Tag: service delivery automation

Quick Takes on Robotic Automation | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Since the start of 2015, we have had the opportunity to speak with a wide range of old friends, new acquaintances, and industry contacts – and spanning across enterprises, services providers, technology providers, academics, and consultants. Almost without fail, the topic of robot process automation (RPA) comes up. Most of the discussion aligns with the thinking in our report from last October (Service Delivery Automation (SDA) Market in 2014 – Moving Business Process Services Beyond Labor Arbitrage), but some goes deeper and adds fresh new colors.

In this blog we offer a quick summary of recent observations from these dialogues. Although these points are an amalgamation of many conversations, a few bear mentioning specifically. Mihir Shukla (CEO of Automation Anywhere), Lee Coulter (CEO of Ascension Health Shared Services), and Gianni Giacomelli (SVP Product Innovation/CMO at Genpact) debated the trends in disruptive technologies, particularly automation, at a recent SSOW event in Orlando. Additionally, Matt Smith and Dan Hudson – formerly leading Virtual Operations North America, now in Cognizant’s RPA group – spent some time explaining how their views have evolved as they have gone from advising service providers to actually working for a provider. We also spent time speaking with a number of enterprises with process improvement programs that are utilizing robotic process automation, plus conducted a recent webinar with Telefónica about automation.

Viability of RPA

  • RPA is a “no regrets” move that essentially guarantees results. Beyond the somewhat obvious fact that it can generally deliver savings quickly, it is also flexible. Unlike many decisions in global services, the approach, priorities, and tactics can all evolve fairly rapidly without having to take major steps back because the automation routines are not fixed and are designed to be changed. In this way, it is closer to how small applications outsourcing projects are simple compared to large infrastructure agreements with multi-year terms, which are complex and hard to reverse transitions, etc.
  • For automation-friendly processes of 8 or more FTEs, 40% savings is a reasonable expectation. Sometimes it is less but can also often be more. As a result, ROIs of new initiatives are measured in quarters, not years.
  • Although the cost savings is nice, the predictability and rigor from automating complex, but rules-based processes can add tremendous value. It makes knowing that operations are under control much easier. Plus, the benefits of reduced errors and delays can be a huge positive–truly value beyond cost savings.

Rate of adoption of RPA

  • Although initial processes can be implemented in several months or quarters, it requires two to three years to implement and reach significant penetration of processes across an organization.
  • There is a surprising degree of organizational inertia to not look seriously at RPA or go slowly. As a result, our view is that it will take five years to penetrate most of the market – despite being a fairly simple, almost no-brainer approach.
  • As an illustration of the pace of adoption, consider the exhibit below from our recent webinar on service delivery automation. RPA is making inroads into FAO renewals and new deals. However, notice that only 12-28% of recent deals are including RPA. Given that most of those are 4-5 year terms plus others immediately preceding them had even lower rates of RPA inclusion, this means that 3-5 years from now deals signed without RPA will be coming up for renewal…and it will still be the majority of the deals hitting the market without RPA. Once we see the deals per year with RPA cross 50%, the rate of change in the market will be noticeably faster. The wildcard, of course, is how many of the deals being signed now without RPA will be restructured during the term of the deal to include it – this will happen, but the rate is not yet clear.

RPA adoption

Technology models for automation

  • No single tool can do everything and it is a matter of building the right portfolio of options. Further, even if a tool tried to do everything, the market would likely be reluctant to select it due to fear of lock-in.
  • Interestingly, we are seeing more proprietary tools by service providers coming into play. This is not to say that the commercially available tools aren’t effective – they are, but rather that providers are experimenting with making their own investments to avoid licenses fees and to create the operating model they desire. In fact, there is a general feeling that some of the proprietary tools have functionality not found in the commercials tools (and vice versa), such that we may be entering an arms-race for innovation in automation tools. Might this even lead to service providers being willing to license their proprietary tools without also providing accompanying services? Time will tell, but this would seem to be a compelling way to attract and retain clients with a differentiated offering while spreading investments across a larger base of users.
  • At this point, those organizations electing to utilize outsourcing appear largely comfortable allowing their service provider to select and provide the relevant tools (results-oriented mindset). Those enterprises wanting to select their own tools, tend to shy away from an outsourcing model anyway.

In case you missed it, we recently released some additional information on automation and technology in business process services:


Photo credit: Flickr

Infosys’ New Strategy Connects all the Dots | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

I recently had a chance to sit down with Infosys’ CEO and his team, and they shared with me their new/renew strategy. From what I understand, it resonates with where the market is heading. This is remarkable as it addresses the vexing problems and risks service providers now face in trying to change their business to address new models, new technologies and new customer expectations. It is always easy to drink the Kool-Aid, and I am definitely experiencing a sugar high. However, the Infosys strategy is one to watch as it appears to connect all the dots in a quickly evolving marketplace.

There are a number of things I find attractive about this new/renew strategy. First is the simplicity of its messaging. It’s easy to understand where they’re coming from and that they are focusing on their customers, not on Infosys like their past strategies. That in itself is powerful for customers’ understanding of what Infosys stands for and where they are heading. And it’s also powerful for the Infosys team to be able to understand what to focus on and what not to focus on. That resonates.

The new aspect

Second, I find the direction compelling. Clearly there is much in the market that is new. New technologies and new business models are driving the market and, when combined, are extremely powerful.

Digital changes how companies interact with their customers, and there’s nothing more powerful than that. Cloud changes the speed and agility and price at which companies can move. The consumption-based and as-a-service models allow companies to align services closely with business outcomes and only pay for services as they consume them. Taken together, these new technologies and business models are very relevant to where customers are headed with their business, and these new areas are capturing the growth in the services segment.

Infosys aligning itself with this direction makes perfect sense as they move to redesign their growth and maintain their leadership position in the services industry.

The renew aspect 

This aspect of Infy’s strategy is equally powerful. There is a second set of technologies that allows providers to change the way they deliver services. I’ve blogged often about four of these technologies: automation, analytics, robotics and artificial intelligence. Providers such as Infosys are looking to harness these technologies transform their environment, lowering costs and making their existing services far more responsive than they’ve been before.

Customers are more demanding

So Infosys is tapping into the big themes in the marketplace. They’re leveraging new technologies and new models to connect the dots to new opportunities for growth. And they’re renewing their existing business by harnessing new technologies and capabilities to optimize their service delivery.

Underpinning the strategy is a sea shift in customer expectations. Enterprises are increasingly more demanding of their existing services and at the same time impatient to take advantage of new technologies and business models.

I like Infy’s new/renew strategy because I believe it is directly in concert with where we at Everest Group see the market moving – taking advantage of new technologies and rethinking how to optimize existing services. And it embraces the “old wine in old wineskins” concept I recently blogged about.

I think this strategy will position Infosys well. A word of caution: as an often-quoted lines goes, “Execution eats strategy for breakfast.” So we look forward to seeing how they execute in this marketplace.


Photo credit: Flickr

Big Bad Wolf Coming to Huff and Puff and Blow Down Providers’ Houses | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

At Everest Group, we researched the potential effect of robotics and automation on the F&A services space. The outcome is almost as grim as the Grimm’s Fairy Tale of a fictional wolf huffing and blowing down the three little pigs’ houses. Where companies implement robotics into finance and accounting functions, we see a reduction of 25-40 percent of the FTEs by the time the implementation is complete.

Some service providers are scared – and rightfully so if our data holds – about the industry turning in a significant way to robotics and automation.

Like the big bad wolf blowing down the first pig’s straw house then moving to the next pig’s wood house, automation and its impact will come in waves. The first wave, as providers move away from an FTE-based model to a transaction-based model, will result in 25-40 percent FTE reduction, with the next two waves in increments of 10-15 percent each. Making the situation for providers even worse, clients will expect their providers to share the cost benefits of automation with clients, which will cause further revenue compression. For service providers, the shift to robotics and automation is a horror story right out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

But in the children’s tale, the third pig built a house of brick that the wolf couldn’t blow down. The good news is there is time for providers to build brick houses.

Here’s the blueprint for building a service provider brick house: Build a transaction-based model rather than an FTE-based model and use the savings from that to expand into new areas. This will create a growth engine that can offset the revenue decline in the shift from FTEs to automation.

It’s clear at this point in time that existing F&A clients aren’t lining up to drive automation schedules … but they will over time. The big bad wolf is coming, but providers have time to build a brick house, and they can use their existing client foundation to do that.

Just don’t wait and get caught in a straw house when the big bad wolf arrives.


Photo credit: Flickr

How Automation Will Change the Services Industry | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

As we at Everest Group look at the service delivery automation landscape and think forward to where we believe it’s heading, there is truly a lot of disruption in the picture. From working with and talking to service providers and enterprises implementing automation, we recognize that it’s more than just a labor-to-technology substitution. It opens up a lot of issues around service delivery and even how processes should be designed. It could change everything.

Let’s look at four areas of issues that result from automation.

Upgrade cycles

Some of the rationale for upgrading ERP systems or systems of records is to make incremental improvements. Automation eliminated that need. It’s not that you won’t need to invest in an upgrade; but there will be less pressure to upgrade.

Work location

As you automate transactional or rote work, you separate judgment and exception handling. This results in new choices as to where and who does that work and how you manage the talent for that work.

Process design

Automation also requires that organizations build a more intentional view of their business processes; otherwise, they will lose some knowledge residing in the rote staff doing the day-to-day work.

Sourcing

Customers may also change their thinking with regard to the providers that do this work. They will certainly ask more of the provider. Labor arbitrage will become less powerful and the ability to drive and maintain the automation layer will become more important.

Investment upgrade cycle choices, location choices, process design choices, sourcing choices … indeed, automation could change everything in the world of service delivery.

KABOOM! Is an Implosion of the Services Market Coming? | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

There is rising concern among the Indian service providers that their arbitrage model is about to go through a significant and abrupt change – and not to their benefit. As I look at the various factors driving their concern, I see a set of challenges that will fundamentally reshape the industry and create new winners and losers. What remains to be seen is how quickly it will happen and exactly how it will affect the providers. Here is my analysis of the situation.

What is driving providers’ concern – even fears for their business?

Challenge to FTE model. Clients want automation, and the providers fear that automation will require far fewer people to deliver services. They now want to buy software-as-a-service rather than people. It’s basically a substitution of technology for labor, which manifests itself as robotics, SaaS and cloud. Growth of the Indian ISP businesses is slowing as the customer demand now is to have a different conversation around capabilities instead of just moving the work to India for labor arbitrage.

Challenge to factory model. We’re seeing increasing commoditization of services. The Indian providers recognize that they built factories that, at the core, break work into different constituent pieces and drive that work to be done with the most junior people possible. But that actually caused commoditization. The client mindset is: “If you can segment the work like that, why not go ahead and automate it?”

Clients today want domain industry knowledge, rare skills, more capabilities on site at the client location and more intimacy from their service providers – and all four of these demands are hard to deliver in the factory model.

Challenge to profit margins. The challenge to the FTE and factory models drive providers’ fear that they won’t be able to maintain profit margins like those in the past built on labor arbitrage.

We’ve known that arbitrage wouldn’t last forever and that providers couldn’t keep extending it indefinitely. It had natural limitations. Now we see the market moving in a new direction. At Everest Group, we believe this will fundamentally reshape the industry.

Kaboom

Important issues in heading in the new direction

I think there are important questions around the reshaping of the Indian ISPs’ businesses.

In what way will the change manifest itself? Will the change in business models result in growth, cannibalism, or both? And to what degree? Will the change, for the most part, only affect where the new growth opportunities are? Or will it cause providers to cannibalize their existing client work?

If it just affects where new work is, it’s much easier for challengers to capture those opportunities. But it’s more difficult for incumbents to transition. For example, in automation they would need to cannibalize the existing work by reducing the number of FTEs, which also will reduce revenue. It will be difficult for incumbents to react to their existing clients’ demands in the change in direction.

There are other questions:

  • How soon will the changes come?
  • How will the Indian providers react?

These are unanswered questions today, but they’re very important. How quickly it happens will affect how the incumbents react. And how they react will determine whether they will succeed or whether challengers will reap the benefits of the new direction the market takes.

What do you think? Are we going to watch the implosion of the services model where it clashes in on itself and technology cannibalizes the industry, shrinks the revenue, changes the FTE model to a transaction model and shifts the terms and conditions to favor new players over old players?

The Downside for Enterprises in Automating | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Service delivery automation is obviously powerful. But there’s a downside and potential risk for enterprises in the shift to automation.

Benefits include reducing the number of FTEs in a process and therefore reducing the cost. And automation can be applied without changing the system of records. Plus the implementation cost is significantly less than traditional reengineering of ERPs, and it can be driven from a business unit or from the process owner instead of the IT department.

The challenge comes in the automation layers on top of and between an organization’s system of records. They are highly sensitive to changes in underlying systems, and most organizations will struggle to maintain the automation layers.

As an example, if a system of record or a government website, or a website from which the automation tool pulls data changes in any way, the tool or robot could make a mistake or could stop working. So these tools need to be carefully monitored and constantly adjusted or tuned to the changes in underlying systems. It’s not realistic to believe the underlying system of records will be static; like all systems, they change. And even small changes will require retuning the robots.

Lack of monitoring and adjusting the automation layers opens up risks. For example, it could turn type-1 errors (such as making a mistake in a manual process on one invoice, which is a problem but recoverable; you have a $10,000 or $20,000 or $100,000 problem) into type-2 errors (making a mistake on all your invoices, resulting in millions of dollars of problems).

The automation layers will be fragile and can even break. So it’s clear that service delivery automation requires constant attention and maintenance to deliver on its promise. Many IT organizations have the capability to implement the automation files; it’s the monitoring and adjustments that they will struggle with. The significant risks are a strong argument for using third-party providers.

The Vexing Aspect of Service Delivery Automation | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

The advantages of service delivery automation add up to significant value realization. Unfortunately, it’s not a one-time step change. Automating is a continuous shift, and it’s never over. You first assess where it should happen. Then you get comfortable with the tools, get data on the process, get comfortable with the organizational implications of automation, then you learn from automating the functions. And then you do it again. And then you get comfortable with an even higher degree of automation. And then you do it again. And again.

Moving into an increasingly automated world is an ongoing journey – which poses a number of challenges for service providers.

Perhaps the most significant challenge is customers’ interests often are not aligned with their service provider. This quickly becomes obvious when the services are priced in FTEs. Automation reduces the quantity of FTEs, which means revenue loss for the provider. But if services are in a transaction-based model, automation dramatically reduces the cost of processing the transaction, and the customer wants a share of that cost reduction.

I think this is a startling challenge to the BPO industry. At a time when revenue growth is already slowing, if revenue drops proportionately with the level of automation (and it makes sense that it would), service providers not only won’t be able to grow revenues but will have to run very fast to stay even with their revenues.

Certainly automation won’t remove all people from a process; but more and more will be removed over time as the tools expand and become more mature and as companies become more comfortable in using the tools and as their learnings and the data from the tools allow them to continue to drive deeper levels of automation. So we can expect the effect of service delivery automation to increase over time.

Thus I believe we’re looking at substantial change and disruption coming to the services industry. And it’s not a one-time impact. It will be an ongoing impact.

Global Services Trends and Tipping Points for 2015 | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

It’s the season when analyst/advisory firms flood the media their predictions and top-10 lists. One problem with those lists is the services world rarely has 10 things that are different from the year before. Another problem is we tend to hype new technologies and business models and make predictions about their impact in the next year, when in reality they take multiple years to validate and start to build traction. So rather than falling into this trap that I and others fall into every year, here are my thoughts on a few big secular services trends and their tipping-point positions.

Cloud

We’re over the tipping point here. As I blogged previously, the cloud experiment is over. The last three years have been a grand experiment in examining cloud and the cloud products family. 2015 will see enterprises increasingly planning and implementing new functionalities in the cloud environment.

Labor arbitrage

We’re now atop an inflection point for change in the labor arbitrage market. It’s alive and well and still powerful, but in 2014 we saw value propositions that are dominantly arbitrage based diminish in effectiveness. We also saw the growth areas increasingly shifting to an “arbitrage-plus” model in new areas. The implications are that arbitrage-based offerings will be less effective and their growth rates will continue to drop.

2015 will be a year in which provider growth is driven by differentiation around industry knowledge, firm knowledge and functional knowledge, rather than cheap resources from India. Firms that pivot and provide more and better resources in country, more focus around industry and function, more specialization for those that will succeed.

Service providers talked the talk of differentiation in 2013-2014, but they didn’t walk the walk. In 2015 providers that are successful in growing share will execute really great, meaningful differentiation rather than just giving lip service to differentiation.

Automation

The tipping point for automation is still in the future. The industry has had a couple of years of experimentation with automation, but we don’t think the experimentation phase is finished. We have yet to see the automation play done at scale either on infrastructure or BPO; it is yet to move into the mainstream and is yet to be acknowledged for the full power and capability that it possesses. So the stories of automation destroying the arbitrage game are premature.

We think that, much like cloud in the last three years, in 2015 the automation journey will continue its experimentation and advance toward a time where it is implemented at scale and is able to change the value proposition in a meaningful way.

In 2015, we do not expect automation to take meaningful share from the BPO or infrastructure players. But we expect many more proof points to develop and more hype or industry attention to focus on automation.

As a service

We’re not near a tipping point in moving to a consistent as-a-service model, but we’re definitely seeing a growing uptick in experimentation with this model. In 2014, we saw a number of important companies experimenting with implementing as a-service solutions, but they weren’t multi-tenant. What they’re doing is taking their entire supply chain and turning it into a consumable, as-a-service supply chain and achieving similar benefits that are derived from a multi-tenant SaaS offering but without having the multi-tenant characteristic.

The implications of early experimentation are very significant for legacy environments. We expect 2015 to have a number of announcements of leading firms implementing this approach. We believe this is an important development but will not become an industry standard for several years to come.

Service provider landscape

As to the service providers, in 2015 we expect some changes in dominance and success. Cognizant and TCS always do well and will do so again in 2015. What’s interesting is to look at those that are going to change their fortunes. Specifically we’re watching two companies: IBM and Wipro. In 2013-2014 both made structural changes that position them well for entering 2015.

IBM decided to address the cloud issue head on. Big Blue’s purchase of SoftLayer, the moving of IBM’s middleware suite to an as-a-service delivery vehicle and willingness to deal directly and forthrightly with customers on cannibalization issues positions IBM for a potentially strong turnaround in 2015. We already see signs of that in the three megadeals IBM announced in the last quarter of 2014. We believe IBM is in for a strong year in 2015 if it stays the course.

Likewise, I’ve blogged before about Wipro laying the groundwork for a resurgence. Specifically I call out the firm’s early adoption of automation and increased focus on the large megadeal space. We believe Wipro’s adoption of automation allows the provider to be a cost challenger without giving up margins in the multi-tower megadeal space. I expect Wipro will continue its momentum into 2015, building on early successes.

This is not to say that other service providers won’t do well. I highlight these two because they took big steps to turn around their business and position themselves for the future and for velocity coming into 2015.


Photo credit: harmish khambhaita

Years of Plenty Followed by Years of Starvation for RIM Service Providers | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

Right now Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) service providers are enjoying explosive growth as they take share from asset-heavy players. The labor arbitrage market is disintermediating or successfully attacking the traditional asset-heavy infrastructure space. But in every boom are the seeds of undoing.

It reminds me of the story of Joseph in the Biblical book of Genesis. Egypt’s Pharaoh had a dream about seven fat cows and seven scrawny cows coming out of the Nile River and the scrawny cows ate the fat cows. He sent for Joseph to interpret the dreams, and Joseph revealed that Egypt would have seven years of great abundance followed by seven years of famine.

Everest Group anticipates that, with HCL and TCS and Wipro having achieved a break-through level of credibility doing large transactions, these three and other providers behind them are poised for a number of strong years of growth as their cost to operate is lower than the traditional players. We forecast three years of plenty where they will drive explosive growth.

But behind the RIM contracts is coming a world in which the integrated automated cloud platforms such as IBM’s SoftLayer and AWS will move into the enterprise and start taking share from the RIM players.

Unlike Egypt where they experienced seven years of plenty and then seven years of famine, we forecast three years of plenty for RIM players followed by increasingly lean years.

RIM players will need to adapt to integrated automated platforms such as SoftLayer and AWS as they move into the enterprise — just like the RIM model is currently disintermediating the asset-heavy players.


Photo credit: George Thomas

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