growth strategy Archive

There’s an old joke that asks how many psychologists it takes to change a light bulb. The answer is it doesn’t matter; the light bulb has to want to change. I think this has a deep truth when applied to the services market. Almost every service provider looking for growth sees that capturing a

I’ve been blogging about why certain companies such as Accenture, ADP, and TCS are such successful service providers. In contrast, let’s look at HP and examine why it’s breaking up. I’ve explained in prior blogs that the most successful companies have six operational elements aligned, as shown in the Everest Group assessment framework below.

I’ve blogged extensively on how the industrialized arbitrage market is maturing rapidly. One of the many frustrating aspects of a maturing services market is that a dominant portion of procurements for larger opportunities come through RFPs. These RFPs require sophisticated and elaborate responses with large deal teams and solutioning teams working at the provider’s

TCS has a sophisticated suite of apps and delivery tools. They accept small engagements with the intent to grow those accounts by being reliable and over-delivering. And they’re willing to shift away from their comfort zone. But this isn’t why TCS is a leader in the services industry. Why are they so successful? To

Analytics has been a bright spot in the services world, particularly for the Indian service providers as their analytics practices have grown faster than the rest of their organizations. They often are able to command premium pricing in this space, and it holds the tantalizing promise of transforming other service lines such as ITO,

FOMO is reaching epidemic proportions among service providers. We see it particularly in the Indian firms, but it’s not confined to the Indian providers. It starts in the sales teams as they fall behind in their sales goals; then it spreads and infects the entire organization. You can easily identify the providers infected with

CSC announced it is splitting into two companies. One will provide service to commercial and government organizations worldwide; the other will serve the U.S. public sector businesses. What are the implications for the services industry? CEO Mike Lawrie has been running CSC’s turnaround. The story line he drove was that he would first drive

Capgemini’s announcement that they have an agreement to acquire iGate is the most recent evidence that the consolidation pace in the services market is picking up. Slowing growth, collapsing margins, and availability of capital with interest rates close to zero are only intensifying the M&A activity. How will the consolidation happen? And which service

After coming back from Nasscom and discussing the inflection change coming to the services industry, I’ve observed a lot of service providers preparing for the shift – especially the apps providers. But I see them making a mistake: putting too much emphasis on apps rationalization and rearchitecting. It’s not that apps rationalization and rearchitecting

Every service provider is looking for the one, simple thing they need to do to change their growth trajectory. They think they may need to change their messaging or perhaps they should incorporate automation into their finance and accounting offering. Or they think moving from FTE-based pricing to transaction-based pricing will grow their business.