by Over the past decade, there has been a significant rise in the adoption of a new business model in the IT industry known as Functional Service Providers (FSP). FSPs offer specialized expertise and services focused on a particular business function like finance, HR or marketing rather than providing the entire spectrum of IT services. Let’s take a deeper look at the key factors driving the growth of FSPs and how they are transforming IT delivery.
Changing Client Needs
The changing needs of clients have been one of the major reasons for the emergence of FSPs. As businesses evolve rapidly in today’s digital world, they require IT services that can adapt quickly and provide specialized expertise. Traditional large IT service providers found it difficult to cater to such niche and evolving requirements due to their size and structure.
Clients wanted IT partners that could quickly understand their business landscape and customize solutions accordingly. They did not want to invest heavily in building internal IT capabilities and preferred to leverage external expertise on a pay-per-use model. FSPs emerged to fulfill this need by providing targeted services around specific business domains and technologies. Their focused approach allows them to develop deep functional knowledge and stay abreast of the latest trends.
Rise of Cloud and As-a-Service Models
The widespread adoption of cloud computing and as-a-service delivery models further accelerated the growth of FSPs. When basic infrastructure and platforms could easily be procured on demand from hyperscalers, buying specialized functional services also followed a similar consumption-based model.
Rather than owning and managing their entire IT infrastructure, clients preferred to rightsize it by employing FSPs for select functions. This helped optimize costs by eliminating upfront capital expenditure and switching to an operational expenditure model. It also provided more flexibility to scale services up or down based on business needs.
Functional Service Providers (FSP) developed offerings like finance automation-as-a-service, marketing analytics-as-a-service etc. that clients could subscribe to from their portfolio. By leveraging cloud-native platforms, FSPs could dynamically provision these services and ensure seamless integration with client environments. This cloud-first approach aligns well with the business models of FSPs focusing on niche domains.
Specialization Leads to Greater Expertise
By restricting their scope to select specialized functions, FSPs were able to build extensive domain expertise that large IT vendors lacking. They could hire and train staff with relevant industry certifications and experience to service client requirements deeply.
As FSPs focused only on finance or HR services, they had more incentive to invest in evolving their capabilities in those domains. They continuously upskill their workforce on latest technologies and engage with clients, vendors, and industry bodies to stay updated on functional trends. Some FSPs even establish in-house research divisions or acquire smaller product firms to bolster their knowledge.
Specialized FSPs often leverage the same solutions and platforms across multiple clients, gaining valuable experience every time. This extensive hands-on exposure and continuous learning enables FSPs to reliably deliver projects and help clients optimize operations through their enhanced understanding of that function. Quality and turnaround improve as processes become standardized through repetition.
Improving Operational Efficiencies
Function-specific services allow FSPs multiple advantages in streamlining operations. By limiting scope, they can minimize overhead costs of larger firms operating across verticals. More focused business units enhance organizational efficiency as decision cycles shorten.
Resource allocation also becomes sharper with function-specific talent pools. Specialization enables better workforce planning, training programs and certification drives aligned to niche domains. Operational rigidity reduces as resources can be smoothly reallocated between functions based on demand fluctuations.
Standardized frameworks and reusable assets come into play when the same processes are automated for finance clients, for instance. This pre-built intellectual property catalog allows faster deployment times and consistent quality. As FSPs cater to multiple customers across industries with similar functions, they derive tremendous learning to keep refining offerings.
The Outlook
FSPs have found eager acceptance from clients seeking cost-effective access to specialized IT skills. Their hyper-focused model addresses the on-demand, consumption-based needs of modern digital businesses. Traditional providers are also either partnering with or acquiring FSPs to supplement their portfolios.
While large firms will likely maintain an important role as system integrators, FSPs are here to stay as agile alternatives. Functions will increasingly become independent services delivered by experts even as infrastructures get abstracted into virtual environments. Deep specialization will continue distinguishing FSPs from broader providers. With domain understanding as their core strength, FSPs are set to grow multi-fold in the coming years empowering digital transformations
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
