HFS Data Viewpoint: As enterprises strive for the OneOffice, the Triple-A Trifecta is paving the way

• The Triple-A Trifecta defined. The Triple-A Trifecta is HFS terminology for the intersection of three critical change agents—automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and smart analytics. HFS developed the Triple-A Trifecta framework to unify how these digital transformation change agents work together to deliver business outcomes in pursuit of the OneOffice.
• Automation is often the anchor “A.” A study of 21 service providers across 15,000 of their clients and ~50,000 engagements indicated that automation, these days often RPA, is the biggest contributor to their Triple-A engagements. While engagements can start anywhere, they often begin with “single-A” projects that blossom into “double-A” and then eventually Triple-A engagements, generally in line with the additional value enterprises want to derive from emerging technology and their broader digital transformation plans.
• Triple-A adoption is just starting to come to life. As HFS data has shown, the state of intelligent automation coming into the pandemic was lots of potential but limited scale. It’s no surprise then that the current state of Triple-A adoption shows the majority at the implementation stage or early production environments. 2021 is gearing up to be the “prove it” year for digital transformation.
• Expect relatively fast growth as projects expand. While just 19% of service provider engagements now include integrated automation, AI, and analytics elements, their inclusion is on the rise. Providers indicated their year-over-year growth (FY2019–20) is a whopping 52% compared to the pre-pandemic IT and business process service market growth of ~5%. The majority of these engagements are being implemented as part of projects rather than ongoing annuity deals.

HFS Bottomline: 2020 was the year enterprises realized digital is no longer optional and myriad Triple-A technologies helped them make rapid strides in digital operations. Now in 2021, the onus is on enterprises and their service provider partners to go deeper to create collaborative, cross-functional enterprise operations, powered by an integrated stack of emerging tech that complements your core, natively automates your processes, enables your people, and powers your decisions.