Everest Group is a firm that is known for applying research to day-to-day business problems. To learn more about the firm, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Udit Singh, Practice Director of Information Technology Services at Everest Group.
Udit Singh’s Background
Singh has been with Everest Group for five years, first as a Senior Analyst and now as Practice Director. And prior to joining Everest Group, Singh worked as a software developer with a leading technology services firm. Singh has an MBA in human resources from XLRI (Xavier School of Management), Jamshedpur, India, and a B.Tech (computer science) degree from UPTU (Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, formerly Uttar Pradesh Technical University), Lucknow, India.
Singh’s Primary Responsibilities
Singh leads the Digital Workplace practice at Everest Group and serves as a member of the Cloud and Infrastructure team. And Singh provides research and advisory support to service providers, enterprises, technology vendors, and private equity firms throughout the IT infrastructure services landscape — workplace, cloud, and networks.
Currently, Singh works on a wide range of projects, including growth strategy formulation, value proposition refinement, capability benchmarking, go-to-market advisory, sales enablement, and market evangelization. And Singh also publishes numerous research reports each year. His most recently published reports explore Workplace Communication and Collaboration (WCC), Sustainable Workplaces, and the Digital Workplace.
Everest Group’s Core Products
Everest Group is known as a leading research firm with the primary goal of guiding clients through today’s market challenges and strengthening their strategies by applying contextualized problem-solving to their unique situations. The firm’s expertise and research are focused on technology, business processes, and engineering through the lenses of talent, sustainability, and sourcing.
Currently, Everest Group offers a variety of memberships—including CX Excellence, GBS / Shared Services, Outsourcing Excellence, Talent Excellence, and more—that span IT services, business process services, and engineering services.
Plus, Everest Group provides custom decision support for businesses’ unique needs and challenges and a vast offering of research reports that cover topics from around the globe and hone in on the latest trends and insights compiled by its industry-leading analysts. The reports include State of the Market Reports, Service Provider Compendiums, Location Profiles, and Viewpoints.
The firm also provides the Everest Group PEAK Matrix assessments, which enterprises use for the unbiased evaluation of service providers on factors such as vision, capabilities/functionality, talent availability, market success/impact, and cost. Providers also look to the PEAK Matrix to gauge and calibrate their offerings against their peers. Similarly, the firm developed the Pinnacle Model assessments to help organizations determine the value of their IT, business services, and shared services functions. Through these reports, Everest Group identifies and details enterprises that show stand-out functions in IT, business services, and shared services, making them the best, or Pinnacle Enterprises. The results help enterprises determine where they are, and where they want to be.
Biggest Milestones
Everest Group was founded in 1991 with the vision to assist the then-nascent outsourcing and global services industry in delivering more powerful and effective mechanisms to create and capture value. And Everest Group has since been on the frontier of the global services industry at the intersection of how leading firms take advantage of disruptive technologies, innovative service vehicles, and game-changing talent models.
In May 2021, Wavestone acquired the consulting practices within Everest Group. And this alliance enabled Everest Group to accelerate the expansion of its research offerings to enterprises, a fast-growing research area.
Through a focus on redefining research into compelling problem-solving, Everest Group today is a leading research firm helping businesses with their unique and complex business challenges and business leaders to make clear, confident decisions. And Everest Group has evolved into a firm with a reputation for delivering forward-looking, practical research with an individual and firm excellence mindset and a collaborative and values-based culture. This excellence model enabled the firm to consistently be recognized for generating innovative insights and solutions that define and shape the next generation of global services.
Customer Success Stories
When I asked Singh about specific customer success stories, he cited how one of the top three global banks came to Everest Group because they needed help building a robust demand profile (or set of criteria for selecting talent) for their long-term tech talent development and supplier management initiatives.
Everest Group had created a comprehensive global tech skills outlook by developing a three-year demand-supply analysis, ultimately covering over 800 skills, helping the bank predict future skill needs and delivery models.
Everest Group’s strategic tech talent solutions offered a clear roadmap for the bank to navigate the talent market, anticipate immediate and upcoming shifts, find and attract the talent it needs, and then retain its workforce.
With Everest Group’s help, the company’s leadership team was able to build a strategic plan for the near and long-term, identify incoming challenges, and pivot when needed. And the company continues to be an ongoing member of Everest Group, garnering further insights when new challenges arise.
Differentiation From The Competition
What makes Everest Group different from the competition? Singh pointed out that Everest Group is different from other research firms as others tend to focus on topics and everything about those topics without considering a client’s specific business problem. And Everest Group focuses on the client’s unique situation and applies research to the problem so the clients are able to make the best decision and get it right.
Plus Everest Group goes deeper into topics for comprehensive, holistic coverage and can offer advice that tackles the more complex aspects of business decision-making through practical, forward-looking insights. And the firm also encourages clients to interact with its analysts and experts through in-person interactions and unlimited analyst inquiries.
Expertise In Sustainable Workplaces And Hybrid Work Environments
Singh has expertise in sustainable workplaces and knowledge of developing hybrid work environments.
“Today, sustainability is at the center of planning for most CEOs, and it is in this growing market that Everest Group intends to evolve with a focus on integrity, ethics, and tenacity,” Singh explained. “Forward-looking organizations are working toward a diversified workforce and prioritizing providing opportunities to all and are contributing to building a stable global economy. While gender equity and inclusion have improved over the last decades, many challenges remain, including discrimination, underrepresentation in leadership levels, and lack of access to education and employment opportunities. Everest Group is helping organizations set up their future sustainability strategies with sustainable learning insights.”
Everest Group’s sustainable learning revealed a measure called impact sourcing, which is one of many strategies implemented today that further the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and are defining success in the global economy.
Impact sourcing is a business imperative that enables companies to reach new talent pools and offers opportunities to marginalized communities and populations, especially women. And impact sourcing is one of the most credible and powerful ways to accomplish some of the 17 UNSDGs.
When it comes to employee experiences in the hybrid work environment, the firm has witnessed the impact working from home has had on the environment, society, families, and individuals. And their research indicates that over half of today’s enterprises expect more than 40% of their employees to continue to work from home in the coming years.
“The pandemic has dispelled certain notions about remote work while highlighting its challenges. We no longer question whether remote work is efficient or even possible; video calling and conferencing tools and collaboration technologies have meaningfully reduced the friction that deterred work from home. Employees have benefitted from shorter commute times, greater flexibility, and proximity to family,” added Singh. “Some enterprises see employee engagement as a key challenge in a remote-only environment. The middle ground (hybrid work) seems to be a winning model among the future of work trends, and we’re working with a number of clients on best practices and the best approaches to implement work-from-home and hybrid work models.”
As remote working is gaining more acceptance and mature economies have aged, organizations are discovering that they can also find talent in a variety of geographic locations. And beyond the US and India, emerging technologies such as AI and automation have sizeable talent pools in multiple countries worldwide.
“The enterprise of the future is seeking to leverage this talent and embracing work from home and hybrid work models,” Singh concluded. “This means that employees can find more work in other areas, opening more opportunities and possibilities, as they work from the comfort of their homes. Our locations insights help enterprises to find available talent in the location that best serves their business goals.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Everest Group’s future company goals? Singh explained that Everest Group plans to continue to offer our members deep value, expanding their research to address tomorrow’s opportunities and challenges, especially those related to fast-changing topics like tech, talent, and sustainability.
