International Data Corporation (IDC) has published a new assessment of 15 companies in the worldwide intelligent automation (IA) services market. The IDC MarketScape report uses a comprehensive framework to assess these vendors relative to a set of criteria that explain both short-term and long-term success in the IA services market. The evaluation also incorporates buyer perceptions of these providers’ key characteristics and capabilities.
The 15 IA services providers profiled in this report are: Accenture, Atos, Cognizant, Deloitte, DXC Technology, EPAM, EY, Genpact, HCL Technologies, IBM, Infosys, KPMG, NTT DATA, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Wipro.
Intelligent automation covers a spectrum of business and technology choices that represent changing human-machine interactions depending on who analyzes data, who makes the decision, and who acts based on the decision. Intelligent automation can be applied across a hierarchy of tasks, activities, processes, or systems.
Intelligent automation services are utilized to assess, plan, design, implement, and operate several levels of automation. Basic automation is used for generally repeatable rules-based tasks that leverage structured data and are addressed with basic technologies such as macros and scripts. Process automation (or RPA) is enabled by software tools that are programmed to automate processes that were formerly performed by a human following a predetermined set of rules.
When exceptions arise while using RPA, both humans and machines address them. Autonomous decision-making, or decision-centric process automation, is enabled by systems or machines independently solving non deterministic tasks by continuously receiving and analyzing data to discover patterns that predict a decision and offer a recommendation to improve it.
“As enterprises adopt IA solutions to reduce costs and improve IT and business operations, they need support from services providers to develop the right approaches for managing data, people, processes, and technologies to enable IA deployments to grow and thrive. Success in this supporting role will require services providers to demonstrate expertise not only in IA technologies but also in developing solutions that achieve customers’ business objectives and address the human and organizational impacts of IA adoption,” said Jennifer Hamel, research manager, Analytics and Intelligent Automation Services at IDC.
Among buyers of IA services, the top business priorities were improving operational efficiency and reducing costs, followed by strengthening customer relationships, driving revenue growth, and preparing for future business needs. Among the buyers surveyed by IDC, lines-of-business heads were the most common sponsor of IA services engagements and project-based services, including business consulting, implementation, and custom application development, were the most common types of engagements.
In its evaluation of IA services providers, IDC found that the top areas of strength were functional or offering strategy, delivery model strategy, and portfolio strategy, as well as the core capabilities of employee management, growth sustainability, and customer services.
