Thought Leadership Archive

We at Everest Group have been exploring robotics and understanding its potential. What we’re seeing is that it’s relatively easy and cheap to implement. Where it has been implemented to date, it results in somewhere from a 15-20 percent reduction in critical shared services or BPO functions, depending on the transactional nature of the

The services industry is facing a big issue. The market for ERP implementation cycle and corresponding transformation projects has matured and is coming to an end. We can see the ERP decline in the reported results from IBM and Accenture and HCL. These three providers have had very big SI practices around large-scale ERP

In our tracking of industry contracts and trends, we find that, in the infrastructure space, incumbent service providers now win recompetes 85 percent of the time. However, the ACV (annual contract value) is 27 percent less scope. This means that the incumbent must be able to add new new logos. The good news is

The Promised Land of SaaS and cloud models in the services world is clearly visible, but it’s frustratingly difficult for service providers to get there. The new models are the land for service providers’ growth and profits, but providers are finding it painful and frustrating as they try to move to the new models.

American country music artist Toby Keith’s hit song “I Want to talk about me” reminds me of a phenomenon in today’s services world — too many providers’ conversations with customers are unproductive. Service providers are very eager to grow their revenue in their existing accounts. As the market matures, this is clearly the fastest,

Many service providers are busy organizing along vertical industries and going to market with vertical solutions. As the services industry matures, it’s very clear that customers want to do business with companies that understand their industry. However, many providers find that verticalization doesn’t give them the growth acceleration they anticipated. So there are limits

Moving work from an enterprise data center to the cloud is not a lift-and-shift transaction. Cloud moves involve reengineering processes. The good news is that providers are emerging with innovative solutions for deploying to the cloud. We’re watching their progress, as we believe they will disrupt the traditional players in the services market. I

Comedian George Carlin commented that men are stupid and women are crazy — and that the reason that women are crazy is that men are stupid. My observation is that it’s a strikingly similar dynamic to what’s occurring in large enterprises’ spend decisions in the global services market today. Business stakeholders are “stupid.” They’re

Recently I had a conversation with an executive at a large software house known for its ERP. One of many things that struck me in our conversation was the change in whom the sales team targets. Their primary target is no longer the CIO; now it’s the CFO. Apparently, in today’s business outcomes-driven world,

CSC just went through another employee layoff, and it’s apparent that it might be as much as 5 percent of its total staff. This move comes within the backdrop of the impressive turnaround that CEO Mike Lawrie has been driving. Since he took over, the stock has done exceptionally well and is back up