Entries by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Reading the tea leaves again: TBR’s Professional Services and IT Services Team looks ahead to 2Q19

Talent remains the catalyst to success, with leadership Every vendor raises the issue of talent when discussing disruptions and strategic priorities, reflecting the continued struggle to recruit, retain, retrain and reward skilled resources in a crowded, competitive market. To track how vendors have been handling these challenges, TBR will continue analyzing every step of the […]

Pivoting to industry offerings and managing disruption: Not everyone can keep pace

Over the last two weeks, TBR has spent time with three leading IT services and consulting vendors, discussing their strategies for evolving digital transformation and hearing from their clients about what has worked and where frustrations remain. Two common themes came out of these discussions: industry-specific offerings and market disruption. While we’ve frequently commented on […]

India-centric professional services firms jockey for position in the digital world

Position as trusted advisers for enterprise customers’ modernization efforts Technology specialists such as Salesforce and ServiceNow recognized the need of enterprises to have a trusted adviser for their modernization efforts and re-geared their service teams to capitalize on this opportunity. For instance, by verticalizing its service teams, Salesforce now provides industry-specific services to customers modernizing […]

Three years later: PwC’s Miami Experience Center led the way

Three years ago, almost to the day, we went to Miami and saw something truly new, an “Experience Center” that PwC built to physically embody its emerging idea of coalescing consulting engagements around business, experience and technology. Saying we were impressed would be an understatement. Here’s what we said in our March 2016 special report […]

What an energy sector use case teaches us about getting digital transformation right

TBR has kept a close eye on the energy sector as macroeconomic pressures have forced adoption of digital solutions to problems as old as oil itself. As the business of providing digital transformation services has evolved, TBR has increasingly seen use cases proving substantive, transformative change for companies not in the news or in every […]

Reconsidering TCS’ SWOT assessment: M&A comes alive

In November our detailed report on Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) performance and strategy included a SWOT slide with the following item in the Threat category: “Competitors are building assets and scale quickly through acquisitions; TCS retains a conservative M&A stance.” Just a couple of weeks into 2019, we’re seeing a change from the company: a […]

2019 Services Predictions: Fix my business problem with a solution, not a slide — IT services and consulting for human-centric digital transformation

Trust in turbulent times: data access and management as the key to IT services and consulting success in an uncertain 2019 From London to San Francisco, macroeconomic shifts and unsettled political environments in both the U.K. and the U.S. will make the start of 2019 turbulent and likely troubled for many companies, including the IT […]

When your car becomes your smartphone, who handles your cybersecurity risk?

In discussing EY’s recently released Global Information Security Survey with the firm’s Americas Cybersecurity leaders, TBR heard a compelling case for an industry-led approach to anticipating the future of cybersecurity and overall risk. The EY leaders noted the firm echoes its overall industry-led go-to-market approach in cybersecurity, adding that understanding security gaps to be addressed […]