Six Building Blocks for Effective Benchmarking
There are six essential building blocks that need to be applied to elicit meaningful and insightful recommendations.
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Service Areas
Key Parameters
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Learn MoreThe FAO industry is experiencing a significant transformation, marked by an increasing emphasis on specialized capabilities to meet clients’ evolving needs. This reflects an increasing demand for comprehensive solutions that extend beyond traditional outsourcing, encompassing technology, advanced analytics, strategic consulting and industry-specific expertise. In response, FAO providers are developing diverse capabilities to enhance their service offerings. This strategic shift not only streamlines financial processes but also offers tailored solutions to address client’s specific challenges. By integrating specialized expertise and advanced tools, FAO providers are positioning themselves as essential partners in their clients’ journey toward operational excellence and strategic growth. This comprehensive approach ensures that providers can deliver value-added services, helping clients navigate complex financial landscapes and achieve their business objectives.
Artificial intelligence governance is a concern for many enterprises. In our recent ISG Market Lens study on generative AI, 39% of participants cited data privacy and security among the biggest inhibitors to adopting AI. Nearly a third (32%) identified performance and quality (e.g., erroneous results), and an equal amount (32%) mentioned legal risk.
There is a lesson to be learned for enterprises as they strive to make use of analytics and data to out-compete their rivals. Just as all 100-meter runners are fast, all enterprises strive to be data-driven. Making decisions based on data is not enough to be successful, however. The winners are those that can process and act upon data at the speed of business. This is easier said than done, given the overwhelming historical reliance on batch data processing. As I have previously stated, the execution of business events has always occurred in real time. Batch data processing is an artificial construct driven by the limitations of traditional data processing capabilities that require enterprises to process data minutes, hours or even days after an event. Processing and acting on data at the speed of business necessitates a change of approach by enterprises to make real-time data processing a central component of their analytics and data strategy, rather than an exception.
It is unfortunate that business-focused digital communications are sold under three different headings: Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) and Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS). (And that just counts the cloud options—let us acknowledge the huge, continuing, installed base on premises.) These are terrible ways to describe complex, varied and overlapping offerings.
The latest ISG Buyers Guide for Cloud Computing Platforms uncovers the market evolution of regional and global cloud providers. Buyers Guides for Public Cloud Platforms, Private Cloud Platforms and Hybrid Cloud Platforms are part of the recent software provider evaluations. ISG Software Research defines Cloud Platforms as a software service for organizations to access virtualized IT resources via the internet on a pay-per-use basis. These resources include servers, data processing power, data storage, networking infrastructure, virtualization capabilities and more. Cloud platforms are an enterprise alternative to operating on-premises data centers and compute environments. However, not all cloud platforms are suitable for all enterprise use cases. Multiple capabilities remain underrepresented and will keep enterprises from accelerating the adoption of cloud-powered services and broader migration of workloads. This analyst perspective highlights opportunities for cloud service providers to better meet enterprise requirements in the coming years.