Nearly all IT services companies and consultancies have adopted a customer-zero approach to emerging technologies. With enough experience and scale, they should move into the latter half of the 2020s with compelling use cases for clients and opportunities to benefit from their internal AI adoption.
As workforce and employee experience grow increasingly critical in the era of rapid technological advancement, EY’s refreshed approach within People Advisory Services — centered on a unified methodology and a stronger focus on people experience — helps distinguish the firm from its peers and better aligns with technology-driven transformation initiatives. Further, taking a global approach to retraining and methodology creates a more unified approach within the firm to better engage with clients and navigate market change.
HCLTech has a long history working with AI, building off its DRYiCE platform, the company’s original automation platform. This heritage equips HCLTech with the background and trusted technical expertise, backed by its engineering prowess. to deliver on clients’ AI transformation needs. Further, HCLTech can pursue larger-scale and more aggressive AI-led transformations, helping the company accelerate ahead of its peers in terms of client engagement and growth.
Learn how competitors, including IT services companies with consulting capabilities, can calibrate their strategies in the consulting market to take advantage of missteps by the Big Four firms, McKinsey and BCG
TBR has reported extensively on Fujitsu’s evolving AI capabilities and offerings, noting in a special report in May 2024: “TBR appreciates that Fujitsu’s combination of compute power and proven AI expertise makes the company a significant competitor and/or alliance partner for nearly every player fighting to turn GenAI [generative AI] hype into revenue. Second, Fujitsu’s vision of ‘converging technologies’ aligns exceptionally well with the more tectonic trends TBR has been observing in the technology space, indicating that Fujitsu’s market positioning is more strategic than transactional or opportunistic.” Add in Fujitsu’s deepening experience in delivering AI solutions to AI clients, and TBR continues to see tremendous near-term opportunity and growth for Fujitsu and its ecosystem partners.
One could argue that many of KPMG’s steps, including launching partner-enabled industry IP, reinforcing trust, developing regionally organized operations, outlining a select few strategic partners, and investing in platform-enabled service delivery capabilities, resonate with the moves taken by many of its Big Four and large IT services peers. We see two differences: KPMG is laser-focused on exactly which of the strategies above to amplify, rather than taking a trial-and-error approach, and KPMG has an opportunity to ride the wave of a once-in-a-century professional services market transformation.
The India-centric vendors leverage partnerships to expand their technology capabilities and scale while also bringing in industry knowledge to strengthen the value of their portfolios. Although these partnerships do not vary significantly from those of other IT services vendors, the India-centric vendors each bring different benefits, such as price competitiveness and low cost of scale, that can enhance other vendors’ go-to-market strategies and ability to reach underpenetrated markets while also bringing in portfolio expertise. Understanding how similar companies bring different capabilities and strengths to their technology alliance partners highlights opportunities for other ecosystem players, such as smaller software companies, OEMs and niche consultancies, that are looking to expand with the India-centric vendors.
Fujitsu’s investments in Fujitsu Kozuchi have equipped the company well to appeal to clients’ needs around the technology, providing opportunities to supply analytics with associated text, vision and trust in support of business operations. While AI technology evolves rapidly to include new capabilities, Fujitsu’s approach to developing the platform and leveraging partners and internal capabilities gives it an advantage in offering a wider set of services.
PwC’s fundamental value proposition around trust and client intimacy reflects the firm’s strong governance, risk and compliance (GRC), cybersecurity and technology capabilities. TBR views risk and cybersecurity offerings as natural enablers for client discussions around business model reinvention and — when complemented by credible customer zero use cases across multiple domains, including AI — an extension of trust throughout a client’s ecosystem.
Learn why strategy consulting will rebound in 2025, and which consultancies will benefit; how GenAI-enabled solutions will upend organizational structures and business models for IT services and consultancies, even as enterprise adoption of GenAI slows; and how the emergence of ecosystem intelligence as a strategic priority will impact IT services companies, consultancies and technology alliance partners