What Makes HfS Blueprints Unique?

HfS Blueprint research reports are the cornerstone of our research. These comprehensive reports have emerged as highly influential guides for enterprise clients to make key decisions on service providers. 

Since the inception of the HfS Blueprint in 2013, we have published Blueprint reports across a broad range of topics covering all aspects of the Intelligent OneOffice™ (see Exhibit 1). Each of our Blueprints covers trends and themes on the combinations of talent and technology for business outcomes, service provider analysis, and recommendations for partnering.

Exhibit 1: The Intelligent OneOffice Framework – The Driving Force Behind HfS’ Blueprint Agenda

Based on conversations with our clients across enterprise buyers, third-party advisors, and service providers, there are five key reasons HfS Blueprints stand out.

1. The Intelligent OneOffice and As-a-Service principles. Our industry is evolving to an era where there is only “OneOffice” that matters, one that focuses on creating an impactful customer experience and intelligent operations to enable and support it. The HfS Blueprints describe in detail how an enterprise can and are partnering with their providers to achieve OneOffice. Our Blueprints also describe the journey of a specific market toward the “As-a-Service Economy” (See Exhibit 2). We analyze the market across the eight ideals of the As-a-Service Economy to describe the use of talent and technology in a more agile and impactful way. The OneOffice and As-a-Service ideals are the fundamental basis of our Blueprints, providing an emerging view of the market that is not just unique but also impactful.

Exhibit 2: The HfS Blueprints Assesses the Journey Toward the Eight Ideals of the As-a-Service Economy

2. Focus on execution and innovation. Unlike other quadrants and matrices, the HfS Blueprint identifies relevant differentials between service providers across a number of facets in two main categories – execution and innovation. This results in the categorization of assessed service providers into four categories: As-a-Service Winner’s Circle, Execution Powerhouses, High Performers, and High Potentials (See Exhibit 3). 

As-a-Service Winner’s Circle: Service providers in the Winner’s Circle show excellence as recognized by clients (and HfS) across Innovation and Execution. They are realizing some or all of the 8 Ideals of the As-a-Service Economy that HfS believes are critical in the long-term creation of value.

Execution Powerhouses: Execution Powerhouses demonstrate solid, reliable execution but have yet to show significant innovation or vision.

High Performers:  High Performers demonstrate strong capabilities but lack an innovative vision or momentum in execution of the vision.

High Potentials: High Potentials demonstrate vision and strategy, but have yet to gain momentum in execution.

Exhibit 3: The Blueprint Grid Focuses on Innovation and Execution

3. A methodology driven by the voice of the customer. Our research methodology is driven by tales from the trenches – interviews with clients who have evaluated service providers and experienced their services. Not only do we ask for multiple client references from service providers, but we also augment the client perspective through interviews conducted with HfS Executive Council members and our extensive network of the Global 2000 enterprises. This focus on the client perspective that is embedded in our methodology also allows us to implement “no-opt out” clauses on service providers so that we can cover the full range of service providers to a particular market. Our methodology also includes sell-side executive briefings regarding providers’ vision, strategy, and capability; examples of innovation and execution; and publicly available information such as investor analyst materials, website information, presentations given by senior executives, and industry events. The lead HfS analyst is permitted to adjust overall buyer scores by a maximum of 10% if there is a justifiable need to calibrate the data model to reflect reality. And we make sure we keep our data fresh through annual or bi-annual refreshes of Blueprints.

4. Different flavors for different topics. Every market is unique in its maturity, characteristics, and dynamics, and robust analysis requires flexibility in approach. As a result, we have developed three flavors of our Blueprint reports: HfS Blueprint Report, HfS Emerging Market Guide, and HfS Blueprint Snapshot. These reports allow us to cover both emerging and mature topics in the industry (See Table 1 for more details). We also provide some leeway in each Blueprint to vary the evaluation criteria and associated weightings depending on what is most important in that particular market segment. As always, we remain transparent to participants and Blueprint readers as to what the criteria are and the relevant weightings between them.

Table 1: The Three Different Flavors of Blueprint Reports

5. Unmatched coverage of IT and business operations. As stated earlier, our objective is to cover all aspects of the Intelligent OneOffice through our Blueprints. This enables us to create a multi-dimensional view of change agents, business and IT functions, and vertical-specific insights that are unmatched in the industry (see Table 2).

Table 2: Recent and Upcoming Blueprints Provide Multi-Dimensional Coverage of IT and Business Operations

Bottom Line: The HfS Blueprint reports are designed to create the market impact envisioned in the Analyst 2.0 Model. Happy Reading!