Introduction

Client expectations from their business process service providers are moving beyond cost reduction and operational efficiencies to a greater impact on business outcomes. This has led to an unprecedented increase in the adoption of technology, as service providers strive to address these new expectations in the most efficient manner.

As the buyers in the Business Process Services (BPS) space are at different stages of maturity in terms of technology adoption, they can be divided into two broad groups – first-time technology adopters and experienced organizations. The service providers are responding to these two groups by adopting a differentiated technology strategy. Consequently, the solutions coming out vary considerably across their development, deployment, pricing, and other characteristics.

Also, as buyers look to garner greater impact from their outsourcing decisions, a new league of transformative solutions, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and digital technologies, are fast emerging.

In this context, the report takes a top-down approach to decode the complexities in the technology landscape and market dynamics.

In this report, we analyze the technology landscape in the BPS market across various dimensions:

• Classification of the various categories of technology solutions
• Key observations from adoption and investment perspective
• Comparison, followed by detailed analysis of standalone / platform-based and augmentation solutions
• Demystification of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions

Scope of the study and methodology of this report include:

• Over 275 technology solutions with 52,000+ deployments in the BPS market
• Coverage across 14 BPO service providers: Accenture, ADP, Capgemini, Cognizant, EXL, Genpact, GEP, HCL, Infosys, NGA, Sutherland Global Services, TCS, Wipro, WNS, and Xchanging

Key exclusions:

• Solutions leveraged by the service provider for internal business operations
• Infrastructure-level technologies

Content

This report provides an overview of the technologies being used in BPS space. After introducing a framework for classifying the current and emerging technology solutions, it analyzes the different categories of technology solutions on parameters such as solutions launched, development models, investments, deployment methods, and pricing models. The report also defines RPA, and analyzes its adoption drivers and characteristics. In addition to that, there is a brief overview of the leading service providers and their approach to technology solutions.

Some of the findings in this report are:

• Technology inclusion as a part of BPS contracts has been growing steadily and is increasingly becoming a significant factor in buyer decision-making
• A large number of technology solutions for BPS have been launched in the last one year, and the number of solutions being launched every year continues to grow progressively
• Interest in digital solutions amongst buyers has grown and there has been a proliferation of solutions with digital components
• Technology solutions can be broadly divided into two categories – standalone / platform-based and augmentation solutions
• More augmentation solutions are being developed and launched, relative to standalone / platform-based solutions
• Within augmentation solutions, analytics and data management solutions have grown significantly. However, in the last year, RPA solutions have shown exponential growth
• RPA can be a game changer in the BPS space as it has the potential to change the prevailing business models