**NEW RESEARCH** Predictions 2018 – Business Process Services

TechMarketViews’s theme for 2018 is “Breaking the Boundaries” which fits neatly with what we expect to see in UK Business Process Services (BPS) next year.

IP led services of BPaaS and platform based BPS are already breaking down barriers between BPS providers and enterprise software and application services players. Partnering is becoming an ever-common feature with suppliers and buyers increasingly moving away from a traditional outsourced relationship towards one based on shared risk and reward, pursuing mutually agreed outcomes. Consulting and automation technologies are breaking the boundaries of the front, middle and back offices, allowing processes to be redesigned and integrated throughout an organisation.

We see specifically the following factors playing out in 2018:

Brexit - A ‘glass half-full’ for BPS? - At a very minimum the Government will need new services dealing with immigration, customs, trade and agriculture. These services will need to be scoped and procured very quickly and will lean heavily on SITS providers to make this happen. This provides the opportunity for suppliers to bring ‘ideas to the table’ and contribute to solving some of these challenges.

Partnering replaces outsourcing - the move to strategic BPS - Relationships between suppliers and buyers continue to evolve with new commercial and operating models becoming prevalent. Relationships are less about outsourcing and more about creating genuinely transformational partnerships.

The maturing of Intelligent Automation - Consulting companies and BPS players are partnering with and acquiring capability across a range of technologies to develop Intelligent Automation ecosystems. As the technology matures you can expect to see greater consolidation and integration between consulting capability, RPA and AI. An integrated approach offers a genuinely transformational environment.

‘Virtual BPO’ - a game changer for UK BPS - Combining strategic consulting expertise and intelligent automation technologies will lead to the creation of ‘virtual BPO’ players – a potential game changer for BPS.  ‘Virtual BPO’ has no legacy of labour intensive operating models with which to contend and can offer those clients who are ready for it a ‘blank sheet of paper’ for process redesign and delivery.

Moving beyond the ‘mega deal’ with commodity services - Mega-deals within the UK BPS market will continue to remain in short supply and a marketplace moving towards smaller opportunities, with shorter contracts and greater flexibility, will require a more productised approach. This is already causing an increased focus on suppliers developing replicable propositions that are fast to deploy, technically simple, commercially easy to understand and deliver clients quick value.

GDPR – the risk and the reward - Some organisations have made good progress and have been gearing up for years but there remain many that are not fully prepared. With many of the issues and permissions already automated and integrated within existing business processes there is huge opportunity for BPS providers to help.

More detail on these predictions can be found in the research note Business Process Services Predictions 2018. Readers who don’t have a subscription can contact Deb Seth for details.

Posted by Marc Hardwick at '09:06' - Tagged: bps   predictions