We couldn’t resist sharing a quick snippet from our new “Eight Ideas of the As-a-Service Economy” study that reveals some rather alarming news: service providers are blaming everyone bar themselves for obstructing their progress towards As-a-Service.
Click to enlarge.At fault number 1 – the Clients. Top of the lists are their clients themselves, with 78% of service provider executives (from a pool of 238) citing their unwillingness to venture into risk/gainshare models with them. Considering most enterprise clients we talk to complain that their provider refuses to budge from their predictable, profitable FTE delivery model, baffles me here.
At fault number 2 – the Advisors. Next up are sourcing advisors – those lovely folk who bring them to the table and horsetrade to get deals done. Apparently, they are not selling the evolving model to enterprise clients and are just not very capable. We are starting to see more As-a-Service traits in some mid-tier deals, where there is less wiggle room to make huge profits on wage arbitrage, and these frequently are too small to warrant several hundred grand being spent on an advisor. The advisor model is still built for the old work of big scale deals, not the new world where analytical and creative skills, technology enablement and automation are the watchwords.
At fault number 3 – the Analysts. And third on the list appears to be a pot shot as analysts, where providers claim a “Lack of quality research to educate the industry on the benefits of As-a-Service models”. We apologise and promise to write more coherently… and this time make sure you read it, Mr and Mrs provider executive, because we know how much time you spend trawling your way through analyst reports these days….
Least at fault – the Providers themselves. And very last on the list (no sh*t) is the fact that they are struggling with their own inhouse talent to shift the model to As-a-Service. Well that’s great news, as I thought it might be a bit of a struggle for providers to retain their developers and project managers to think analytically, help clients with design thinking, laying down an automation roadmap etc. Now we can all rest easy with the knowledge that the providers will save the day, while the rest of us clients, advisors and analysts can all go away and die somewhere on the scrap heap of legacy labor models, SLAs and dull irrelevant research.
(Cross-posted @ Horses for Sources)
Service providers blame their clients advisors and analysts for their As-a-Service failure is copyrighted by Phil Fersht. If you are reading this outside your feed reader or email, you are likely witnessing illegal content theft.
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