On the heels of learnings from the COVID-19 shutdown, the Business Process Services (BPS) industry, is poised for its next evolution—BPS 4.0—an era of agile, efficient, and transformative delivery of next-gen services to enterprises.
Everest Group predicts that BPS 4.0 will create transformative value for enterprise stakeholders by delivering:
1. Resilience and agility with lower risk
2. Exponential efficiencies across the board
3. Active contributions to business outcomes
4. Superior stakeholder experiences
A joint study by the Everest Group and India’s NASSCOM noted that 88% of respondents agreed that COVID-19 has hastened the arrival of a new era in the industry.
During the pandemic, the BPS industry has swiftly adapted to work-from-home (WFH) delivery, ably fulfilled services, maintained quality levels, and demonstrated strong resilience in the face of unprecedented global disruption, with largely satisfied customers.
74% of enterprise adopters of BPS reported moderate or high satisfaction with their service providers during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Rajesh Ranjan, partner and global head, BPS, at Everest Group commented that COVID-19 has created customers that expect real-time, personalized omnichannel experiences. He added that technology is being adopted on a large scale and at a much more rapid pace than originally expected. He also noted that the dynamics and logistics of workforce management is forever changed, the geopolitical environment is turbulent with protectionism, trade wars and global recession, and there is an increased focus on risk management.
“To help organizations navigate these changes successfully, it is imperative for BPS industry to evolve into its next version—BPS 4.0—where the focus will be to create transformative value for enterprises,” he opined.
2021 Predictions
Everest Group predicts the BPS 4.0 era will bring accelerated growth of 6-8% over the next five years.
As in the preceding era, the industry will continue to leverage design thinking, digital and data-driven capabilities, and domain knowledge but in deeper and broader ways. New thinking such as a Business Process-DevOps-style approach, wherein cross-functional teams from different areas, such as development, IT operations, and business operations, will drive agility and speed in go-to-market approaches and decision-making.
Service providers will tap a differentiated and distributed workforce, where a mix of highly skilled talent works in a hybrid location model (combination of office-based and WFH) and with flexible employment arrangements.
“In terms of enterprise-provider engagements, we’re going to see a strong preference for strategic relationships and greater focus on overall return on investment, measured more holistically."
Rajesh Ranjan
He added that technology will remain centre stage, with continuous investments in technology a necessity.
“We’ll see a particular focus on integrated yet composable platforms that provide a seamless flow of data and use analytics and artificial intelligence to improve customer experience and real-time decision-making. Most importantly, talent holds the key to achieving the promise of BPS 4.0. BPS providers will have to double down on their talent-related investments across the hire-to-retire cycle,” he concluded.
