HFS Horizons: The Best of Engineering Research and Development Service Providers, 2025

Engineering Research and Development (ER&D) services are evolving to be strategic enablers for driving digital transformation and innovation that delivers long-term sustainable value and outcomes. ER&D providers are increasingly collaborating with clients and partners to co-innovation and investments through industry partnerships, joint ventures, and R&D labs, among others, in high-growth areas. With a growing focus on improved operational efficiency, cost reduction, accelerated product development and launch, and enhanced customer experiences ER&D providers are pivoting and redefining the scope of services to become a growth catalyst for the enterprises.

The Best of Engineering Research and Development Service Providers, 2025 report assesses how well service providers are help achieve measurable outcomes and realize value across three distinct Horizons.

• Horizon 1: Ability to drive functional optimization outcomes through cost reduction, speed, and efficiency.
  
• Horizon 2: Horizon 1 + enablement of the OneOffice model of end-to-end alignment across partners and customers to provide unmatched stakeholder experience (PX, CX).
  
• Horizon 3: Horizon 2 + ability to drive OneEcosystem synergy via collaboration across the ecosystem players with common objectives around driving completely new sources of value.

The report evaluates the capabilities of 29 service providers across the HFS Engineering Research and Development value chain based on a range of dimensions to understand the why, what, how, and so what of their service offerings.

It highlights the value-based positioning for each participant across the three distinct Horizons. It also includes detailed profiles of each service provider, outlining their provider facts, strengths, and development opportunities.

HFS Horizons: The Best of Engineering Research and Development Service Providers, 2025

Note: All service providers within a Horizon are listed alphabetically. ACLDigital and Alten are evaluated together.
Source: HFS Research, 2025

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