In its Technology Vision 2016 report, Accenture predicts that 25% of the world’s economy will be digital by 2020. The global consulting firm contends that we are witnessing a major technology revolution, specifically a digital revolution. It’s a revolution of emerging “digital platforms” comprised of cloud services, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, predictive analytics, and intelligent automation.

These platforms transform and replace traditional business processes in areas such as finance and accounting, human resources, marketing, procurement, supply chain, and more. To quickly leverage these digital solutions, companies increasingly look to outsource traditional in-house functions to third-party providers in what are referred to as business process outsourcing (BPO) transactions.

In a June 2016 research report, Gartner (a leading IT research and consulting company) predicts that total BPO spending will approach $3.8 trillion by 2020. Much of this growth is driven by the promise of digital platforms. They promise to deliver greater agility, efficiency, productivity, compliance, data-driven insights and, ultimately, improved outcomes. Traditional methods, by comparison, are viewed as capital and labor intensive, prone to error, disconnected, and financially unsustainable.

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