Although smaller than the typical IT and professional services firms covered by TBR, Hitachi Digital Services warrants close attention in the coming years. Its distinctive business model, strategic direction and performance — particularly its combination of IT, OT, AI and domain expertise — position Hitachi Digital Services as a potential outlier in the IT services landscape.

On April 15 and 16, PwC Japan hosted over 20 analysts, a partner and PwC executives for a day and a half summit at the company’s Technology Laboratory in Tokyo. Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Innovation Officer Kenji Katsura set the tone when opening the meeting by explaining that over the course of the event attendees would be hearing from leaders across PwC’s businesses — including audit, tax, deals and consulting — highlighting the importance of PwC’s strategy to deliver the full range of the firm’s expertise to clients. While ensuring that PwC’s services remain highly relevant to clients in Japan, the firm’s GTM strategy is closely aligned with its global network. This alignment allows PwC Japan to leverage the best practices and innovations from across the network while also contributing homegrown insights and advancements that can benefit clients worldwide.

Companies keep recruiting, hiring, paying, rewarding, moving, repatriating, retiring and hiring in an endless loop, and EY has capabilities — including consulting, tax and software — that can accelerate movement around that endless loop. EY did not need to say that at the Global Mobility Reimagined conference, as clients understood it already. EY also has a stated ambition to grow People Advisory Services to more than $3 billion by 2031. Absent the worst possible global political and economic scenarios, including a drastic curtailment of global mobility, TBR believes that ambition is perhaps a bit too modest.