This article was published in The Economic Times Online on June 13 2026. Please click here to read the article.
Today India Inc is at an inflection point where growth today is increasingly powered by a vast array and environment consisting external partners. Third Party vendors today are not just suppliers, they could be technology providers, innovation partners and as we have come to know in many a case even an extension of the enterprise itself. Yet as organisations expand their third- party ecosystem to speed up and realise their digital transformation objectives, they are also exposing themselves to risks in many ways that in today’s digital first world is becoming challenging to control through traditional approaches.
At the same time, organisations are under constant pressure to modernise operations, manage costs, adopt artificial intelligence(AI) , and stay compliant amid rapidly evolving regulations, be it here in India or globally. Managing these priorities internally today can more often than not prove to be resource intensive. It is therefore not a surprise that organisations are evaluating and rethinking how critical functions for example like – Third Party risk management are delivered.
The shift is apparent and clear as stated in KPMG International’s Managed Services Outlook 2026 released recently. Managed Services, once viewed as a cost lever, today has moved firmly into the strategic core of enterprise decision making. 99 per cent organisations consider managed services a strategic priority, with almost half of them putting it at the very top of their list for investment. This is in a way redefining the term of outsourcing, moving from transactional support to a transformation engine.
The gradual shift is being driven by the fact that there exists a widening gap between innovation and execution. While teams across organisations are aligned on the need to adopt AI and drive consistent transformation, they are often held back by challenges and constraints around legacy systems, processes and at times talent shortages. This is where managed services is increasingly being seen as a bridge that helps close this gap, thereby helping organisations develop new capabilities across operations, minus the delays associated with building them in-house.
The aforementioned study shows that 87 percent of organisations have already integrated managed services into their digital transformation strategies. This level of integration reflects a deeper shift: organisations are no longer outsourcing isolated functions, but are instead redesigning and revisiting their operating models to deliver outcomes through a combination of internal teams and external managed service providers.
AI is now being viewed as a powerful catalyst in this transition with managed services being looked at as a key tool for delivering AI on scale and adoption of AI. What this shows is AI today is not just a technology layer but needs a different operating model, one that can manage data, ensure security and compliance and help with optimising performance. Managed Services can provide this infrastructure backbone.
Today the value that managed services brings to the table, extends itself far beyond efficiency gains. Organisations are looking at it to drive growth, innovation, more importantly in areas that have become core and central to competitiveness in today’s complex and ever-changing business environment. The managed services model helps to access capabilities and skills in specialised areas, modern platforms and analytics that sometimes are challenging to scale and build internally. In a world where speed and agility define success this becomes a decisive factor.
Another aspect is also in how organisations approach risk. The traditional methods of third-party risk management have been found to be fragmented, reactive and literally all over the place where multiple vendors are hired by different functions leading to a lack of integration. As ecosystems expand, the lack of integration and fragmentation leads to blind spots. Managed services help to bring in synchronisation, allowing for a more coordinated and integrated approach be it standardising methods, or using AI and automation to move from one time screening to periodic checks and to continuous monitoring.
Equally important is moving from cost driven outsourcing to outcome-driven partnerships. Organisations today want to see value, better service quality, leading to faster resilience further leading to faster innovation. This is leading to a redesign of relationships from vendor contracts to strategic collaboration with accountability.
For India, the implications are significant. As a growing and expanding international hub for digital services, organisations and companies in India are functioning and operating in and within deeply interconnected global value chains. Managing these ecosystems in a systematic, organised and secure fashion can become a key differentiator. Going forward, organisations must view managed services not as an adjunct, but as a key structural element of how operations are shaped and delivered.
Lastly for India Inc the message is clear. The question should no longer be about whether to adopt managed services, but about how to use and leverage them to transform functions. In today’s interconnected world resilience is no longer built within the organisation alone, but across the whole ecosystem. And managed services partner eco system is fast becoming the foundation of that resilience.
