Latest Reports

• Factors Affecting DevOps Engineer Staffing Levels

  DevOps is a natural extension of agile development into the deployment and operational phases of the system life cycle. It has been a way of life among modern, cloud-native software developers, and it is also starting to become popular within enterprise IT organizations, especially those that invest in custom software development. Yet, DevOps engineers are a small percentage of the total IT staff, even among such enterprises. This Research Byte outlines the reasons for this.

  September, 2023

• Combining Technology and Domain Expertise to Deliver Touchless Claims Experience

  With uncertain macroeconomic conditions, an increasing number of natural calamities, and rising inflation, insurers are dealing with a huge volume of claims. Insurers must find new ways to continue innovating through this challenging period. For property and casualty (P&C) insurance providers, this translates to a significant impact on nearly every category of insurance due to the rising claims expenses and costs. Even though they are losing money, they need to invest continuously to offer better quality and customer experience. With the emergence of technologies such as IoT, AI, and telematics, insurers can adopt a more proactive strategy for forecasting, identifying, and mitigating risks, and to support these, they rely on outsourcing claims processing to service providers. This is evident from a 15%–20% increase in the revenue of claims processing outsourcing service providers between March 2022 and March 2023. Demand-side and supply-side trends are covered in our Claims Processing Business Process Transformation 2023 Market Insights™ and Claims Processing Business Process Transformation 2023 RadarView™, respectively.

  September, 2023

• Generative AI Gold Rush: Mitigating the Risks

  While generative AI has captured widespread attention, its uptake has been relatively sluggish due to the pressing concerns surrounding intellectual property rights, data privacy, ethical biases, hallucinations, and environmental vulnerabilities. This whitepaper delves into the imperative enterprise strategy of deploying generative AI with comprehensive safeguards. It also highlights the endeavors of technology companies and governments to establish robust guardrails for generative AI, thus enabling responsible and secure integration. By proactively addressing these critical challenges, organizations can effectively harness the power of generative AI while mitigating its potential risks.

  September, 2023

• End-user Computing Services: Enhancing End-user Experience and Productivity

  Enterprises are undergoing a transformative shift from traditional service-level agreements (SLAs) to experience-level agreements (XLAs) in their end-user computing services contracts. It allows them to focus on parameters impacting business outcomes, such as service accuracy, technology adoption, and employee experience. They leverage AI-driven solutions to optimize device management by predicting refresh and maintenance needs and RPA-enabled chatbots to empower end users with self-service options. End-user computing service providers can help organizations optimize their device life cycle, perform persona-based analytics, deploy sustainability accelerators, and virtualize workplace assets. Both demand-side and supply-side trends are covered in Avasant’s End-user Computing Services 2023 Market Insights™ and End-user Computing Services 2023 RadarView™, respectively.

  September, 2023

• Generative AI Augmenting Digital Procurement Tools

  Digital transformation of the procurement value chain has been growing for years. With the advent of generative AI, enterprises can further automate transactional procurement processes and improve decision-making for strategic sourcing processes. Specialist procurement tool vendors have already started to integrate large language models and GPT technology into their solutions to facilitate digital procurement transformation. This research byte explores the potential of generative AI in the procurement value chain and how specialist procurement tool vendors are leveraging this technology to improve the potential of their tools.

  September, 2023

• Europe Increasing IT Budgets Even More Than US and Canada

  The IT spending and staffing outlook in Europe for 2023 is positive, but CIOs are being asked to be especially careful to make sure their investments count. For over a year, European companies have dealt with inflation, poor economic growth in the region, brittle supply chains, and a war on their doorsteps. By now, we would have expected more companies in Europe to be cautiously preserving cash, preparing for a recession. And yet, for the most part, businesses are not cutting IT budgets. This Research Byte is a brief description of some of the findings in our European IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks 2023/2024 study.

  September, 2023

• Generative AI – Opportunities and Challenges

  Although artificial intelligence originated in academic research in the 1950s, only recently has it captured the imagination of the general public. This has everything to do with the release of ChatGPT, putting a powerful tool in the hands of individual consumers. But what are the opportunities it brings to businesses? And what are the challenges we face in using it? To answer these questions, Avasant Senior Partner Frank Scavo recently conducted a video interview on this subject. This Research Byte provides a link to the full interview.

  August, 2023

• Digital Masters: Balancing Cost Optimization with Innovation through Hyperconvergence

  The global economy is showing signs of resilience. However, although the overall economic outlook appears positive in the near future, it remains challenging in the medium term. As a result, enterprises are enhancing their focus on cost rationalization and turning to a zero-cost transformation strategy to drive and safeguard their digital transformation initiatives. In this transformation, cybersecurity also plays a crucial role as organizations prioritize post-pandemic network security. With the need to balance cost optimization with the innovation and growth narrative, enterprises realize the value of hyperconvergence of digital technologies, wherein service providers help them overcome implementational, technological, and talent-related challenges. Both demand-side and supply-side trends are covered in our Digital Masters 2023 Market Insights™, and our Digital Masters 2023 RadarView™ provides crucial business forecasts for each of the Digital Masters.

  August, 2023

• Digital CX Services: Empowering Growth Through a Connected and Engaging Customer Experience

  Enterprises are revamping their CX strategies by eliminating data silos between multiple customer touchpoints and different business functions to create a single view of customers and deliver unified CX. Companies across sectors are pivoting toward a business outcome-driven approach to CX transformation that measures and drives key business outcomes such as increasing customer conversion, sales, customer engagement, and cost and inventory optimization. The focus has shifted toward leading with an integrated CX. As a result, the providers focus on a broader spectrum of digital CX services. These trends, among others, are covered in Avasant’s Digital CX Services 2023 RadarView™ and Digital CX Services 2023 Market Insights™.

  August, 2023

• IT Staff Growth Mixed Bag

  There have been quite a few competing pressures on IT hiring in recent years. Organizations need more talent, especially those that understand the needs of business and the art of the possible. On the other hand, labor has gotten more expensive and harder to find. Combine the push and pull from these competing factors with economic uncertainty, and this is one of the stranger hiring years in recent memory. This research byte is a brief description of some of the findings in our IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks 2023/2024 study.

  August, 2023

• Digital Workplace Services: Driving Organization Agility and Innovation in the Era of Hybrid Work

  The hybrid workplace has made significant strides since its inception in 2020, with the 2–3-day work-from-home model being widely accepted. Enterprises are dedicated to enhancing employee experience through outcome-based engagements with service providers and experience-level agreements (XLAs) by leveraging emerging technologies such as AI/ML, analytics, IoT, and automation; creating new possibilities in the workplace; and fostering increased collaboration, productivity, and employee satisfaction. These trends, among others, are covered in Avasant’s Digital Workplace Services 2023 RadarView™ and Digital Workplace Services 2023 Market Insights™.

  August, 2023

• Moving from Cost Optimization to Value Generation Through Procurement Transformation

  Traditionally, procurement was considered a cost center but, of late, procurement has become a strategic business function within enterprises. As a result, the role of a Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) is evolving from reducing costs to maintaining supply chain resilience in addition to deriving higher value from their sourcing and procurement function. The priority is not new; however, varied supply chain disruptions are bringing it to the forefront. Further, organizations are engaging domain experts and investing in AI, automation, and analytics to generate higher value from the procurement function. They are increasingly leveraging service provider support to parallelly transform people, processes, and technology. As a result, procurement business process transformation deals have grown by over 15% between March 2022 and March 2023. Both demand- and supply-side trends are covered in Avasant’s Procurement Business Process Transformation 2023 Market Insights™ and Procurement Business Process Transformation 2023 RadarView™, respectively.

  August, 2023