Report Summary

We surveyed 200 executives in 11 industries around the world who make decisions on which IT services to use (average company revenue of $11.7 billion). The quality of an IT services firm’s thought leadership content was their third most important buying criteria, with nearly eight in 10 saying that it highly or very highly influences their purchase decision. Thought leadership was more influential than ratings of IT analyst firms, and even more important than the price of a project.

79% of executives who decide which IT services to use rely on thought leadership from those firms to help make their decisions.

Yet most IT services firms don’t realize how important thought leadership is today in customers’ buying decisions. Using the same decision criteria we used with buyers of IT services, 300 IT services firms (average revenue of $2.6 billion) ranked thought leadership a distant eighth as a factor in their customers’ decisions. Less than 60% believe it is highly or very highly influential. 

Let that sink in: 79% of executives who decide which IT services firms to use rely on thought leadership from those firms to help make their decisions. Yet only 59% of IT services firms believe their thought leadership content has the same degree of influence on which firms clients choose. Perhaps this helps explain why the average IT services firm spends only 1.7% of revenue on thought leadership and has fewer than six people whose jobs are to make them seen as thought leaders.

Nonetheless, we also found that 12% of IT services firms take thought leadership seriously. We identified these firms as “Leaders” because they said their thought leadership programs have a very high impact on revenue. From the way they answered 32 questions, they differ markedly from the 16% of IT services firms that said their thought leadership programs had zero impact on revenue. We refer to this group as “Followers.”

In addition to our surveys, we also interviewed heads and other managers of thought leadership at Accenture, Capgemini, IBM, Tata Consultancy Services, Virtusa and other IT services firms – as well as executives from other industries who decide on which firms to use, as well as IT services industry veterans, analysts and financiers. In all, we interviewed 20 people with extensive experience in IT services, both on the “sell” and “buy” sides.

From our survey and interviews, we found that the Leaders in thought leadership at IT services firms differ from the Followers in seven fundamental ways:

1. They invest six times more on thought leadership and twice as much on research to develop compelling views. Leaders spend nearly twice the average and more than six times what Followers spend on thought leadership. But more important, leaders appear to concentrate their spending on fewer topics than Followers, which spread their smaller investments across too many topics, and which makes it hard to formulate big new insights on any of them. What’s more, Leaders spend 57% of their content budget on research, while Followers spend only 28%. Spending on research gets client attention. When asked what types of thought leadership content they valued the most, clients chose long primary research reports. Leaders also differed in how they conduct their research. They do most of their own studies (58%) and co-brand 42% with IT analyst firms, publishers or others. Followers do the opposite: co-branding 65% of their studies, and branding as their own 35%. 
2. They are much more likely to measure the revenue impact of thought leadership, and much more likely to believe it drives revenue. All Leaders say thought leadership drives their firms’ revenue. And they’re much more likely to monitor the quality of their content.
3. They have more rigorous processes for thought leadership research and are less likely to let generative AI do their thinking. The best IT services firms at thought leadership bring greater rigor to the research they conduct, especially in research design. Leaders are twice as likely as Followers (69% vs. 34%) to have a rigorous research process. Leaders also conduct more extensive marketing than Followers. And Leaders more often help business developers turn thought leadership messages into sales pitches. What’s more, Leader firms are more selective than Followers in where they use generative AI in producing content. While nearly half the Leaders (47%) use AI to gather and summarize secondary research, less than a third use it in other content development tasks – e.g., identifying topics, creating insights, outlining narratives, and writing and editing prose. Follower firms are more likely than Leader firms to use generative AI in all but one of nine content development tasks that we asked them about. 
4. Their top managers are bigger advocates of, get more involved in and more often view thought leadership as a competitive advantage. Leading IT services firms have more and higher-level internal advocates for thought leadership. Their top management is nearly eight times more likely to be involved in developing content than the people running Follower firms (86% of Leader firms vs. 11% of Follower firms). Why more advocacy and involvement? In part, it’s because executives in our Leaders group view thought leadership as a key to gaining market leadership – i.e., as a competitive advantage. In 83% of Leader companies, top management sees thought leadership as a competitive advantage – more than twice the number of Follower firms (30%).
5. They collaborate more strongly with sales, marketing, and service innovation – functions that view thought leadership content as essential for creating demand (i.e., for marketing and selling services) and developing new services. They have strong working relationships with marketing, sales and service innovation. 80% of Leaders said their thought leadership groups work tightly with the company’s sales function. Only 34% of Followers’ thought leadership groups work closely with sales. Twice as a many Leaders than Followers – 62% vs. 30% — always or usually turn their content into new services. 
6. They have more thought leadership talent, and they value research skills the most. Leaders have a big talent advantage. Some 78% said they were talent rich or abundant – six times the number of Followers who said the same thing. Leaders view research and analysis, developing unique perspectives, and writing and editing as the three most important skills. (Followers did as well.) But the skill in which Leaders say they need the biggest improvement is in marketing and distributing thought leadership content. Followers said their most sought-after skill is the ability to develop unique perspectives.
7. They centralize thought leadership to create consistently high-quality content, and to have it report above marketing, sales, and service innovation on the organization chart to avoid becoming captive their parochial demands. Centralizing thought leadership is important to having revenue impact. Half the Leader firms centralize their thought leadership activities vs. 0% of the Follower firms. In Leader firms, the thought leadership group is also more likely to reside high on the organizational chart and report not to market, sales, or service innovation but rather to the strategy group or higher. That’s the case at 42% of Leaders — nearly three times the number (15%) whose thought leadership groups report to the head of strategy or higher at Follower firms.

This report explores how clients of IT services firms and the firms themselves use thought leadership. In particular, we drill deep on what the best IT services firms at thought leadership – the firms we call “Leaders” — do differently. We then explain how all IT services firms can improve their games.