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 Avinash Vashistha “Intelligent Automation, Machine Learning, Cognitive Computing and Applications moving
to cloud is transforming businesses and the services industry. Tomorrow’s workforce will
Chairman & CEO be a digital workforce at scale, consisting of digital workers and human beings working
Tholons Inc. together. "

Fabrizio Opertti “IDB’s human capital development programs for services exports in Latin America & the
Caribbean, called “finishing schools”, have been great drivers of the industry. IDB’s
Chief ConnectAmericas.com platform is the first social network for small & mid sized
Trade & Investment enterprises in the Americas and includes a Global Services networking community
Div powered by digital.”
IDB
Kerry Hallard “A BOT is not the same as what you automated before. It is game changing. If you are
President & CEO going to be a sourcing professional today, you have got to have an insatiable curiosity.
Global Sourcing You’ve got to be reading and educating yourself, if not somebody else is going to come in
and do it to you.”
Association - UK

Richard Jones “Robotic Automation could drive the next generation of BPO’s. If BPO’s do not embrace
Chairman this new approach to automation, they could get left behind in this very competitive
Proxima market.”

Kitade Y “Digital transformation must undergo business transformation, distinctive thinking, support
Managing Director for innovation and modern business models. Consolidating digitisation of resources and
Global Initiative Inc an increased use of innovation to move forward is the priority.”
Japan

Warren Gallant "Digital transformation is a race, and as such, there's a basic parameter: speed. In this
Founder, TPI era of Big Data. Companies must respond rapidly, to the point where the market changes
Member of Board its behaviour, rather than to be first in market."
Tholons

“SIG, world’s largest association representing global 1000 companies, is seeing a

Dawn Tiura tectonic shift in clients adopting Intelligent Automation across their businesses. Service
President & CEO providers and consultants need to be strategic partners to clients helping them through
SIG their digital transformation journey.”

Debjani Ghosh "IT industry is going to go through a process of Digital Transformation - talent, capabilities
President in new technologies and strategic partnerships are the three things that are going to
pretty much shape the success."
NASSCOM

“The Republic of the Philippines would need to embrace developments in Technology

Jonathan De Luzuriaga and Innovation which includes enhancing the Start-up Ecosystem. We need to leverage
President our strengths in the services sector as we explore bigger opportunities in product and
PSIA/IBPAP intellectual property creation.”

Michael Barrett “The opportunities are endless, especially with mobile base technology – a platform
Professor which allows not just the lead users to discover new application, but also for them to take
IT & Innovation to develop a new businesses around the platform on their own.”
University of
Cambridge
Andrew Wrobel “Digital transformation of business is creating a significant demand for innovation,
Chief Strategist intelligent automation, cloud, analytics, mobility - skills that talent in growth markets in
Emerging Europe emerging Europe have developed over the last decade.”

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 Tholons Services Globalization Index - 2019

Tholons Services Globalization Index is the leading touchstone to benchmark the accelerated
digital transformation of industries and services globally. The index evaluates ranks and provides
location strategies to multinational corporations, countries, governments, multi-lateral agencies,
analysts and investors. Digital is now a critical element in disrupting and transforming industries
globally. Technology, Business process management companies and multinational corporations
need to align with the stark reality of digital innovation and transformation. Most of the services
will get commoditized for the biggest leaders in services globalization like US, UK, Canada,
Europe, India, Philippines, East Europe and Latin America.

New digital technologies have given birth to a new business age—the “Age of Innovation.” The
advent of new technologies of which social media, analytics, big data, mobility, IoT, cloud,
intelligent automation, robotics, cognitive computing, as-a-service, artificial intelligence and virtual
reality are only some, overturning incumbents and reshaping markets faster than ever.
Technology is redefining industries and enabling enterprises to diversify their product and service
offerings. The only means to survive this competitive business ecosystem is “to evolve.”.
Businesses are leveraging sophisticated RPA solutions for scaling up business value. According
to IBM Institute for Business Value, over 66% of RPA solutions are hosted by service providers;
over 78% of GIC’s have implemented RPA pilots; over 69% of RPA adopters are large
enterprises. Global 2000 RPA investment to slash cost and improve business metrics. The
investment focus in 2019 is estimated at 28% and in 2020, it is estimated at 17%.

Tholons introduced innovation, startup ecosystem and digital transformation as key components
to define its index for Top 50 Digital Nations and Top 100 Super Cities in 2017. We are excited to
present our perspective on digital, and how it will change the industry, and the future of
economies and growth markets. In our previous release of TSGI 2018, we included - cyber
security, digital skills, scale and global competiveness to guage the wider aspects and impact of
the digital ecosystem. This 2019 report is generated with inclusion of new attributes in digital itself
– mobile phone/internet users, regulatory/compliance, digital investment and usage of AI/Cloud.

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 Innovation at Scale for Enterprises

Innovation at scale for enterprises is a digital transformation process / function which brings five
key elements to deliver sustainable impact:

Consulting
Re-imagining customer experience and business, and outlining strategy for the expected
business benefits is a first step. Customer Experience, Customer Engagement, Intelligent
Automation and Transformation are key for future businesses.

Transformation
The transformed solution includes data strategy, envisioning the execution roadmap, combining
RPA, cloud, mobility, blockchain, AI, social media, IoT, data, machine learning and cyber security
with advanced analytics to unlock new intelligence. The solutioning augments the power of
humans with artificial intelligence, leverage AI and advanced analytics algorithms to sense,
comprehend, act and learn across value chain at an unprecedented speed and scale

Operation
Outlining the process and deployment of “Digital Workers” to handle a single / multiple process
with the desired outcome of speed, accuracy and economic. The intelligent operation connects
data, human thoughts and intelligence to generate insight-led decision making. Intelligent digital
workforce (RPA) consisting of “Digital Workers” is enabling replacement of high percentage of
manual work with great accuracy levels. The operations at workplace is set to have both human
and digital workers, becoming an intelligent workforce completing the task / set of tasks with the
power of intelligent automation, analytics and decision making capabilities while increasing the
productivity and quality and cutting down the cost. In the process of intelligent workforce

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 operations, cognitive bots play a SME role, learning from the best. Machine learning is used for
the processes that essentially require decision making of an expert.

Impact
The impact is measured through real time data and analytics, producing business insights – for
scale and effectiveness. It also determines the action of Digital Worker’s yield, process, statistics
and operational analytics. The metrics produces the comparative result - measuring the start time
and stop time of a given process, before and after an RPA deployment. It measures the time
consumed by human workers on a task versus digital workers completing the same task. The
metrics projects accuracy rate and compliance of an accomplished task by a digital worker in
comparison to a human worker.

Action – Insights / Decisions

Competitive data intelligence, executive acions and business decisions are done most
appropriately with the insights and assessments performed and predicted by digital workforce and
its analytics dashboard.

Digital and Open Innovation Ecosystem – The Future

Businesses are embracing digital technologies and platforms like social media, mobile
technology, cognitive computing, machine learning, big data analytics, virtual reality / augmented
reality, intelligent automation, cloud and artificial intelligence.

The countries and the cities are competing in the arena of digital transformation. There is a
significant focus on creating an environment of digital skills, culture of innovation and
entrepreneurship.

Start-ups are synonymous with the best of innovation. It becomes imperative to study start-up
ecosystem of a location. Technology startups are key to development of digital talent in a city.
Number of startups in a city is fuelled by government incentives to startups, availability of funds,
mentors to guide, corporate accelerators and venture capitalists. Government’s role in fostering
innovation and startup ecosystem is vital.

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 Intelligent Managed Services

Intelligent Managed Services is transforming the digitalization of core businesses and services at
scale. Digital financial managed services and digital health care managed services are some of
the examples that work on an intelligent technology enabled services platform. The new
transformed services platforms possess workflow automation, intelligent searches, intelligent
automation and exception handling. Denial management, intelligent claims adjudication, KYC,
AML, trade finance are some of the examples of intelligent technology enabled services
platforms.

Knowledge
and Insight

Strategy & Machine

Planning Learning
Components
driving Digital
Technology

Visual
Collaboration
Perception

Components driving Intelligent Automation:

1. Knowledge and Insight

The future digital workforce will be able to understand any language – ability to
translate to other language, extract meaning from text – ability to identify specific
words or phrases and classify them as names, organizations, places and to other
categories, predict the optimal emotional response – ability to understand the emotion
from the specific words or sentences.

It will be able to bring together contextual information to support handling of process

and present to human as required. The future digital worker scales the digitally
transformed business and empowers humans.

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 2. Machine Learning

The digital workforce with AI technology has got ability of problem solving with ease.
AI can even surpass human ability and intend to create more sophisticated
intelligence. It runs on customizing algorithms that might need strong Graphics
Processing Unit (GPU) systems.

3. Visual Perception

The digital workforce will be able to analyze and process the images, documents and
extract the content from it. It will also be able to intelligently identify and classify the
images. The digital workforce will have the ability to interact and interpret screens in
the same way as humans. The ability to adapt to the changes like screen resolution,
application performance and changes within the application is the key challenge.

It also helps the workers to work with any type of application like Java, Mainframe and
web application. The workforce will be able to interpret the data within the application
based on some complex rules or by linking to the digital skills like Knowledge and
Insight.

4. Collaboration

Human beings, mobile systems, digital platforms and digital workers will collaborate
seamlessly in the world of digital. Digital Duct Tape will be setup on a person’s
desktop that can perform macro recording, monitor work performance and analyze
repetitive tasks. Digital workers understand the working environment and work
seamlessly with the co-workers. Collaboration makes it easy for the human workers
that has the ability of business processing and can also help humans with repetitive
tasks.

5. Strategy and Planning

The digital workforce provides high performance and reliability by careful planning and
sequencing. In order to achieve a specific goal, planning and sequencing skills are
essential. It involves formulation, evaluation and selection of a sequence of thoughts
and actions. The process is designed in a way that can be re-used. The robot can be
programmed once and can be used in variety of business processes with ease. The
future digital workforce will be completely self-managing.

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 Tholons Services Globalization COUNTRY INDEX - 2019
TOP 50 DIGITAL NATIONS

RANK RANK DIGITAL NATION

2019 2018
1 1 India
2 3 Brazil
3 4 United States
4 6 Canada
5 2 Philippines
6 27 United Kingdom
7 7 Russia
8 5 Mexico
9 13 Singapore
10 14 Argentina
11 9 Colombia
12 12 Chile
13 8 Vietnam
14 15 Ireland
15 11 Poland
16 39 Australia
17 10 South Africa
18 23 Uruguay
19 22 Czech Republic
20 18 Indonesia
21 19 Turkey
22 29 Hungary
23 21 United Arab Emirates
24 26 South Korea
25 28 Romania

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 TOP 50 DIGITAL NATIONS

RANK RANK DIGITAL NATION

2019 2018
26 17 Malaysia
27 16 Thailand
28 24 Costa Rica
29 25 Egypt
30 37 Bulgaria
31 33 Pakistan
32 30 Taiwan
33 42 Ukraine
34 31 Sri Lanka
35 - Germany
36 38 Morocco
37 35 Ghana
38 34 Spain
39 40 Estonia
40 50 Puerto Rico
41 48 Israel
42 20 Peru
43 43 Serbia
44 50 Guatemala
45 45 Panama
46 - Paraguay
47 47 Slovakia
48 46 Slovenia
49 - Trinidad and Tobago
50 41 Jamaica

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 Tholons Services Globalization CITY INDEX - 2019
TOP 100 SUPER CITIES

RANK RANK SUPER CITIES

2019 2018
1 1 Bangalore
2 2 Manila
3 8 Sao Paulo
4 3 Mumbai
5 7 Dublin
6 15 Toronto
7 4 Delhi (NCR)
8 5 Hyderabad
9 12 Singapore
10 10 Buenos Aires
11 6 Kraków
12 11 Cebu City
13 17 Chennai
14 9 Montevideo
15 20 Santiago
16 18 Pune
17 24 Johannesburg
18 13 Kuala Lumpur
19 16 Prague
20 30 Mexico City
21 22 Warsaw
22 23 Budapest
23 39 Moscow
24 68 Sydney
25 14 San José

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 TOP 100 SUPER CITIES

RANK RANK SUPER CITIES

2019 2018
26 19 Dubai
27 - London
28 21 Birmingham, Alabama
29 - New York
30 - San Francisco
31 32 Hanoi
32 37 St. Petersburg
33 33 Curitiba
34 35 San Antonio, Texas
35 26 Belfast
36 29 Calgary
37 38 Bogotá
38 40 Bucharest
39 28 Ho Chi Minh City
40 27 Brno
41 25 Kolkata
42 41 Rio de Janeiro
43 56 Cape Town
44 31 Chandigarh
45 34 Colombo
46 44 St. Louis, Missouri
47 51 Sofia
48 45 Coimbatore
49 47 Halifax
50 46 Jaipur

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 TOP 100 SUPER CITIES

RANK RANK SUPER CITIES

2019 2018
51 - Durban
52 59 Jakarta
53 50 Medellin
54 48 Glasgow City
55 43 Tallinn
56 60 Ahmedabad
57 42 Monterrey
58 53 Guadalajara
59 57 Perth
60 77 Vancouver
61 - Los Angeles
62 49 Cork
63 96 Montreal
64 - Washington
65 - Chicago
66 72 Taipei
67 73 Indianapolis, Indiana
68 58 Brasília
69 91 Dallas-Fort Worth
70 61 Seoul
71 85 Tel Aviv
72 94 Atlanta
73 71 Istanbul
74 36 Cluj-Napoca
75 - Kyiv

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 TOP 100 SUPER CITIES

RANK RANK SUPER CITIES

2019 2018
76 - Austin
77 62 Accra
78 - Boston
79 63 Bangkok
80 70 Bratislava
81 78 Lahore
82 55 Ljubljana
83 64 Nizhniy Novgorod
84 - Miami
85 66 Leeds (Yorkshire & Humber)
86 - San Diego
87 - Seattle
88 54 Penang
89 - San Juan
90 74 Cairo
91 65 Lima
92 52 Wroclaw
93 - Philadelphia
94 80 Casablanca (Dar-el-Beida)
95 75 Davao City
96 - Denver
97 - Belgrade
98 90 Barcelona
99 81 Kingston
100 99 Cali

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 Potential Digital Leaders

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 Tholons Research Methodology

Methodology

Tholons Services Globalization Index is the leading touchstone to benchmark the accelerated
digital transformation of industries and services globally. The index evaluates, ranks and provides
location strategies to multinational corporations, countries, governments, multi-lateral agencies,
analysts and investors. Digital is now a critical element in disrupting and transforming industries
globally. Technology, Business process management companies and multinational corporations
need to align with the stark reality of digital innovation and transformation.

Tholons location assessment methodology integrates both primary and secondary research.

 Primary Research: Tholons utilizes surveys and interviews with service providers and
buyers. These surveys are used to determine delivery and consumption trends for
globalization services in specific destinations. Primary data gathering interviews were
used to determine market and labor sizes as well as expansion strategies of leading
service providers. Tholons utilizes its extensive network of industry stakeholders
including buyers and suppliers of services, governments, trade bodies and
associations to collect and validate data and analysis.
 Secondary Research: Tholons utilizes secondary research methodologies to gather
volumes of historical data and various statistics a n d economic related data from
governments, global institutions & agencies, and monetary bodies.
 Quantitative & Qualitative Analysis: Tholons employs a combination of quantitative
and qualitative analysis in developing the weighted rankings. Our proprietary ranking
framework continues to evolve to align with most of the current market realities and
demand. Further, qualitative analysis was implemented to provide perspective to the
quantitative results of the report. Tholons carefully considered numerous variables when
providing final rankings, validated by senior thought leaders from Tholons and industry
leaders globally.

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 Following are the metrics used to evaluate location attractiveness. The relative weights of each
metric are based on their importance to the location decision, again derived from client
experience and industry surveys. TSGI’s 2017 ranking was published with traditional factors
having 80% weightage and digital with 20% weightage. TSGI’s 2018 & 2019 ranking attributes
traditional with 75% weightage and digital with 25% weightage.

Talent, Skills and Quality

Refers to the overall talent pool availability in a particular location and in relation to the capability
of the labor pool to meet staffing demands and fulfil outsourced services from both scale and
quality perspectives. Total population, demography, labor pool size, annual tertiary graduate
output, both in technical and non-technical background and skills proficiencies were among the
host of related components considered when generating the Talent, Skills and Quality Score.

Scoring: 10 = High scale and quality 1 = Low scale and quality

Business Catalyst

Business Catalyst measures industry-related activity as well as the degree of organizational

support present in a location, which is geared to develop the services outsourcing industry.
Current industry performance including the top service providers and captives, location’s

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 headcount and revenues, etc. Number of Employees in ITO & BPO, Number of ITO & BPO
Providers and ease of doing business and Policies and incentives for FDI are among the critical
sub-components.

Scoring: 10 = Strong business catalyst 1 = Weak business catalyst

Cost & Infrastructure

Cost includes relevant payroll and non-payroll costs in a location. Real Estate cost, basic
outsourcing industry salary costs are among the factors considered to generate the Cost Score.
With the internet now being indispensable, the bandwidth cost has also been included.
Infrastructure refers to the availability of physical and technological platforms/systems, which are
required to host outsourcing operations from a location. This considers the availability of office
space, number of special economic zones or IT parks, mass transports systems, number of
leased line providers, Number of Hospitals, Number of Educational Institutes and airport
Connectivity.

Scoring: 10 = Low cost and Capable infrastructure available 1 = High cost & Inadequate
infrastructure

Risk & Quality of Life

Risk encapsulates the qualitative perceptions and measurable occurrences of natural and socio-
political risks which in turn affect the quality of Life, where quality of life refers to non-operational
considerations and ecosystem components that may affect living and working conditions. Risk is
quantified according to the propensity of events to impact personal safety and the overall stability
of a location to hosting business operations. The overall Risk and Quality of Life Score is
generated from the identification of social infrastructure, non-work culture, and availability of
leisure and recreational facilities, among others and from the identification of factors such as
economic, political, natural, social and also cyber and digital risks in a location.

Scoring: 10 = Low risk& High quality of life 1 = High risk & low quality of life

Digital & Innovation

Digital and Innovation is the lifeline of today’s businesses. Businesses must embrace digital
technologies and platforms like social media, mobile technology, cognitive computing, cloud and
artificial intelligence to cater to the changing demands.

Following are the parameters considered for Digital and Innovation:

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 Open innovation ecosystem, number of startups, startup diversity and maturity, innovative
policies and incentives, unicorns, cyber security, global digital competitiveness, digital literacy
rate i.e. the number of people using internet, digital evolution, digital talent and high tech patent
grants, business agility, usage of RPA/AI/cloud, investors.

Scoring: 10 = High digital and innovation 1 = Low digital and innovation

Super Cities in Top 100

Super Cities in Top 100 refers to the number of cities from a given country that are ranked in
Tholons Services Globalization City Index 2019 among the Top 100 Super Cities.

Scoring: Number of cities in Top 100 Super Cities Index.

Workforce/Total Population

Workforce is a measure of the size of the workforce population in a given country and is an
indicator of a talent pool available that can be skilled/re-skilled to serve cross industries in
services.

Scoring: The total population of the country that is derived from the population of the cities
present in top 100 list for a given country.

10 = High workforce 1 = Low workforce

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 About Tholons
Author and Editorial Board: THOLONS is a Global Strategic Consulting, Digital Innovation and
Investment Advisory group serving Fortune 500 / Global 2000 clients,
Avinash Vashistha
Chairman & CEO, Tholons Inc. multi-lateral / development agencies and countries. Tholons has over
two decades of experience and an unparalled network of clients,
Fabriziio Opertti
mentors, startups, system integrators, technology partners and
Chief, Trade & Investment Division, IDB
venture funds
Kerry Hallard
President & CEO, Global Sourcing Association Tholons helps clients maximize returns on their innovation, digital
transformation, business growth and global expansion. MY SPACES,
Richard Jones
Chairman, Proxima the Enterprise Innovation global network, powered by THOLONS is
the global leader and platform in collaborative ecosystem of Co-work |
Kitade Y
Managing Director, Global Initiative Inc. Co-innovate | Co-invest.

Warren Gallant Tholons advisors engage with senior management of client

Founder, TPI organizations to develop strategies for global expansion. We have
Dawn Tiura deep understanding of key industries like Financial Services,
President & CEO, SIG Banking, Healthcare, Insurance, Media and Entertainment,
Debjani Ghosh
Manufacturing, Retail, Telecom, Education, Utility, Oil and Gas and
President, NASSCOM Technology.
Jonathan De Luzuriaga Tholons draws upon the considerable experience of a handpicked
President, PSIA/ IBPAP
team, which has successfully formulated and executed globalization
Michael Barrett and digital strategies to unlock value. Service providers leverage
Professor, IT & Innovation, University of Cambridge Tholons expertise to optimize their global delivery model. Tholons
Andrew Wrobel advisors engage with government bodies to build compelling
Chief Strategist, Emerging Europe strategies for making countries attractive destination for technology,
Dr. Garima Vashistha digital, innovation and business process management.
President - Research, Tholons Inc.

Ankita Vashistha
President - Innovation & Ventures, Tholons Inc. THOLONS Global Offices
Anthony Rajesh North America Europe South America
Principal - Research, Tholons Inc. 415 Madison Avenue, The Landmark West Av. Italia 6201
14th Floor Tower, 22 Marsh Wall, Latu Los Sauces Of. 104
New York, NY 10017 London, E14 9AL 11500 Montevideo,
Uruguay
We would like to thank the various industry associations,
investment and promotion agencies, global clients, leading
technology service providers, multi-lateral agencies and India Philippines
Tholons global research team for this 2019 Tholons Services 346, 17th Cross # 805, Antel Global
Globalization Index. HIG Colony, Dollars Colony Corporate Center,
Bangalore 560 094, Manila NCR 1600
India Philippines
Media Contact:
New York: Ankita Vashistha
+1-646-250-3828 | [email protected]

London: David Jones

+44-745-967-9656 | [email protected]

Bangalore: Anthony Rajesh

+91-988-645-7772 | [email protected]

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