TBR’s Business Insights

Shutdown Ends, but Federal Contractors Face a Slow Return to Normal

12.17.25

The 43-day U.S. federal government shutdown, the longest in history, came to a welcome end on Nov. 13, 2025, but for some federal systems integrators (FSIs), the shutdown’s impact could linger well into federal fiscal year 2026 (FFY26). According to the Professional Services Council, the national trade association for federal technology and professional services contractors, it will take three to five days for agency functions to return to normal for each day of the shutdown, implying that operations at some agencies may not return to normal until March 2026.

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Partnerships, Not Products, Will Define How Consultancies and Native AI Companies Share Value in Agentic AI Era

11.03.25

Just like supporting startup programs, many traditional IT services companies and consultancies have struggled to adequately put themselves in their alliance partners’ shoes. And when those partners are startups or immature native AI companies, that struggle will be harder in the absence of leadership, strategic direction and sustained investment. But that’s the potential downside. The upside is that consultancies are perfectly positioned to be change management specialists, helping their largest clients adopt the best new AI.

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Human Capital Management in the Age of (Agentic) AI

10.07.25

Fundamentally HR management remains a back-office function that IT services companies and consultancies can use to drive managed services engagements. And TBR’s research shows that managed services can lead to additional consulting opportunities, particularly when managed services providers (whether a traditional IT services company or consultancy) partners smartly with technology companies, leveraging the data and insights generated through back-office platforms to uncover issues and opportunities.

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GenAI Outcomes or Autonomous AI Architecture: Where Should CIOs Focus?

10.01.25

What good are AI-enabled solutions if an enterprise’s IT environment and architecture can’t handle the data orchestration demands and IT becomes a roadblock to faster, better, clearer insights from AI, rather than the business accelerator expected of IT departments in the AI era? After more than a decade of consultancies and IT services companies helping IT departments become business drivers, will inadequate architecture slow down AI adoption and AI agents at scale?

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Amdocs Is Well Positioned to Continue Absorbing Market Share in the Telecom Industry; AI Is a Key Growth Vector

09.24.25

Although TBR believes it is very early days for agentic AI branding, Amdocs’ early foray into this emerging area and thought leadership underscore how the company is seeking to move into new and adjacent areas as it expands its offerings, especially around consulting, design and transformation enablement.

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HCLTech’s Expanding KYC Journey: From Technology Provider to Trusted Compliance Partner

09.11.25

By evolving its KYC offerings across platforms and clients, HCLTech has shifted from tech implementer to outcomes-driven partner.

DOGE drives civil sector slowdown; defense contractors gear up as Trump’s budget shifts billions to military priorities

08.04.25

The Trump administration’s recent “skinny” budget proposal for FFY26 suggests that nondefense spending will fall from around $720 billion in FFY25 to approximately $557 billion in FFY26, representing a 23% decline. Contractors with any level of exposure to the civilian sector can expect agency reorganizations, layoffs, budget reductions and in-depth contract reviews within civil agencies for the remainder of FFY25 and likely into at least the first half of FFY26. The pace of new awards has already slowed significantly at some civilian agencies, as has the rate of new bookings on existing civilian engagements.

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Geopolitics with Purpose: EY-Parthenon Drives Strategy, Not Just Awareness

07.17.25

TBR has long maintained that the Big Four firms have an inherent advantage against all competitors when it comes to understanding and advising on geopolitical risk. Perhaps only the U.S. government has the same global spread of talent, with professionals in nearly every country, most intimately aware of local business, economic and even political trends. When EY-Parthenon showed off its Geopolitical Advisory team recently, TBR wanted to know: Is this something special?

Manufacturing Growth Slows, But EMEA IT Services Vendors Find Lifeline in Public Sector Wins

07.16.25

This quarter, we look at Accenture, Atos, Capgemini and IBM Consulting in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market, and compare how their industry diversification, portfolios and localization strategies position them for revenue growth. Atos and Capgemini, the two IT services companies whose EMEA revenue makes up over half of total revenue, experienced a steady decline in trailing 12-month (TTM) year-to-year revenue growth in recent quarters. Yet, Accenture and IBM were better able to maintain growth as macroeconomic conditions deteriorated in recent quarters.

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Ensuring Competitive & Market Intelligence Models Suit Your Needs

02.24.23/by admin

There’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)

02.23.23/by admin

TBR 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)

02.22.23/by Allan Krans, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

A 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.

Blog series: Gimme 3 Insight Interviews with TBR's Subject-matter Experts

Technology Business Research, Inc.

IBM makes smart IT services play in the U.S. federal sector IT services space

02.17.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

This 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.

PwC offers rosy outlook for Middle East economies in 2023

02.03.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

PwC recently expressed optimism in the Middle East regarding macroeconomic trends, the challenges local companies face and what is needed from the region to be more competitive globally.

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Landscape Shifts In Management Consulting Require Consulting Firms To Change Their Approach

01.30.23/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Learn which ongoing landscape shifts within the management consulting space have pushed firms to re-evaluate business structures and portfolio offerings

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Industrial IoT (IIoT) – Challenges in the marketplace

12.07.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

Learn why IT services vendors and consultancies must make smart choices around IP and ecosystems in industrial IoT (IIoT)

What’s next for Lockheed Martin after being left out of ABMS consortium?

11.28.22/by James Wichert, Analyst

Notably, Lockheed Martin was left out of the ABMS Digital Infrastructure Consortium, despite ramping up its efforts to underpin the DOD’s JADC2 vision.

Special Report: TBR 2023 Digital Transformation Predictions

Technology Business Research, Inc.

Top 3 Predictions for Digital Transformation (DT) in 2023

11.21.22/by Patrick Heffernan, Practice Manager and Principal Analyst

TBR starts off 2023 with 3 predictions surrounding Digital Transformation. The report includes commentary revolving around Metaverse, AI and how hyperscalers will kill technology agnosticism.

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