At CSS Corp’s analyst day and OneWorld client conference in Santa Rosa, California, the theme was “Let’s Simplify”. CEO Tiger Ramesh opened the analyst day with a story about his own digital experience travelling to the conference, including buying his airline ticket online, and piloting a hotel phone app he used to select his room and take restaurant recommendations. He us[...]

ADP recently held its seventh annual industry analyst event in NYC at its Innovation Lab in Chelsea, providing a current business update, news of recent developments, and insights on what’s to come.   Overall, there has been growth across ADP’s cloud-based platforms, including RUN, Workforce Now, Vantage HCM, and GlobalView HCM, with the total number of clients reaching ~5[...]

Though we’re only just into fall, the nature of activity in the Benefits Administration market in 2015 provides important pointers to key strategic focus areas in 2016. In the U.S., the emphasis will continue around Health & Welfare (H&W) services, stemming from the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In 2015, tier two H&W specialists such as Businessolver and TASC launched ACA reporti[...]

Minacs has a strong tradition of supporting the automotive industry: over six years ago, the sector made up ~70% of overall revenues, and it now stands at ~45% due to diversification across multiple sectors. Consequently, Minacs has a vision for supporting the connected car, aiming to deliver seamless CMS solutions for any wirelessly connected vehicle, over any network. Its clients are mainly orig[...]

Over the last few years, ADP has ramped up its capabilities beyond payroll to focus on other areas of HR, including benefits administration and RPO, making it well-equipped to handle the main HR functions. This is important because many organizations, from SMEs to large companies, are looking to minimize the number of suppliers they deal with – though only if quality of service is not c[...]

I recently had the opportunity to meet with the Alorica executive team for an update on the integration of its recent acquisition, West Corporation’s Agent Services business. In March 2015, privately held Alorica acquired West’s Agent Services business for $275m in cash. In 2014, the Agent Services business generated ~$580m in revenue. Alorica anticipates $1.2bn in combined revenue [...]

The recent merger of Willis Group and Towers Watson has created a global advisory and brokerage firm valued at $18bn. The deal was met with raised eyebrows by several financial analysts, who argued that Towers Watson shareholders were being short-changed in a deal with significant strategic risks, all for the benefit of revenue synergies and the tax savings that will result from moving its tax hea[...]

A couple of weeks ago, Hinduja Global Services (HGS) announced that it is to acquire Mphasis' Indian domestic BPO division for Rs. 17 crore. For around $2.7m, HGS will pick up seven contact centers in Noida, Raipur, Indore, Mangalore, Pune and two buildings in Bangalore, with a total seat count of 6,400, and ~7,500 employees - and a business that was generating around $22m in annual revenue. T[...]

French CMS vendor Groupe Acticall is to acquire Sitel Worldwide, buying the 86% stake owned by Onex for ~$55m including an earn-out component. Groupe Acticall has financing for the acquisition from Société Générale and BNP Paribas It comes as no surprise that Onex is selling its stake in Sitel. What is perhaps a surprise is the size of the company making the acquisit[...]

Not long ago the concept of blended learning typically meant formal instructor-led training combined with self-paced e-learning. Now it includes both formal and informal methods delivered in a variety of modes. The widespread use of mobile technologies cannot be ignored, and now the trend is for on-demand and just-in-time (JIT) learning. Microlearning is also increasing in importance: while mil[...]

NelsonHall recently visited one of Convergys’ Intelligent Contact (IC) centers in Belfast, Northern Ireland. IC originally started life as LBM in 1996, then was acquired by Stream in 2013, which was itself acquired by Convergys in 2014. IC is a specialist sales division of Convergys, consisting of agents across multiple centers in Belfast and Greater Manchester, performing a mix of outb[...]

STARTEK is to acquire Customer Management Services (CMS) BPO provider ACCENT Marketing Services, LLC ("Accent") from MDC Partners Inc. for $16m in cash plus working capital adjustments. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Jeffersonville, IN, Accent has 2.3k employees and delivers services from six locations in the U.S. and J[...]

Two common themes in the marketing collateral of vendors providing Customer Management Services (CMS) are the use of analytics and transformation.  For analytics, a popular claim is the use of big data for predictive modeling within contact centers. But is it really happening? The reality is that, while certain vendors are using data for simple predictive modeling, this is still a distinct[...]

It seems like yesterday that the concept of a private health insurance exchange was novel: it’s hard to believe that active exchanges have been available from benefits consultancies for three years, and that retiree exchanges are nearly 11 years old. Here’s a quick update and review of how the private exchange landscape has changed in this short time. Active exchanges are mu[...]

During a recent visit to London I had the opportunity to visit the HGS contact center in Chiswick. The 500-seat center is focused on supporting accounts with broad language capability needs and it also provides specialist client programs beyond traditional customer care support. The industry sectors supported from the center include automotive, consumer packaged goods (CPG), government, and health[...]

Financial planning for retirement readiness is a big concern for many individuals, and the stress is often magnified the closer one gets to retirement. For years, organizations and DC administration providers have been honing different approaches to address this. One of the biggest challenges in establishing a model that works stems from diversity within the workforce. Earlier approac[...]

Demand for learning services has been the lowest of all the HR outsourcing services over the last few years. But while the market has been in a lull, several suppliers have taken the time to revamp their learning services businesses in one of two ways. The first approach is about honing learning offerings around one specific learning function. Sometimes this is about refining one func[...]

By Vicki Jenkins and Mike Cook A year ago Convergys acquired fellow contact center vendor Stream, making it the second largest CMS BPS provider by revenue behind Teleperformance. NelsonHall CMS analysts Vicki Jenkins and Mike Cook caught up with key members of Convergys’ leadership team on the anniversary of the acquisition to discuss how the new organization is shaping up. The importa[...]

What a difference a year makes for EXL. It entered 2014 under the cloud of the loss of two contracts, including the unfortunate termination Travelers (which had accounted for nearly 10% of total revenues in 2013) because of inappropriate behavior by an employee. So it started the year facing significant revenue headwinds. A year later, EXL delivered full year 2014 revenues that beat revise[...]

STARTEK has announced results for Q4 2014 and full year 2014. Q4 2014 Revenues were $64.2m, up 1.2% y/y LBIT was $1.5m, a negative margin of 2.4%, down 98 bps y/y. Full year 2014: Revenues were $250.1m, up 8.1% LBIT was $4.9m, a negative margin of 2%, up 72 bps. Q4 revenue contribution from largest clients was: T-Mobile: 30.6% AT&T: 19.6% Comcast 15.7%. [...]