How managed services can deliver the capacity, capabilities and customisation to speed up successful transformation

To best illustrate the sway emerging technology is having on boardroom priorities, look no further than generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Nearly two-thirds of UK business leaders (64%) taking part in PwC’s 27^th Annual Global CEO Survey expect GenAI to increase the efficiency of their workforce in the next 12 months. Nearly half (45%) believe it will help them to boost returns at a time when profitability and growth are exceptionally hard won.

Developments in areas such as GenAI offer productivity boosts of 40% or more - offering a potential tool to accelerate transformation and a catalyst for business model reinvention. But there’s a catch. Converting that potential into performance needs more than just investment in technology. Without the necessary experience, organisational know-how and buy-in from the workforce, it can be difficult to design, implement and embed modernisation - especially with the levels of aspiration and speed needed. Keeping pace with your capabilities in areas as fast-moving as Gen AI could require a whole team in its own right. And in the scramble to keep pace, your business can also find itself saddled with one-size-fits-none vendor solutions that fail to meet your real needs and objectives.

And when organisations are already struggling to have the right skills and capabilities in place to implement and run these solutions, the hidden wider factors holding businesses back come into sharp focus. Many are turning to partnering; managed capacity to address short-term pinch points or managed services across longer durations to oversee the implementation and running of the technology. But the benefits that come from picking the right managed services partner go beyond alleviating tech implementation headaches.

Human-led, tech-powered solutions

Through our solutions lab, we’re working with a range of businesses to bridge this divide between ambition and execution - looking at the business architecture to design the right operational, technological and commercial solutions for an organisation’s outcome.

Rather than being just implementers, our technologists are problem-solvers and innovators. They’re supported by our industry experts, so they can tackle the kind of complex, business-critical demands that conventional business process outsourcing can’t handle, let alone rethink and reinvent.

The results can be genuinely transformational. In a unique collaboration, we enabled a private bank to become one of the first businesses in its sector to apply GenAI-enabled Intelligent Conversation Analytics. This cut the time spent making notes by 75%, freeing up wealth managers to have more meaningful conversations with clients - while saving around £4 million a year in operational expenses.

Made to measure

It’s not only about tailoring solutions to your specific business goals, the right approach needs to design them to fit around your existing infrastructure, your appetite for transformation and your level of digital fitness.

What does this look like? We start the process of designing and building a bespoke solution by assessing and understanding your business model, current systems and long-term strategic objectives. The focus on outcomes rather than isolated operations can also help to break down the silos in tech strategies and maximise the value. Why just focus on indirect tax reporting, for example, when this could be the catalyst for a wider transformation of the surrounding sales and invoicing processes?

Once the outcomes are set, we help you to select, install and run the most appropriate tools and technology. We can also help you to develop the data management capabilities needed to speed up sourcing, strengthen data integrity and guard against risks such as cyber breaches and bias.

Our solutions draw on our own systems and alliances with both large vendors and niche specialists.

There’s a simple way to view how the various elements fit together: our alliance partner ecosystem and your existing tech infrastructure are the bricks, our solutions lab is the mortar that holds everything together.

Springboard for transformation

In some cases, meeting your strategic ambitions calls for full modernisation. As well as helping you select and implement new cloud-native infrastructure and systems, we can help with workforce communication and training to encourage your staff to embrace change and make the most of your new capabilities.

Some employees may be worried that automation and AI will take away their jobs. So it’s important to emphasise the benefits, including eliminating a lot of the needless drudgery in their work and allowing them to make better use of their skills.

The emergence of GenAI will raise the bar for upskilling, as so much of the potential centres on increasing workforce productivity. But it also allows people to reimagine their roles and what they can accomplish within them.

It may be difficult to secure all the skills and expertise you need to keep pace with digital advances. Managed service options can provide access to both, while allowing you to develop your in-house capabilities over time.

We run, you accelerate

As operational demands increase and it becomes increasingly expensive to keep systems up-to-date, we can take on whole functions such as finance, tax and HR through our managed service operations.

The advantages include access to the latest state-of-the-art systems without having to commit your own funds to investment and development.

While managed services can help you to raise and realise your ambitions, it isn’t a silver bullet. Making the most of the potential demands a rethink of what’s possible and how your people work and create value.

If you want to find out more about how our managed services can help you to accelerate digital transformation, send us an email. Better still, get in touch to visit our managed service operating centre in Belfast.