2025 Pricing Trends Signal New Opportunities in HR Outsourcing
ISG Research is detecting significant fee reductions as enterprises enhance their HR target operating model, better leveraging provider technology and best business practices.
It’s HR that engages the workforce of tomorrow, drives operational efficiency and delivers value to the business in a new way.
Transforming HR means reorienting the role HR plays in the organization. Rethink your operating model and boost its capabilities by leveraging the right technology, the right delivery model and an effective sourcing ecosystem.
Reimagine the Employee Experience
The
workplace of the future requires the workforce of future. How do you attract and retain top talent?
You need a workforce strategy that not only aligns HR with business goals but also leverages HR as an enterprise leader. Optimize processes, roles, and shared services so you can help the business define success – and lead the charge.
Revolutionize HR with Technology
Is your HR technology holding you back? Manual processes and inflexible systems are frustrating and inefficient.
You need to balance technical architecture, data security and the use of emerging technologies like machine learning and chatbots with a deep understanding of HR functionality, processes and user expectations.
Optimize Sourcing to Save
Wondering if there’s a better way to “get it all done?” HR has a broad set of outsourcing markets—from HR contact centers and payroll administration to recruitment and learning, there are outsourcing partners to support your team.
ISG’s HR Technology & Transformation experts are the market leaders in helping enterprises transform their HR organizations through strategic use of outsourcing. We bring the domain experience, sourcing know-how, best-in-class methodologies
and world-class market data you need to assess, source, benchmark and manage your HR delivery partner relationships.
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Learn MoreI have previously described how data as a product was initially closely aligned with data mesh, a cultural and organizational approach to distributed data processing. As a result of data mesh’s association with distributed data, many assumed that the concept was diametrically opposed to the data lake, which offered a platform for combining large volumes of data from multiple data sources. That assumption was always misguided: There was never any reason why data lakes could not be used as a data persistence and processing platform within a data mesh environment. In recent years, data as a product has gained momentum outside the context of data mesh, while data lakes have evolved into data lakehouses. It has become increasingly clear that data lakehouses and data as a product are well matched, as the data intelligence cataloging capabilities of a lakehouse environment can serve as the foundation to enable the development, sharing and management of data as a product.
Conversational automation is one of those software segments that means something different depending on who you are or your role in an organization. According to my colleague Jeff Orr, the core of the idea is that conversational automation tools benefit from artificial intelligence (AI), allowing software agents, chatbots and virtual assistants to automate customer interactions and internal processes. This broad definition hits the mark, I think, because it identifies the core functions without putting too tight a straitjacket on the technology itself, which is developing very quickly. The software provider landscape is analyzed in the ISG Buyers Guide for Conversational Automation.
For decades, organizations have treated sales incentive compensation as a separate entity, isolated from the broader total rewards strategy. This isolation stems from historical operations, where sales compensation is designed and managed within Sales, with periodic budget oversight from Finance, while HR focuses on base pay, benefits and equity. Unfortunately, this siloed approach, further reinforced by outdated technology and entrenched business practices, limits companies from fully leveraging their total rewards strategy. As a result, I predict that by 2028, many companies will find their compensation processes ineffective, prompting a critical assessment of their alignment with desired priorities and values.
The six costliest words in managing a finance department are, “We’ve always done it this way.” The record-to-report (R2R) cycle describes the process of finalizing and summarizing the financial activities of a business for a specific accounting period—typically a month, quarter or fiscal year. It is important to note that R2R exclusively covers the activities between recording (keeping the books) and reporting (publishing financial statements and management accounts). It involves completing various tasks to ensure that all revenue, expense and other financial transactions are properly recorded, accounts are balanced and accurate financial statements can be prepared.
Ten years have passed since artificial intelligence (AI) first appeared in sales technology, and the results are mixed. Early tools applied rudimentary machine learning (ML) models to customer relationship management (CRM) exports, assigning win probability scores or advising on the “ideal” time to call. The mathematics was sound, the demos impressive, yet adoption faltered because little thought was given as to how sellers should use this information.