Introduction
Welcome to Partnership Benchmark 2025, the fifth edition of our annual study to look at the best performing IT service providers on the BeLux market and the top trends shaping the industry. This year we interviewed more than 200 senior client stakeholders across 160 client organizations. This includes most of the large firms across all industries and a significant participation from government organizations and European institutions. These 160 clients contribute to more than 80% of the total IT spend across the region. The survey was extended this year to include not only Belgian but also Luxembourg clients. We assessed 25 service providers across 500+ contracts.
We present our benchmark in four squares: Applications & Digital, Cloud & Datacenter, End User services and Cybersecurity. While the Cybersecurity square is a completely new addition, the previous Infrastructure services square has been split into Cloud & Datacenter and End User services.
Applications and Digital services continues to lead on the median satisfaction score at 3.75 (3.7 last year), closely followed by End User and Cybersecurity (3.7 each), with Cloud and Datacenter lagging behind at 3.4.
The Results
Applications & Digital: Accenture, TCS and Capgemini reconfirm their position as Leaders. CGI, Cognizant and Infosys emerge as the top 3 for client satisfaction. Infosys (+0.52), Cegeka (+0.38) and Cognizant (+0.24) make the biggest jump in CSAT.
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Cloud & Datacentre: Kyndryl remains the sole Leader also with the highest CSAT. They are followed by NRB and TCS to complete the top 3 on CSAT. Atos (+0.59), Fujitsu (+0.47) and HCLTech (+0.3) make the biggest jump in CSAT.
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End User services: Cegeka comes out as the sole Leader with Fujitsu narrowly missing out. Stefanini, Delaware and TCS emerge with the highest CSAT. Atos (+0.74), Delaware (+0.37) and Cegeka (+0.19) make the biggest jump in CSAT.
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Cybersecurity: Accenture, Atos and OCD come out as Leaders on our brand new
square. nviso, Cronos and Cegeka have the highest CSAT.
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There are 3 companies that are present in all 4 of our squares so these can be said to have the broadest service portfolio at BeLux customers: Atos, Capgemini and Cegeka
This year we welcome a number of new providers. NRB which was a notable exception until now makes its debut on 3 of the 4 squares. Sopra Steria and Inetum make their debut on the Applications square. We welcome Econocom on our End User services square. And finally
specialist security providers OCD and nviso make it onto our brand new security square. Wipro and IBM have dropped from the Applications square due to insufficient datapoints.
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Let us now briefly highlight the key trends that we have noticed as to IT sourcing.
Geopolitics, war and economic uncertainty lead to tightening of IT budgets
What we have heard from quite some CIOs over the last six months of 2024 is that IT budgets have tightened. Or at least stay flat -“do more with the same”. How will IT budgets evolve over the coming years? Can IT cost savings be made as AI is expected to boost the productivity of IT service delivery? Can those savings be re-invested in developing AI use cases for the business?
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AI dictating a radical shift in the IT outsourcing industry
AI will fundamentally transform the IT outsourcing industry in the coming decade: labor will become less relevant as AI can perform many tasks more efficiently, without the need for as much human labor. The traditional model of adding more capacity (headcount) will not hold. Instead, success will depend on “reversed pyramids” – focusing on brains rather than bodies, and reorienting to an AI enabled workforce. This will require investment in AI assets and deep partnerships with the technology firms. The winners of today might not be the winners of tomorrow. Read more on our article under Perspectives.
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Survey: Impact of AI on productivity in IT delivery
GenAI will transform the way IT services are delivered. With its ability to generate code, answer user queries, and perform human-like tasks GenAI is unlocking productivity. As part of an AI survey completed by 11 service providers, we set out to examine the expected impact of AI on IT managed services delivery. There is a marked increase of close to 20% additional productivity due to AI/GenAI. The largest impact due to AI/Gen AI seems to be in the areas of Service desk and Digital Workplace where the productivity figures are being doubled. In terms of overall productivity over 5 years contract terms, the leading areas are Applications Development (43%), Application Maintenance (42%) and Service Desk (42%). Read more in our article under Perspectives.
The buzz around Global Competence Centers
In 2024, there was a noticeable increase in the establishment and expansion of Global Capability Centers (GCCs). While the trend around GCCs is very cyclical, this year we heard many new names taking this route. Proximus, one of the first companies in Belgium to adopt structural offshoring and one of the largest outsourcing clients in Belgium also announced that they were looking to setup a GCC. In this article, we look at the GCC evolution in India, the different GCC models, and the advantages and challenges when going this route.
