Driving Business Growth with Next-gen ADM Services

Macroeconomic trends combined with huge advancements in technology have set the information services (IT) industry on a transformation path. And Application Development and Maintenance (ADM) services are no exception. ADM service providers are navigating challenges due to an expanding digital landscape, tight budgets in a softer economic environment, and the growing adoption of generative AI (Gen AI). These challenges also present opportunities for organizations ready to address them.

Integrated Services

Infrastructure support can provide early warning signs for issues in applications. By bundling infrastructure and applications, organizations can uncover such signals with centralized dashboards and take corrective actions before they surface. This can improve user productivity and system experience. Service providers are increasingly offering integrated solutions with applications and infrastructure. A bundled solution also reduces vendor management overhead.

Intelligence and Automation

 IT automation for ADM workloads has been around for many years. Artificial intelligence (AI) has helped identify improvement opportunities that can be actioned using automation. Agentic AI is pushing the envelope further by situationally determining the best automation agent for the job. This is reducing effort, enhancing throughput, and more importantly, improving quality. Gen AI is broadening the horizons by empowering people—support teams and end users alike. Chatbots and virtual agents have maximized their impact with GenAI, and it doesn’t stop there. Organizations are working with clients to create Gen AI use cases that optimize business outcomes.

Data and Business Value

By analysing data sources needed as part of the ADM services, organizations are able to arrive at business insights. These insights help identify opportunities to improve Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by assessing their impact on business outcomes. ADM is increasingly focusing on ensuring that data is secure and accessible as required. Proper data governance frameworks are crucial for data quality, security, and compliance. The ability of an ADM partner to manage data and enable real-time analytics and decision-making is uncovering opportunities to augment both IT services and businesses.

ADM Services and Intelligent Industry

Business data is no longer limited to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The Internet of Things (IoT) and digital signal processing need to be equally, if not more, analysed for pattern recognition, enabling teams to act on the right support for detected issues. In a world where products and services are becoming more intelligent, the traditional separation between IT and operational technology (OT) systems poses significant risks. Seamless data integration for analysis and decision-making will require efficient communication between IT and OT. Strengthening the engineering and ADM collaboration is critical, now more than ever, with a strong emphasis on ensuring data protection.

Sustainable Technology

Sustainability is on the business agendas around the world. Businesses are increasingly demanding sustainability targets from their ADM partners. Well-applied IT by enterprises can be more energy efficient. An ADM partner is an upstream provider, and by reducing the delivery footprint of its services, it can help businesses meet their sustainability objectives. By enabling clients to adopt efficient cloud migration strategies, establish sustainable infrastructure, and enhance data sourcing and validation, the ADM partner can streamline business processes while significantly reducing overall carbon emissions.

Ways of Working

New methodologies have changed application development and operations by promoting collaboration, continuous integration, and rapid iteration. The integration of development and IT operations enables iterative development, fostering a culture of continuous delivery and flexibility. Organizations, willing to improve time-to-market, operational efficiency, and alignment between IT and business goals, have widely adopted these approaches.

Future Skills

With the rapidity of change, organizations must adapt to new technologies. Full-stack skills for cloud-native support have made ADM bring in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) skills. Additionally, ADM needs a healthy dose of sector knowledge, which should eventually become business as usual.

ADM services are evolving across multiple dimensions. To meet the evolutionary challenges and ensure that clients realize business value from their technology investments, service providers must possess robust capabilities spanning applications, infrastructure, and engineering. This makes it essential for service providers to continuously invest in their people and processes to stay ahead of the curve. Today, leading service providers collaborate closely with clients, addressing customer challenges and delivering the outcomes necessary for business growth.

By Sudhakar Takke, Global Head of ADM Business Line, Capgemini