 businesses are unknown, and clients need significant help from service partners to navigate this complex new pioneer. Enterprises will need assistance deciphering contractual obligations, data privacy, personal identity, cyber security, and interpreting platform terms and conditions.

The recent collapse of crypto exchange FTX is a good example. Some law firms have found the terms and conditions of popular Metaverse platforms extremely one-sided. If these platforms shut down their business, the consumer would lose all their virtual assets. Service partners need to work with clients to help them understand the risks and build recovery solutions. Providers also will need to deliver cyber security, content moderation, trust, and related security and risk services so clients feel secure that customers will trust their Web 3.0 business initiatives.

In addition, given Web 3.0 enabling technologies are under scrutiny for their environmental impact, clients will look for service partners who have sustainability as a primary offering. Environmental sustainability will take near-term priority for such initiatives.

Moreover, massive opportunities will emerge to build technology workloads by adopting Web 3.0 concepts. In the same way clients adopted Web 2.0 social media and digital commerce to enhance their businesses, they will want to adopt business-contextualized Web 3.0 technologies. The key difference is that Web 3.0 will propel enterprises to engage with stakeholders in previously unknown ways, learn about newer architectures and monetization models, and embrace the creator economy – all pushing them beyond what they are now and realizing the art of the possible.

For more on Everest Group’s research in this area, see our reports on the following topics: NFTs, Decentralized Finance, Metaverse, crypto assets, Blockchain, and trust. If you are a brand management, technology, or strategy consulting provider, please reach out to [email protected] to share your experience in building Web 3.0 business for clients.

Start planning for the future of your organization. Join our upcoming webinar, Key Issues for 2023: Rise Above Economic Uncertainty and Succeed.

The Rising Role of Customer Data Platforms in Data-driven Personalization | Blog

November 10, 2022

By bringing together disparate data to gain a single customer view, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are becoming increasingly important to help brands drive personalized marketing efforts while maintaining trust and privacy. Learn more about the benefits of Customer Data Platforms and why they matter in this blog.

With the explosion of data on consumers’ spending and online behavior available from a multitude of sources today, gleaning valuable insights from the massive amounts of information is a top priority for brands.

But unifying the various disconnected touch points clearly and comprehensively to make sense of all the data is one of the biggest challenges facing marketers.

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) have emerged as an important software solution that can help businesses get closer to consumers and achieve their organizational goals. Let’s explore what is driving the rise of CDPs.

Shift to data-driven marketing

Third-party cookies stored within users’ browsers have historically been a key marketing technology to track visitor behavior activity, improve the user experience, and collect metadata.

But today’s new consumer priorities, data privacy laws, and evolving technologies are leading to the third-party cookie’s demise. Following Safari’s lead in 2016, the world’s three main browsers eliminated (or will eliminate) the use of third-party cookies.

In addition to the demise of third-party cookies, other developments are limiting the use of consumer data for marketers. On the mobile/tablet devices side, Apple’s iOS 14 now requires explicit consent for any mobile identification collection.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and other similar regulations are impacting consumer data collection and processing. In addition, 71% of countries have data protection and privacy regulations and 9% have draft legislations, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD.)

These developments significantly impact the consumer targeting capabilities of advertisers who often depend on third-party data. The vast majority of advertisers use or have used retargeting and old-generation Data Management Platforms (DMPs) that rely heavily on segments fed by third-party data.

Along with targeting, measurement is also significantly hindered. With more stringent consent collection requirements, collecting the consumer identifications needed to track impressions, clicks, or views and reconstruct complete customer journeys is more difficult.

These changes represent a major shift in data-driven marketing – leading to greater reliance on first- and second-party data to meet the challenges of an increasingly privacy-focused world.

But the unfortunate reality is that most organizations simply aren’t ready to adapt to these trends.

In our report Emergence of CDPs: Charting the Path to Data-driven Personalization, we estimate that even though 90% of businesses agree that data-driven marketing is the future, only 20% consider themselves highly mature enterprises, citing the high cost of data acquisition, limited automation, and data fragmentation as some of the top challenges.

How can enterprises prepare?

With this imminent shift from third-party to first- and second-party data, the changing regulatory environment, and evolving customer expectations for omnichannel and hyper-personalized experiences, enterprises are actively investigating new ways of collecting and activating customer data to drive personalization while fostering customer trust.

This is where CDPs become increasingly important and act as a central repository for the marketing stack.

A CDP allows enterprises to capture and store user data to link with all the users’ interactions, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and eCommerce platforms, social media, websites, and apps. Having data from multiple different systems improves the likelihood of identifying an individual. See the customer data platform framework below:

Customer data platform framework

Screenshot 2022 11 10 093829

 

By gaining a single customer view, brands can better understand customer requirements and up-to-date communications preferences, personalize individual brand experiences based on past behavior, and create personalized recommendations for customer segments. All of this can be achieved using unique, relevant, and accurate information that a person has willingly shared with the brand.

CDPs do not replace existing data systems. Instead, their role is to enhance current tools’ capabilities, mitigate risk from the third-party cookie demise, and power marketing teams with near real-time best-in-class audience selection. CDPs bring together existing customer data, anonymous floating attributes, and digital behavior across channels, devices, and tools.

Customer data platform landscape

Adoption is on the rise with, CDPs being viewed by enterprises as one of the most viable, future-proof solutions for managing the overwhelmingly disparate data streams that today’s brands gather and generate about their consumers and prospects.

Enterprises have many choices in this rapidly expanding market, including:

  • Large enterprises like Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce that are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the space and offer CDP as part of a greater MarTech (marketing technology) package
  • Pure play CDP players like Celebrus, mParticle, and Treasure Data that are purpose-built to support and address CDP use cases first that don’t need to be integrated into a larger system

Along with the growth in new entrants, the CDP space has seen a flurry of merger and acquisition activity in recent years of players that have showcased their unique data, campaign, analytics, and delivery capabilities, as illustrated below to see merger and acquisition activity in the customer data platform landscape.

Merger and acquisition activity in the customer data platform landscape

Screenshot 2022 11 10 094205

The road ahead for customer data platforms

As the data management landscape continues to rapidly evolve, CDPs will play an important role in the marketing tech stack and enable marketers to achieve true 1:1 personalization.

For enterprises to reach the desired business outcomes and mitigate risks in their personalization journeys, they should follow a comprehensive roadmap with the following four steps for data-driven 1:1 personalization:

Roadmap for data-driven 1:1 personalization

Screenshot 2022 11 10 094416

 

For more, see our report, Emergence of CDPs: Charting the Path to Data-driven Personalization, or view our webinar, Hyper-personalization Using Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). To discuss Customer Data Platforms further, please reach out to Sandeep P at [email protected].

Discover  how CX leaders can meet the expectations of their digitally enabled customers in our webinar, How are Leading Organizations Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience?

How to Clear Up Industry Cloud Confusion and Choose the Right Solution

November 7, 2022

With so many industry cloud platforms available from different technology players, selecting the right solution for your enterprise is not simple. Learn the important characteristics to look for from providers in this latest blog in our industry cloud series.

As cloud technology matures, industry-specific solutions are emerging as a leading preference over generic options to deliver efficiency, experience, innovation, and business-enabled growth. According to Everest Group’s latest survey, a staggering 87% of enterprises rate industry cloud as one of their top three investment priorities.

The supply landscape is heating up with technology providers leading with an industry cloud-focused go-to-market narrative, investing in multiple offerings for target verticals, initiating industry cloud-dedicated partner launch programs, and announcing large enterprise engagements.

Many technology providers operating in different spaces are approaching this market in their own ways. In our last two blogs on this topic, Demystifying Industry Cloud and The Battle for Supremacy in Industry-specific Cloud Has Begun, we discussed the evolving industry cloud solution provider landscape and go-to-market strategies adopted by key ecosystem players.

Read on for a deep dive into suppliers’ industry cloud offerings and our recommendations to equip enterprises to select the best-suited industry cloud solution for them.

The industry cloud solution marketplace is proliferating

The following three broad categories of industry-specific cloud solutions are emerging in the market:

  • Cloud infrastructure providers such as Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, AWS for Health, and Google Cloud for Telecommunications focus on providing an industrialized set of cloud solutions and services tailor-made for specific industries. Industry-specific configurations, interfaces, use cases, and blueprints are embedded into existing functionalities and bundled with partner solutions
  • Enterprise platform providers such as Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud, and Oracle Retail Cloud embed industry-specific processes, solutions, and frameworks into their horizontal applications and functions to enable industry specificity
  • Business solution providers such as Veeva Systems Life Sciences Cloud, Temenos Banking Cloud, and Guidewire Cloud for Insurance deliver true and heavily nuanced vertical solutions by providing niche industry-specific functionalities covering the breadth and depth of the value chain, targeting industry pain points

Though the objectives appear similar, technology providers take different routes for portfolio development based on their heritage and core strengths and provide varying degrees of industry specificity, adaptability, and improvisation.

For instance, cloud infrastructure providers offer flexible and ecosystem-driven industry cloud, while business solution providers have a more exhaustive use case coverage.

How to select the right industry cloud for your firm?

Enterprises need to make informed decisions when selecting providers of choice and carefully consider their business objectives, existing technology landscape, level of industry-specificity and enterprise-contextualization required, and preferred consumption model (off-the-shelf solution versus customized offerings).

Below, we detail the key characteristics of each solution type to assist enterprises in selection.

  • Industry cloud solutions by cloud infrastructure providers

Cloud infrastructure players provide a basic level of industry-specific functionalities and configurations powered by advanced cloud computing and next-generation technology capabilities in data analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), and the Internet of Things (IoT).

These most benefit existing consumers of cloud infrastructure providers’ technology stack that intend to digitize their platforms and services by co-creating or co-developing solutions with ecosystem players, instead of preferring directly consumable end-to-end industry cloud offerings.

Level of industry-specificity: Low-medium

Degree of customization: High

  • Industry cloud solutions by enterprise platform providers

Enterprise consumers of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and other horizontal applications focused on achieving unified customer relationships, and employee experience can leverage industry cloud solutions by these providers.

Enterprise platform providers provide out-of-the-box industry solution workflows, built on core horizontal enterprise platform functionalities consisting of purpose-built functionalities, pre-built data models, and automation and AI/ML capabilities for particular industries.

Their focus is on digitizing vertical systems across the front, middle, and back offices, powered by customer data-related insights and integration between the sales and operations teams. These offerings have a limited level of customization and are usually available as different editions of off-the-shelf offerings.

Level of industry-specificity: Medium

Degree of customization: Medium

  • Industry cloud solutions by business solution providers

Enterprises requiring extensive value chain coverage and high-grade industry-specific cloud solutions that are looking to digitize their industry platforms can consider offerings by business solution providers.

These solutions are delivered in a pre-packaged and composable format. Enterprises can consume these solutions and services in a modular form and augment functionalities by developing vertical-specific solutions and services on top of these platforms.

Level of industry-specificity: High

Degree of customization: Low

  • Interdependence of technology providers and the role of System Integrators (SIs)

These providers cannot independently provide end-to-end expertise across all layers of an industry cloud stack – infrastructure and platform layer, application layer, differentiation layer, and customization layer.

While these players bring their own strengths to the table, they rely on each other to fill in the missing pieces.

Both cloud infrastructure players and enterprise platform providers depend on business solution providers for domain expertise and vertical-specific contextualization. Meanwhile, enterprise platform and business solution providers rely on cloud infrastructure providers for underlying compute and next-generation technology capabilities.

In this ecosystem-led play, SIs play the key role of ecosystem enablers. For an effective industry cloud implementation, enterprises should engage with SIs for enterprise contextualization, industry knowledge, implementation capabilities, and system integration expertise.

Industry cloud offerings in banking and financial services

To illustrate, we compare different industry cloud solutions in the banking and financial services space by these provider categories below:

Picture1 3

The industry cloud outlook

Though this space is witnessing heightened investments and significant interest among enterprises, the market is still primitive, and the road to success is not straightforward.

To ensure optimum value from industry cloud adoption, enterprises need to clearly define their industry-specific cloud requirements, identify target use cases, choose the appropriate sourcing strategy, analyze available solutions, align the partner ecosystem, factor in technology-related dependencies, and consider industry-specific compliance regulations.

To share your thoughts and discuss industry cloud, contact [email protected] and [email protected].

Also, learn how enterprises can measure the value of cloud and how to unlock its full potential to maximize efficiency in our webinar, How to Unlock the Full Value of Cloud.

Unleashing the Potential of Data in Insurance – The Road Ahead | Blog

November 4, 2022

Leading insurance organizations seek to be more data-driven in their business decisions by harnessing the full potential of the data that resides within their enterprise boundaries. With the evolving technology landscape, real-time experience management, and explosion of data types, insurers are increasingly leveraging real-time insights to improve customer experience. In this blog, we will explore the potential benefits for carriers of unlocking data in the insurance value chain.

Insurance enterprises are facing a tough business environment marred by macroeconomic challenges, heightened natural catastrophes, and unfavorable interest rates. This is creating an urgency to re-evaluate underwriting and pricing models by taking data-driven approaches.

Data can help insurers unleash the next growth wave, enable targeted cross and up-selling generated through higher customer engagement levels, and provide a 360-degree view of their customer needs. For example, embedding data and analytics and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) models within the claims workflow can enable zero-touch insurance claims transactions. The digital interaction process can flow seamlessly from intaking all filed claims consistently across channels, validating and assigning complexity scoring to each claim, segmenting and routing the claims based on complexity, to finally settling them as quickly as possible.

Infusing intelligence across insurance operations while investing in data and analytics capabilities can generate a surplus economic value of US$ 874 billion, according to Everest Group research, as illustrated below.

Exhibit 1

Picture1
Source, Everest Group

However, the industry faces challenges to effectively unlock the full potential of data in insurance, including:

  • Siloed and scattered data: Insurers face a high data spread across disparate systems, business lines, functional areas, and channels preventing them from gaining a 360-degree customer view, resulting in high integration costs
  • Inadequate enterprise-wide data strategy: Insurers need to foresee the entire insurance lifecycle to democratize enterprise-level data and analytics objectives and define how they can manage data as an asset and drive critical business decisions
  • Attraction and retention of skilled talent: Employees with technical expertise and domain-specific skills are scarce

The changing road ahead

Insurers are not only striving to make data-driven decisions but also beginning to explore new business models by combining available big data with advanced AI and ML capabilities.

Insurers are shifting from being risk mitigators to playing more of a risk avoidance role with data, cloud, and platforms being their foundational components. Digitization of the value chain, new business models, and underwriting transformation are helping insurers expand their roles from underwriters to risk decision partners who predict unforeseeable risks and ensure protection.

Data from connected devices is becoming a prominent source to assess and prevent risks. To illustrate, in the auto insurance industry, sensors, blind-spot assist, collision avoidance tools, and other safety systems have already been pre-built into vehicles using behavioral data to help improve safety.

Vast data stores are opening up opportunities to price risk more accurately and offer personalized product structures. For instance, utilizing climate and other third-party data empowers insurers to assess geographical areas that present greater catastrophic risk and charge higher premiums instead of measuring these types of risk through traditional approaches.

Deploying AI and other latest technologies not only assists with ingesting unstructured data but also helps generate actionable insights that previously were unavailable to underwriting and claims teams. Insurance data and analytics spend is growing at an accelerated rate of over 25% annually as insurers look to transition to being data-driven enterprises.

Leveraging data from different types of sources such as wearables, internet of things (IoT) sensors, and telematics through clients’ lifestyles and behavior, insurers are embarking on a new age digitized underwriting process. Smart loss capture and IoT sensors are expected to bridge the gap between the traditional claims processing mechanism to zero-touch claims transactions.

How will the insurance industry progress toward a data-driven approach?

Insurers need to actively engage with the ecosystem of data generated by the insurance enterprises as well as information coming in from external sources such as InsurTechs, and services and technology partners. By doing this, insurers can create and implement strategies that will lead to unmatched automated decision-making support that they can leverage to drive growth and efficiency and extract maximum value.

Exhibit 2

Picture2

Source, Everest Group

Data will be a central driving force to strengthen competitiveness in the industry moving forward – allowing carriers to leave behind their traditional approach of solely being risk protectors and move them toward being risk preventers.

As insurers look to become data-driven, data centers and cloud services can enable companies to respond to evolving customer needs, improve resiliency, instill agility, and drive enhanced operational efficiency. Similarly, leveraging AI/ML models and predictive analytics offer a major solution to the challenge of providing real-time actionable insights. Insurers that can create true differentiation and impact using internal and external data will be able to future-proof their business and be seen as leaders in times to come.

To learn more, check out our State of the Market Report 2022 – Unveiling the Economic Value of Data and the Road to Actualization. To discuss more on these topics and share your perspectives with our analyst team, contact [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

Selecting the Right Low-code Platform: An Enterprise Guide to Investment Decision Making | Blog

July 15, 2022

Enterprise adoption of low-code platforms has been invigorated in recent years by its potential to drive digital transformation. This fast-rising platform solution offers promise to democratize programming with today’s talent shortage and help companies develop applications and enhance functionalities faster. While the opportunities are clear, charting a path to successful adoption is ambiguous. Learn the 4Cs approach used by best-in-class enterprises for selecting and adopting the right-fit low-code platforms in this blog.

As many as 60% of new application development engagements consider low-code platforms, according to Everest Group’s recent market study. Driven by the pandemic, the sudden surge in demand for digital transformation accelerated low-code annual market growth to about 25%. Considering its potential, low code is appropriately being called the “Next Cloud.”

Interest by investors also has accelerated, further driving R&D spend for new product development. Funding activities in 2022 to companies featuring low code in their profiles already amounts to $560 million across 40 rounds.

Platform providers are responding to these elevated expectations with equal fervor by building platforms with deep domain-specific expertise, while others are providing process-specific solutions for enterprises’ customization requirements.

While these markets have resulted in a proliferation of low-code platforms to choose from, it also has led to confusion and inefficiencies for enterprises. As more and more enterprises explore the potential of these platforms, IT leaders are faced with numerous questions and concerns such as:

“How do I select the platform that can address my current and future requirements?”

“Which platform will work best in my specific enterprise IT landscape?”

“How can we optimize the investment in this technology?”

“How do I compare the pricing structures of different low-code platforms?”

“How do we ensure governance and security of the IT estate with these new tech assets?”

Adoption journey and evaluation parameters for low-code platforms

In addition to the high-priority use cases that initiate the adoption, enterprises should consider the platform’s scalability potential, talent availability for support and enhancement, and integration with the broader IT landscape to make the right selection.

Additionally, low-code platforms are intended to address the requirements of the IT function as well as business stakeholders. Considering the drivers, expectations, and requirements of both when making the selection is essential. A collaborative decision-making set-up with the central IT team and key Line-of-Business (LoB) leaders is critical for a successful platform selection. Let’s explore the 4Cs to low code success.

4Cs to low code success

The key steps to ensure successful low-code platform selection and adoption are:

  • Contemplate: Initiate platform adoption by a set of high-priority use cases but plan for scalability at the enterprise level during platform selection
  • Collaborate: Bring together the central IT group to lead the selection and adoption effort and meaningfully involve the LoB stakeholders
  • Compare: Start with business and tech drivers, expectations, and requirements from both IT and business to prioritize and rank platforms and select the best-fit platform
  • Customize: Make small and incremental enhancements post-adoption to broaden the platform’s scope without disrupting daily operations

This approach can provide a roadmap for enterprises with distinct outcomes. We have witnessed enterprises either adopting the best-fit approach resulting in a platform portfolio or leveraging a single platform as a foundation for an enterprise-grade innovation engine.

For instance, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of a leading bank in the US invested in establishing a low code Center of Excellence (CoE) that uses different platforms for process automation, IT Service Management (ITSM), and enabling point solutions for business users.

On the other hand, a large US commercial insurer built its entire end-to-end multi-country app on a single low-code platform. This comprehensive, business-critical application managing claims, billing, and collection is accessible by all underwriters and service personnel.

Next, we explore how to best compare platforms based on their offerings and capabilities. The tables below illustrate the top five business and technology-oriented parameters to consider when evaluating platforms, along with their relevance and enterprise expectations.

Technology parameters for low-code platform selection

Factors associated with the platform’s technical robustness are of key importance to IT decision-makers. Integration and UI/UX capabilities are at the top of enterprise’s technology priorities when comparing multiple platforms.

For instance, Appian ships with 150-plus Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) connectors. Appian SAIL, a patented UI architecture, takes declarative UI definitions to generate dynamic, interactive, and multi-platform user experiences. It also makes the applications more secure, easy to change, future-proofed, and native on the latest devices.

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Business parameters for low-code platform selection

Assessing these parameters is important to understand whether low code can be sustained and scaled long-term and if it addresses the business users’ expectations. Pricing and security constructs are at the top of the list for businesses looking to adopt a low-code platform.

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Let’s consider Salesforce as a case-in-point. Salesforce has security built into every layer of the platform. The infrastructure layer comes with replication, backup, and disaster recovery planning. Network services have encryption in transit and advanced threat detection. The application services layer implements identity, authentication, and user permissions. In addition, frequent product updates that help it to align its product offering with changing market demands put Salesforce as one of the go-to platforms for all the CRM needs of enterprises.

Low-code platform outlook

The plethora of options makes it difficult for enterprises to zero down their investments on a particular low-code platform. Enterprises must also leverage their network of service partners for guidance in this decision-making process.

Talent availability for implementation and enhancement support is critical to keep in mind during the platform selection. For the same reason, multiple system integrators are now taking the route of inorganic growth to bolster their low-code capabilities.

This is the time to hop on the low-code bandwagon and establish low code as the basis for enterprise digital transformation.

Everest Group’s Low-Code Application Development Platforms PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2022 provides an overview of the top 14 platforms based on vision, strategy, and market impact.

To share your thoughts and discuss our research related to low-code platforms, please reach out to [email protected] and [email protected].

Metaverse and ScienceTech: Will These Virtual and Real-world Markets Compete?

July 4, 2022

Metaverse is the buzz these days. While Metaverse provides an embodied virtual-reality experience, ScienceTech fuses technology and science to solve real problems of humanity. Who will win in the battle for relevance, investments, and talent? To learn more about these virtual and real-world market opportunities and what actions technology and service providers should take, read on.

While they once seemed far out, the Metaverse and ScienceTech are here now. As part of our continued Metaverse research, let’s explore these emerging technologies and whether they will collide or coexist.

ScienceTech brings together technology and science to improve the real world by enhancing living standards and improving equality. It combines technology with physical sciences, life sciences, earth sciences, anthropology, geography, history, mathematics, systems, logic, etc.

Meanwhile, the Metaverse is an emerging concept that uses next-generation advanced technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR), digital assets, spatial computing, and commerce to build an immersive, seamless experience.

Over the past few months, Metaverse has become a hot topic not only in technology circles but also among enterprises. As providers pump billions of dollars to create the landscape and value realization becomes clearer, Metaverse will grab increasing attention from enterprises, providers, and market influencers.

Its serious market potential can be seen by the collaboration of industry participants to define standards to interoperate Metaverse platforms and ecosystems. Everest Group is witnessing great interest in our Metaverse research and our recent webinar Web 3.0 and the Metaverse: Implications for Sourcing and Technology Leaders generated unprecedented client inquiries.

ScienceTech has been around for many years but has been mostly experimental with limited revenue and growth. Technology and service providers have been reluctant to meaningfully scale this business because of its complexity, significant investment requirements, and high risk of failure.

However, the pandemic has changed priorities for enterprises and individuals, making ScienceTech more critical to solving real-life problems. The cloud, an abundance of data, better manufacturing processes, and a plethora of affordable technologies have lowered the cost of enabling and building these offerings.

Competition between Metaverse and ScienceTech

Below are some of the areas where these two emerging fields could conflict:

  • Relevance

Many cynics have decried Metaverse as one more fantasy of BigTech trying to take people further away from reality. This cynicism has gained pace in light of the disruptive global pandemic. The make-believe happy world driven by a heavy dose of virtual reality takes the focus of humanity away from the pressing needs of our time.

While not well defined, ScienceTech is generally perceived as being different from pure play. Some of its ideas have been around for many years such as device miniaturization, autonomous systems, regenerative medicine, and biosimulation. The core defining principle of ScienceTech is that science researched, validated, and hypothesized themes are built through technology. The relevance of ScienceTech may appear far more pressing to many than the make-believe virtual world of Metaverse.

  • Investment

The interesting competition will be for investments. Last year, venture capitalists invested over US$30 billion in crypto-related start-ups. As the Web 3.0 and Metaverse tech landscape becomes more fragmented and crowded, investors may not want to put their money into sub-scaled businesses. This can help the ScienceTech space, which is not well understood by investors, but offers a compelling value proposition.

  • Talent

Technology talent is scarce and ScienceTech talent is even scarcer. Although Metaverse vendors will continue to attract talent because they can pay top dollar, ScienceTech vendors can offer more purpose and exciting technologies to niche talent. In the internet heydays, people bemoaned that bright minds were busy clicking links instead of solving world problems. Metaverse may have that challenge and ScienceTech can benefit from this perception. GenZ job seekers want to work in areas where they can impact and change the world, and ScienceTech can provide that forum.

What should technology and service providers do?

Both Metaverse providers and ScienceTech companies will thrive and share quite a few building blocks for technologies, namely, edge, cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and data. Multiple technology and trends will not battle. Moreover, these two markets serve different purposes and Metaverse and ScienceTech will coexist. Technology and service providers will need to invest in both segments, and capture and shape the market demand.

Providers need to prioritize where to focus efforts, investments, partnerships, and leadership commitment. A different people strategy will be needed because skilling technology resources on science and vice-versa will not work. They will need to select specific focus areas and hire people from multiple science domains. The R&D group will have to change its constituents and focus on science-aligned technology rather than just Information and Communications Technology.

To be successful, providers also will have to find anchor clients to underwrite some offerings, collaborate to gain real-life industry knowledge, and engage with broader ecosystems such as academia, government, and industry bodies to build market-enabling forums.

To learn more about our Metaverse research and discuss your experiences in these emerging areas, contact [email protected] or contact us.

Visit our upcoming webinars and blogs to learn more about upcoming technologies and trends.

Low-code Market Realities: Understanding Common Myths to Avoid Costly Mistakes

June 23, 2022

Despite their growth, low-code platforms are still surrounded by much confusion. Many enterprises incorrectly believe that real developers don’t need low code, anyone can do it, and it’s only for simple problems. To debunk three common myths in the low-code market, read on.  

With its increasing importance, low-code platforms are also subject to several myths and misunderstandings. As with every evolving technology, enterprises have many questions about optimally using these platforms.

Based on our conversations with multiple enterprises confirming the lack of understanding about the low-code market, we tackle the common misperceptions below:

Myth #1: Low-code platforms are meant for use by citizen developers

The term low code generally evokes the impression of an HR manager who, tired of following up with the IT team multiple times, decides to create a leave approval workflow application. While this impression is not incorrect, professional developers and enterprise IT teams are key stakeholders in the low-code ecosystem as well.

Professional developers increasingly use low-code platforms to improve their efficiency. Some of these platforms can provide code quality alerts and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered recommendations, not to mention custom solutions that require minimal tuning.

The built-in DevOps capabilities in these platforms also encourage a culture shift from the commonly used waterfall model among users. For example, supply chain management software provider Nimbi significantly reduced developers in their team from 40 to 24 when they switched to OutSystems from traditional platforms.

We strongly believe central IT teams have a meaningful role in the ecosystem to provide effective oversight and governance, in addition to strategizing the use of the best low-code platforms at the enterprise level. In the absence of centralized governance, low-code platforms may proliferate across the organization leading to aggravation of the shadow IT issues and higher spend.

Myth #2: Low-code development does not require technical skills

As much as we may want to believe, low-code platforms are not a panacea to the ongoing talent crisis. Misleading promises by certain technology vendors have created a common impression that any user can develop any application using low-code platforms. However, low-code development does not imply zero technical skill requirement.

Most low-code platforms enable the extension of their capabilities through traditional programming languages like Java and C#. Off-the-shelf solutions have their limitations, and most applications need custom logic at some point. Typical job descriptions for low-code developer profiles outline technical qualifications like JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, alongside Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipeline tools like Jenkins.

Thus, it is unrealistic to expect an army of business users to step in and take over all application development-related needs from the IT organization. Low-code development remains a role with a highly demanding skillset across various technologies.

Myth #3: Low code cannot be used for enterprise-grade development

Many enterprise leaders and service providers believe that low-code platforms are only suitable for small-scale department-level needs. However, our conversations indicate that low-code platforms are being rapidly adopted for critical applications used by millions of users. Here are some examples of how low code is solving complex IT problems around the world:

  • A large US commercial insurer has built its entire end-to-end multi-country comprehensive, business-critical application that manages claims, billing, and collection on Appian
  • One of the largest consumer goods companies in the world built a huge global application for financial management on Microsoft Power Platform

As we witness the adoption of low-code platforms garnering pace, a lot of myths and misunderstandings need to be cleared up about low code versus traditional development. Technology providers and service partners play a key role in helping their clients navigate the abundant options to orchestrate a carefully crafted low-code strategy and select the best low-code platforms.

At Everest Group, we are closely tracking the low-code market. For more insights, see our compendium report on various platform providers, the state of the low-code market report shedding light on the enterprise adoption journey, and a PEAK Matrix assessment comparing 14 leading players in the low-code market.

To share your thoughts and discuss our low-code market research, please reach out to [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected].

You can also attend our webinar, Building Successful Digital Product Engineering Businesses, to explore how enterprises are investing in next-generation technologies and talent and the most relevant skillsets for digital product engineering initiatives.

2022 Contract Renewal Highlights – Information Technology (IT) Services

April 6, 2022
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Anti-financial Crime Talent Imperatives in the Digital Age | Blog

February 26, 2020

For years, financial institutions have struggled to attract and retain quality anti-financial crime (AFC) talent, which remains a compliance program’s most vital asset. And the situation is only getting worse.  Why? First, both the importance and application of anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud risk management are increasing. Second, the requirements and expectations of regulators are snowballing. And third, demand for AFC talent is skyrocketing while unemployment remains low. It’s a perfect storm.

Perhaps most importantly, the AFC workforce must now be able to work with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Financial institutions that can’t adapt their workforce to the demands of this new augmented human intelligence era simply won’t survive. Knowing what talent to look for – and how to attract, manage, and retain it – is key.

The changing definition of talent and the rise of “bilinguals”

In the past, whenever new compliance initiatives or regulations arose, banks tended to staff up operational teams to address them. Now banks realize that hiring operational staff isn’t enough. Instead, solving for the underlying problem – be it “Know Your Customer” remediation, reducing incidences of fraud, or ensuring better AML compliance – is the answer.

To do this, banks are breaking up their talent pyramid into tasks. Those tasks that are manual and repetitive (and therefore subject to a high degree of automation) sit at the bottom of the talent pyramid. And those requiring a high degree of judgment that can be handled only by skilled employees sit at the top. As a result, talent must now be “bilingual,” possessing not only the domain and operational expertise to drive judgments but also the technology expertise to help automate repetitive, mundane tasks.

Attracting talent

If a bank has bilingual workers, it’s not letting them go, so finding such talent at scale through hiring practices alone is unlikely. Instead, the challenge is to identify skilled workers from either a domain or technology background and train them to develop the skills they lack.

One solution is partnering with universities. For example, recognizing that ready talent is not necessarily available in the marketplace, some service providers partner with universities to identify suitable individuals for entry-level positions and then train staff in those positions on AFC fundamentals.

Developing talent

At the same time, the half-life of professional skills is decreasing at an alarming pace. Regulations and technology are constantly changing, so talent agility is key. Organizations must create an environment of innovation, training, and enabling people to do their jobs faster and better, including enabling them with access to the right tools, be they bots or data libraries.

Firms are increasingly using techniques such as micro learning, which breaks information into bite-sized pieces, and spaced learning, which identifies the right moment for intervention so that trainees retain more information. Gamification is another technique that makes learning fun and increases retention.  Through a combination of these approaches, firms can train employees and develop talent much more efficiently.

Retaining talent

Today’s banks are losing employees not only to other banks, but also to techfin firms. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are all making forays into banking, and they’re always on the lookout for people who can help their engineering teams understand the financial payments and risk disciplines. To retain talent, it’s important to drive workers’ aspirations.

Keeping employees engaged is essential to retention. Engagement can be accomplished through creative challenges and contests that instill sustainable change and help employees use their skills beyond their day-to-day work.

When it comes to AFC talent, it’s a battlefield out there. To learn more about how financial institutions can attract, manage, and motivate AFC talent to achieve the best balance between human and technical intelligence, check out the webinar I recently conducted with Genpact on this topic.

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