Forrester announces leaders in global digital experience agencies

Forrester has revealed its leaders in global digital experiences agencies, with Publicis Sapient, Deloitte, IBM, Accenture, and PwC named in the top spots. 

Forrester evaluated 14 service providers for its Forrester Wave: Global Digital Experience Agencies, Q4 2019 report against 24 criteria, which were grouped into three categories: Current offering, strategy, and market presence. Each service provider included in the evaluation has a portfolio of digital experience services and the capacity to deliver, global presence and delivery capability, and market leadership and visibility.

Forrester said in the report the steady rise of digital experience requirements has pushed agencies and consultancies to expand their portfolios of services with new capabilities in consulting, strategy, design, marketing, commerce, innovation, security and organisational change, as well as their research and program management capacity, creative and product engineering and physical design skills. 

Deloitte was named a leader due to scoring well on a number of strategy factors including vision, client co-innovation, partner ecosystem and employee experience. Forrester said Deloitte Digital has higher customer adoption and ratings of its experience design, content services, analytics and client portal or app services, and has good adoption of creative services, customer data and commerce. 

Accenture has integrated its digital services to deliver experience-led transformation and scored well on vision, partner ecosystem, client co-innovation and employee experience. Forrester said Accenture has higher customer adoption and ratings in many service lines, including customer experience strategy and insights, creative services, customer data and analytics, and program management, and higher adoption of marketing and commerce services, but lower adoption of its emerging touchpoint services. 

Forrester said Publicis Sapient tackles transformation with strategy, design, and engineering and scores well on employee experience. It was also ranked as having the strongest current offering. Forrester said Publicis Sapient has higher customer adoption and ratings of its customer experience strategy and insights, experience design, product engineering and technology services, along with good adoption of its content and emerging touchpoint services. 

IBM iX scored well in several strategy factors too, including vision, client co-innovation and partner ecosystem. Forrester said IBM iX has higher customer adoption and ratings of its experience design, analytics, and artificial intelligence and machine learning services, but lower adoption of its content services. 

PwC has a unique approach to business transformation with a robust ecosystem. Forrester said PwC has higher customer adoption and ratings of its experience design, privacy and compliance and program management services, but lower adoption of its customer data and technology services.

VMLY&R, TCS, Isobar, EPAM, Wipro, Cognizant and Capgemini were also all named strong performers. Wunderman Thompson and MRM/McCann were named contenders. 

“We are honoured to be recognised by Forrester as a Leader,” Publicis Sapient chief experience officer, John Maeda, said. “We believe this recognition reflects the digital experiences we create that enable our clients to exceed their customers’ expectations. 

“For just as long as Apple has dominated in design, we’ve been quietly crafting ‘dataful’ experiences for our clients that combine consumer insights with new technologies to create transformative business value.” 

The Forrester Wave: Global Digital Experience Agencies, Q4 2019 report aims to help application development and delivery professionals select the right vendor for their needs and recognises: “Today and forevermore, a digital experience is the entirety of the relationship that a customer or employee has with your company” and “Digital experiences now echo and support the entire customer journey, either directly through self-service or indirectly through employees.” 

The report, authored by Forrester vice-president and principal analyst, Ted Schadler, analysed the companies, leading with experiences that are following through with transformation; that bring creative thought and expression to differentiate brand experience; integrate a portfolio of strategy, design, data, technology and program services; and deliver consistently in every region.

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