Trade wars and tariff uncertainties conjure up visions of cargo ships, ports, factories and stacks of goods stranded by economic chaos, not consultants and IT services professionals. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are usually good for the consulting business, while the higher costs of running a business fuel demand for more outsourcing. This time, things might be different. This trade war, even if partially suspended for now, may significantly disrupt professional services, especially if tariffs continue creeping into new areas and the trust deficit continues to grow. Steel now, services later.
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Technology Alliances Are Evolving
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystTBR has been evaluating the changing nature of technology alliances through its subscription and commissioned research for decades. A series of best practices have emerged, most often developed by young technology companies, while the commercial impediments seem more acute for legacy vendors with their employees’ resistance to change. The balance of this document will discuss the successful approaches vendors have shared with TBR, and what end customers and small technology companies have shared with us as the anachronisms associated with legacy partner program structures.
Assessing Vendor Partnerships
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystTBR interviews with leaders of small SaaS vendors have shown a consistent blueprint for successful engagement with big vendors that consists of three major elements: Are you a strategic fit with the large vendor? How do you approach the large vendor for top-down attention within the firm? And how do you initially engage the large organization for positive, bottom-up, word-of-mouth marketing inside the large vendor?
Build a Successful GSI Alliance Program in 5 Steps
/by adminTBR views the path to a successful GSI alliance program as a five-step process, with many small steps, tasks and requirements associated with each step. Technology vendors may be anywhere in this journey, depending on the maturity of their GSI alliance program, if they have one. It should be noted that this is our perspective, based on the support we have given companies along this journey with our research and advisory services. We have drawn elements of this framework from ASAP’s Alliance Life Cycle framework to make it specific to ISV-GSI partnerships.
PwC India Update: Sustained Outcomes and Trust
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystIn early March, TBR met with Arnab Basu, PwC India’s Consulting Leader to discuss developments in India and how the firm’s presence and activities have changed in recent years. The following reflects that conversation, as well as TBR’s ongoing research around PwC, the other Big Four firms, and the broader management consulting and IT services market.
Analytics, AI and digital transformation reach tipping point in acceleration
/by TBRDiscover the two main forces shaping TBR’s outlook for the digital transformation market and how they can help you capture analytics and insights opportunities while reducing and managing expenses
Top 5 Questions To Ask When Creating Market And Competitive KIQs
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystDeveloping and deploying KIQs requires creativity and precision, mixed with experience, so we wanted to share five tips we’re learned from over 20 years in this business
Ensuring Competitive & Market Intelligence Models Suit Your Needs
/by adminThere’s no one playbook or set of “hacks” that can help you build models that are actionable for addressing your business challenges. For that, only collaboration and iteration (read: hard work) will do. However, there are a number of key success factors that we believe can help ensure that a CI/MI.
The Top Metrics You Should Be Modeling In Competitive/Market Intelligence (CI/MI)
/by adminTBR dives into the top categories of metrics and specific metrics that we typically see as part of a foundational CI/MI modeling program
How To Build Trust In Financial Model(ing)
/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystA model is only as valuable as the validation, sourcing and trust that underly the numbers. In other parts of this series, we’ve talked about what a financial model is and how it can be used, but none of those things matter without trust in the data. At TBR, this fact plays into every step of working with clients on financial modeling engagements: upfront, during the modeling process, and in the final delivery of the models and our recommendations based on them. Here are some of the techniques we recommend for building trust in your financial models.
IBM makes smart IT services play in the U.S. federal sector IT services space
/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal AnalystThis month Patrick chats with Senior Analyst John Caucis, lead author of TBR’s Federal IT Services Benchmark, and Senior Analyst Elitsa Bakalova, who leads TBR’s coverage of IBM, about IBM’s investments in serving the U.S. federal IT market.