Based near Cambridge UK, David Cushman is a Digital Strategy and Innovation Expert with experience in start-up, scale-up, and large scale digital transformation programs.
He has a lifelong fascination for ‘what-comes-next’ – always striving to understand the impact of emerging technologies on how we live, work and create value.
With a combination of tech nous (from Data and CRM to Decisioning, ML and AI through to analytics and human behavior), and practice leadership in CX/Digital Strategy Advisory, David is an integral part of the HFS OneOffice Platform dream team.
David also leads our coverage in the HFS OneOffice Hot Vendor programe.
He is a published author (The 10 Principles of Open Business – Palgrave-Macmillan 2014) and an experienced Tier-1 Services Consulting Director.
He holds a Joint Honours Degree from Essex University in Philosophy & Sociology, enjoys reading, writing, traveling and thinking (exploration of all kinds), embraces change and always seeks the learning opportunity. But for all that he has supported Leeds United Football Club since he was seven years old. Some things just can’t be unlearned.
AntWorks is back, leaner, fitter, and more focused than ever on tackling the data challenges demanded to deliver scalable, intelligent document processing (IDP) for the enterprise. Not so long ago, it was hard to avoid AntWorks’ publicity machine. But its...
Business process-rooted BP3 is the newest member of an exclusive club of robotic process automation (RPA) services specialists that can offer enterprise customers the reassurance of scale and multi-geo reach in what remains a largely fragmented market. This month’s acquisition...
The business interface between humans and AI is heating up as focused applications with specific deliverables make emerging technology part of the working processes of more people in more roles. Sales is among the hottest of the new frontiers. Here...
Digital transformation fails for three key reasons—culture, talent, and process debt. Forget the rate of digital adoption. That’s a non-starter if your change management is nothing more than a bolted-on afterthought. We have to get serious about putting people first...
All enterprises are striving for post-pandemic digital transformation. The nuances of how you actually accomplish this depend on your business and sector. Often the need is to modernize and become interoperable with an ecosystem of partners. Global supply chains were...
Whether talking to analysts, customers, or investors, up-and-coming technology and business services providers need a relentless focus on business outcomes - a central theme of the entire HFS Digital Symposium held in June. There’s no template for creating a conversation...
It was just a question of time: Not if, but when Salesforce would add to its enterprise portfolio with a move for a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) provider of its own. It is Servicetrace that turned out to be the...
The rapid rise of low-code, no-code makes it harder than ever for technology leaders to ignore. Now no-code champion Unqork is popping the champagne to mark the launch of the world’s first no-code marketplace, ramping up the pressure on those...
Global health services company Cigna is setting the pace for automation use at a strategic scale—accelerating value realization from $2 million to more than $100 million within a year. To achieve this kind of traction with automation requires much more...
The combination of emerging technologies Pfizer brought together to win the race to deliver a safe COVID-19 vaccine should be a wake-up call for every organization still pondering its operational engagement with artificial intelligence (AI), smart analytics, and automation. Under...
Against the background of the hype around Intelligent Automation, Cutover is operationalizing the application lifecycle whilst blending the human and machine activities of delivering those applications. It is doing it by delivering on a highly differentiated value proposition: A SaaS...
Cambridge UK start-up Gearset, is scaling fast and headed for the US, on the back of burgeoning demand for its Salesforce DevOps. Its deployment engine and supporting DevOps, backup, and release management solutions are already helping teams with Salesforce DevOps...
The HFS OneOffice™ Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players, each with a differentiated value proposition for the OneOffice. HFS analysts regularly speak with numerous exciting start-ups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS...
Robocorp Technologies Inc. is on a mission to bring robotic process automation to more enterprises after landing a $21 million early-stage round of funding. The deal follows hot on the heels of Robocorp being named a OneOffice Hot Vendor in...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players, each with a differentiated value proposition for the HFS OneOffice. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting startups and emerging players and designate a select group as the HFS Hot...
IT automation and orchestration provider Resolve Systems has acquired its peer Ayehu to expand its offerings from customizable support for complex environments, to include low-code out-of-the-box automation. Ayehu – based in San Jose, California and bootstrapped in 2007, secured external...
Graph database business Neo4j has taken the largest Series F investment in database history - landing $325m to accelerate its cloud portfolio, invest in enhanced machine learning models to unlock new predictions, and expand its global footprint. Graph databases are...
Data Integrity specialists Precisely have added on Process Automation and Master Data Management with the acquisition of Winshuttle. Precisely’s data integrity software is used by 12,000 customers in more than 100 countries, including 90 percent of the Fortune 100. It...
RPA vendor ElectroNeek’s mid-sized enterprise and Managed Service Provider-friendly (MSP) model saw its license revenues soar 400% in 2020 – and the company reach a valuation of $105m on a $20m raise of Series A funding in June 2021. ElectroNeek...
Roboyo is claiming the crown of ‘world’s biggest intelligent automation professional services company’ with its acquisition of Stockholm-based Another Kind of Automation (AKOA). The two had been going toe-to-toe for business in the DACH area (Germany-Austria-Switzerland) making this deal an...
Japanese multinational SI NTT DATA has announced its intent to acquire former HFS OneOffice Hot Vendor Nexient. It’s a move that would bring scale to NTT DATA’s application development and modernization capabilities in its largest market – the US. Nexient...
Intelligent document processing and workflow transformation vendor Kofax is extending its document capture, content management, and workflow automation capabilities with the acquisition of PSIGEN. At the same time, California-based Kofax is rolling out a new version of its workflow orchestration...
Europe’s leadership in piloting process intelligence (process mining and process discovery), when tracked across companies of all sizes, does not convert to application at scale when we ask the Global 2000. When HFS investigated the process intelligence market in Q3...
Low-code business process automation platform provider EvoluteIQ is going through its own accelerated evolution - almost trebling its headcount in the last six months. The rapid adaptation has been driven by strong demand, and robust revenues delivered in the form...
Camunda's open-source approach has already delivered some impressive reach – as far as Mars if you include NASA's use of their open-source automation to process data from the Perseverance lander. The Germany-based company has raised a $100m in its latest...
Executives based in North America are blazing a trail in the adoption of emerging technologies – moving fastest from pilots to scale with an eye placed firmly on the promised benefits. But their ultimate success depends on taking their people...
Quantum computing is coming of age in the enterprise with 86% of the respondents in the May 2021 HFS Pulse survey (representing 801 of the global 2000) reporting that they are either piloting, implementing in a few areas, or applying...
Investing in emerging technologies is prioritized by respondents in the May 2021 HFS Pulse survey. Over 70% of the 801 representatives of global 2000 companies expect to increase their stake. This reflects the increasing value placed on technologies such as...
Supplier management solution Basware has added diversity data to give enterprises a view of who is in control of the companies they may plan to do business with. Finnish-headquartered Basware – a global provider of networked accounts-payable automation and cloud-based...
Redwood Software, an IT and business automation provider, has announced a $380million strategic investment from private equity fund Turn/River Capital. The announcement stands out for two reasons. First, it is a significant amount for an automation segment that is rarely...
The digital demands of the pandemic proved the benefits of low-code in delivering the agility now demanded by a change-hungry, fast-paced, new ‘business metabolism’ in the enterprise, says Appian CEO Matt Calkins. Appian has responded with all-you-can-eat pricing to encourage...
Workato’s integration-led automation capabilities have made it a hit in Europe with a 289% increase in data use on its platform in the EMEA region in the last 12 months. By way of response, the business is doubling its investment...
A cloud-enabled AI start-up, with a crowdsourced two-million-strong distributed workforce and a timely solution to tackle content moderation in social media, has raised $50m of Series D on a $2b valuation. San Francisco-based Hive has established a strong presence for...
IBM’s intention to acquire applications resource management (ARM) and network performance management (NPM) provider Turbonomic for a reported $2bn is focused on an area that rarely makes the big headlines: Observability. Observability is the extension of, or some purists say,...
Low-code and open-source workflow automation vendor ProcessMaker has taken its first outside investment since its launch in 2008 - raising $45m in Series A funding. Based in Durham, North Carolina, ProcessMaker has been bootstrapped until now, on a journey that...
Boomi – the leading integration Platform-as-a-Service (IPaaS) provider is setting new customer records amid rumors the business may be sold off by owner Dell. In April it made announcements on ‘unprecedented’ customer growth, Boomi’s new availability in the AWS Marketplace,...
Business leaders must get ahead of artificial intelligence (AI) and understand how and why their machines make decisions. By doing so, they can both maximize their data strategies’ success and give customers and employees the confidence and evidence they need...
People and culture must be business leaders’ highest priorities as they grapple with the continuing – and in many cases deepening – impact of the pandemic on their journey to becoming Cloud Native. Gathered for an HFS (supported by Wipro)...
The current pandemic economy has focused C-suite minds to prioritize the most pressing tech issues. HFS data, collected with the support of BluePrism, for our report ‘Your workforce has changed – Now the C-suite must adopt a NATIVE automation mindset’,...
Investment in automation accelerated across the board as a result of the impact of Covid-19. HFS data, collected with the support of BluePrism, for our report ‘Your workforce has changed – Now the C-suite must adopt a NATIVE automation mindset’,...
Digital Fluency – the ability to drive the seamless interplay between business and technology - is recognized as the most urgent business skill to ramp up in today’s pandemic-accelerated rush-to transformation. But investment in Digital Fluency is lagging behind –...
IT leaders can side-step costly challenges in cloud adoption if they maintain a OneOffice Mindset within a structured, innovation-focused journey to cloud-native culture - and beyond. Despite all the marketing noise around technological capabilities such as containerization and microservices, the...
If there is one lesson we will eventually take from COVID-19, it’s the paranoia that government and business leaders now live with: the constant fear that a crisis like this could ever catch them cold again. This paranoia must spur...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players, each with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting startups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS Hot...
Video and analytics business Solink has seen demand for its cloud-based video surveillance platform rocket during the pandemic. That demand has been driven in large part by the expansion beyond security and anti-fraud use cases, into operational services - as...
The recent partnership between Google and Automation Anywhere (AA) has a lot more meat to it than your usual “we now integrate with…” RPA (robotic process automation) announcement. The need to automate processes in the cloud to deliver the data...
When companies with the size and stature of Aetna, Amazon, Nationwide Insurance, Microsoft, and Unilever commit to maintaining a hybrid work model well beyond COVID-19—when home working is encouraged—then businesses must prepare for a seismic shift in not just how,...
The energy industry has a new big beast in business process management – in a merger and acquisition promising fast-track benefits for digital transformation customers. Houston-headquartered Quorum Software – the oil and gas industry digital transformation platform named an HFS...
WorkFusion’s $220m Series F investment injection will be spent going deeper into the banking and financial services and insurance (BFSI) sectors – a strategy which if executed well could make it the dominant industry-specific automation choice in the lucrative category....
If you want to know the future – invent it – so the saying goes. And if you invent it, there’s a good chance you own it. No wonder R&D and VC investment is accelerating. Salesforce’s total R&D spend of...
Conventional wisdom has it that tech company valuations equal single digit multiples of their revenue. With strong elements of recurring revenue and good growth potential, that can rise to low double-digits. But these are not conventional times. Today we...
Design thinking is re-emerging as a critical transformational activity in 2021 as enterprise leaders move beyond their "fix-and-survive" mode to compete effectively in the "work-from-anywhere" economy Design thinking is an iterative process for solving problems creatively, fleshing out the desired...
The S&P 500 price-to-sale ratio (with an overall valuation of 2.85 x revenue) may be riding at an all-time high as we get rolling in 2021 – but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the wonder numbers bubbling...
Covid-19 is accelerating a shift towards a OneOffice work culture, rapidly evolving from siloed working to interdisciplinary collaboration, prioritizing inclusivity and amplifying data-powered decision-making in every process as the enterprise shapes post-Covid ways of working. We asked 400 executives from...
Today’s C-suite are tackling a tsunami of uncertainty that established, deterministic rules-based business processes are ill-equipped to make sense of, let alone make value from. HFS Research’s OneOffice Emerging Tech Platform (Exhibit One) advocates what enterprises need to thrive in...
Talent is the top enabler of the HFS OneOffice drive toward true digital transformation. Fifty percent (50%) of high-performing Global 2000 companies are retraining existing employees and 46% plan to hire for digital mindsets and specific skillsets that will help...
Customer data platforms meet three critical “must-haves” for marketers—cloud, speed, and anticipation Customer data platforms (CDPs) meet three urgent needs for marketers to champion a OneOffice mindset. The cloud-based platforms can handle the pandemic-accelerated trend to work from anywhere, they...
The gap between concept and reality in enterprise-wide digital transformation is finally closed - by OneOffice Emerging Tech Until now, we lacked clarity on the detail of how to engineer the move from the idyll of a strategist’s vision of...
