HFS Horizons: Services for the Platform Economy, 2023

Born-digital tech companies that provide a platform for multiple businesses or individuals to trade or engage with consumers are called platform businesses. Uber, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Spotify are all platform businesses. A platform is often associated with a business ecosystem, and the members of the ecosystem have access to the platform’s capabilities and functionalities. The last decade has seen the ascendancy of such businesses. These businesses have changed how consumers and producers interact, how companies compete (customer acquisition becoming more important than profits), and how value is created in the economy. These platform companies with new rules of engagement, reimagined value chains, and non-conventional business models constitute the platform economy.

The platform economy has become an irresistible customer segment for IT and business process services (BPS) providers. However, few providers have been able to crack the code required to work with platform businesses. This report looks at covering a few notable providers catering to the platform economy.

HFS Horizons Report: Services for the platform economy, 2023 assesses how well service providers are helping their platform clients efficiently run their operations, expand their business, and realize value.

• Horizon 1: Specialists catering to specific aspects of a platform business such as digital engineering or digital marketing, leading to functional outcomes in terms of cost, speed-to-market, or revenue. For example, providers only in digital marketing or digital engineering or M&A consulting would feature under Horizon 1.
• Horizon 2: Experts with Horizon 1 attributes plus a diverse portfolio of services and core competence in working with platform clients with varying business models and deep partnerships; for example, a provider offering revenue operations (revops), digital engineering, content management, or contact center services with a substantial set of customers along with partners directly involved in those services.
• Horizon 3: Leaders with Horizon 2 attributes plus an innovative portfolio of tailored services and instances of co-innovation driving completely new sources of value with HFS OneEcosystem™ approach. IPO readiness, content moderation, and multi-sided client onboarding are examples of tailored services. An example of co-innovation would be a provider working with a platform company on LLM initiatives.

This study evaluates the capabilities of seven providers across the HFS value chain—services for the platform economy, based on a range of dimensions to understand the Why, What, How, and So What of their service offerings.

HFS Horizons: Services for the Platform Economy, 2023

Note: All service providers within a “Horizon” are listed alphabetically
Source: HFS Research, 2023

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