IT Services

IT Services: A Force Multiplier?

The following is the opening segment from our most recent study - "IT Services and Strategic Impacts for Global Banks: The Force Multiplier" -  published via our partner, Aite Group. Learn more about how to access the full report here. Today, outsourced IT services are firmly embedded in all industries and most large corporations. Alphacution’s message to financial sector clients and other buyers of IT services is both blessing and curse: The global IT services sector continues to be dominated by lowest-cost, predominantly India-based human capital, and the motivation to engage with these services continues to be, as it seems to have been all along, about labor arbitrage, or the savings harvested from the reduction of high-cost, U.S.- or U.K.-based in-house human capital in favor of lowest-cost, leased human capital. Although the expectation to improve performance—via higher-quality output, more efficient output, or some other cocktail of innovation—is rarely made explicit, we believe that the potential for enhanced process efficiencies adds value to the equation. This is the blessing part. The potential [...]

By |2020-10-05T21:16:50-04:00June 13th, 2017|Open|

Trojan Horse or Savior? IT Services Continue to Infiltrate Banking Operations

How far can it go? The relationship between large banks, financial services firms, and insurance companies - sometimes simply known by the acronym BFSI - and large IT services and outsourcing firms, like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, or Cognizant Technology Solutions (among several others), has become increasingly and consistently cozy and pervasive over the past decade or so. In the rearview mirror, this development makes total sense. We all now live in a perpetual "more for less" environment. And, if you can't achieve more-for-less, at least approximate the same functionality for less. So, with BFSI caught in a brutal post-GFC vice represented by unprecedented regulatory pervasiveness on one side and a lowest-rate, lowest-volatility market environment on the other, it makes total sense that a ton of legacy infrastructure, legacy software maintenance, and select semi-skilled, labor-intensive processes have gradually been offloaded to lowest-cost purveyors of these types of services. Clearly, this play has been quite popular. Though BFSI is certainly not the only client sector for global IT services - in fact, the diversity across sectors is broad, from logistics to [...]

By |2020-08-17T07:14:09-04:00April 20th, 2017|For Subscribers|

Financial Technology Impacts: YOU are in Darkness – And, THIS is a Flashlight.

Disclaimer: Opinions and a grain or two of salty language contained herein are solely those of the author. Save your time. Just, pick up the flashlight now. Ok. Here's some bait: Chances are quite high that you are searching for answers in the darkness (amidst the chaos). And the tools that you have at your disposal - typically in the form of 5,000 or 10,000 word salads with few pictures and fewer numbers from a "pedigreed" purveyor of guidance - actually do not emit much light. The good news is that you need not toil in darkness any longer. There is a flashlight at your disposal - and, unlike a normal flashlight, this one is designed to grow in luminosity and enhance your enlightenment at the same time. Now, you can continue to deny that this is your reality - and continue as you are - or, you can check out the flashlight. Still skeptical? Here's more of the pitch: I have been successfully solving complex puzzles for a very long time. The puzzle that fascinates me and tickles my curiosity most right [...]

By |2020-08-17T07:14:09-04:00March 15th, 2017|For Subscribers|