AI cost controls are solving the wrong problem. The real challenge is context debt—and until organizations manage it, spend will rise faster than value.

You can use business process outsourcing (BPO) services to deliver measurable, AI-enabled operational outcomes, raise enterprise AI maturity, and optimize customer experience (CX) and customer effort. But to realize these benefits, you’ll first have to select from a diverse set of providers that vary by size, type of offering, geography, and business scenario differentiation. Business and technology leaders should use this report to understand the value they can expect from a BPO service provider, learn how providers differ, and investigate options based on size and market focus.

The advent of cloud ecosystems and the rising role of technology in business have amped up pressure to get better outcomes from technology and service partners. The old model of engaging providers as vendors misses big opportunities to extract the full value from their investments in capabilities, alliances, and solutions. In a high-performance IT strategy, you will see partners as extensions of your teams, helping you deliver the capabilities your business needs. By focusing on business outcomes, aligned incentives, and blended teams, you will maximize the value you get from your partners. Adopt four co-innovation practices to improve results.

A traditional approach to service providers misses the innovation opportunity. The old approaches of RFPs, pricing inputs, and relying on the promise of innovation fail to deliver. Companies pursuing a strategy of high-performance IT take a different approach, innovating through ecosystems of cloud platforms and co-innovation partnerships. A co-innovation partner brings assets, alliances, and solutions and helps you transform by orchestrating the value of your internal and external ecosystems. Not every provider can be a co-innovation partner, but the ones you have should share the risks and rewards and be financially motivated to achieve your outcomes.

During a partner selection process, you will build your request for proposal (RFP) and prepopulate your evaluation with objective research. Where appropriate, use Forrester Wave™ reports — we analyze over 200 technology and service markets — to see how the providers line up in advance of their responses. This helps eliminate surprises.

The year that made uncertainty a boardroom topic recently ended. Leading public technology service providers’ Q4 2025 earnings announcements contrast that uncertainty with a rosier outlook for 2026. Bookings grew, but margins slumped despite firms’ valiant efforts. More providers announced AI revenue, although it’s not always clear what counts as such. Recent industry developments foreshadow what’s coming; this report explores what they mean for technology executives.

During a partner selection process, you will build a shortlist of providers with the right capabilities, experience, ecosystems, and viability to address your business scenario. Where appropriate, use Forrester’s Landscape reports — we analyze over 200 technology and service markets — to build your shortlist.

We attended IBM APAC Analyst Insights 2026 event in Bengaluru this week. The event surfaced a thesis worth examining: Digital sovereignty, the rise of agentic AI, and cybersecurity are converging in ways that favor vendors with broad, integrated stacks. IBM is making an aggressive play across all three. Here’s what tech leaders should take away […]

Last week’s Siemens RXD Summit (Real Meets Digital) in Beijing marked a strategic milestone for the company, not only as its first RXD technology summit but also as a clear signal of how central China has become to Siemens’ global industrial AI strategy. Siemens positioned China not just as a growth market but as a […]

AI is accelerating the industrialization of professional and tech services. As AI-powered delivery models drive labor productivity in some services by 50% or more and service providers increasingly invest in and orchestrate AI agents to create code and other output, traditional T&M pricing models no longer make sense. Procurement needs to step up and lead their organizations toward pricing for measurable business outcomes rather than hours expended. You must educate and equip your buying network on the tradeoffs between different pricing models and choose one that creates the most incentives for providers to deliver the outcomes, while sharing risk and rewards. This report shows you how.