Serco announced its 2013 results this week including: Revenue £4,288.1m up +5.6%, up +6.7% at constant currency (CC) Operating profit was £143.8m, a margin of 3.4%, down 330 bps The decline in profits was anticipated with a warning given by the company to this effect only a few weeks ago. In this period, Serco reported a net exceptional charge of £90.5m, reflecting p[...]

The new deal between Hartlepool Council and Northgate Public Services (PS) shows how old-style local authority partnership contracts can evolve. This, is a low risk deal for Hartlepool Council, unlike other local authority partnerships of yester-year that failed to deliver.  For a start, Northgate has provided the Council’s IT services since 2001 and it has already established a presenc[...]

Webhelp is to acquire SNT, a Netherlands based CMS vendor. SNT has 3,500 agents across eight sites in Europe with revenues of 77m. The combined company will be called Webhelp SNT following the acquisition which is to be completed in twelve months.  This acquisition will give Webhelp a significant Dutch presence and will bolster its global agent headcount to ~21,500, and increase its a[...]

Firstsource has just announced its strongest quarter since FY 2013. Revenue was up 12.1% y/y to Rs. 7,998m (~$128m) and margins increased 210 bps y/y to 9.3%. The margin improvement is due in part to Firstsource’s consolidation of unprofitable accounts in both its customer management business and in domestic accounts in India and Sri Lanka. Telecoms and media, Firstsource&r[...]

Serco has updated its guidance for 2013 and 2014 following its clearance by the U.K. government to bid for new contracts.  Serco expects a mid-single digit percentage organic decline on 2013 revenue due to: Lower levels of incremental work won across the group to date Attrition from contracts lost such as electronic monitoring Volume reductions in its Australian immigration detent[...]

Earlier this month Capita confirmed that it had won back the London congestion charging contract from IBM. The contract with TfL is for £145m for five years starting from November 2015, with an additional five-year extension option. The scope of the new contract has expanded to include traffic enforcement notice processing for penalty charge notices for bus lane and yellow box junc[...]

2013 proved to be an exciting year in benefits administration.  In the U.S., much of the focus was on corporate health exchanges for active employees while the U.K. was focused on auto-enrollment (AE).  Specific highlights of the year in the U.S. included: Aon Hewitt: added 15 clients to its corporate health exchange (total number of clients is at 18) Mercer: added 52 clients [...]

Work at home agent (WAHA) CMS BPO specialist Arise Virtual Solutions announced this week it is hiring 6,500 WAHAs (who will be equivalent to 3,250 FTEs) across Arizona, North Carolina, Texas, Michigan and Virginia. This marks a turnaround for Arise after what was a difficult 2013 marked by loss of volume in some key contracts and delays in new signings. These hires will represent a 26% increase[...]

Capita acquired Cedar HR back in September 2011 for £15m to bring new market opportunities to the group. At the time there was much talk of police turning to technology and outsourcing for efficiency but a period of indecision preceded and followed the first-ever election of police and crime commissioners in November 2012. Against this backdrop, the Cedar seed has slowly geminated and starte[...]

Serco has announced a partnership agreement with Bromley Healthcare, an employee-owned social enterprise, to work together in the community healthcare market. Initially the partners will work together to improve quality of community healthcare in Suffolk, with Bromley Healthcare acting in an advisory capacity and supporting clinical leaders. In the long term, they intend to join forces to bid f[...]

Capita has been awarded a £145m contract by Transport for London (TfL) to operate the congestion charging, low emission zone and traffic enforcement notice processing schemes. The contract is for five years starting from November 2015 with an option to extend for a further five years. Services to be provided include: Operating the traffic congestion scheme Operating the low[...]

NelsonHall recently attended a briefing by the Cabinet Office Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) about the new Crown Commercial Service (CCS). This has replaced Government Procurement Service (GPS) and is to become the most comprehensive government procurement services provider in Europe. It is to address the market in a more coherent fashion by organizing into domains and segments but operating as[...]

Convergys is to acquire Stream Global Services for $820m.  With anticipated combined CY 2013 revenues of ~$3bn (Stream ~$1bn, Convergys ~$2.045bn). Convergys will this year become the second largest CMS BPO pure-play by revenue globally, close to Teleperformance (expected CY 2013 revenues of $3.26bn). The purchase price of $820m represents ~80% of Stream’s annual revenues but an impr[...]

Customer management services (CMS) is no longer the red-headed step-child of the BPO world.  In spite of the exit from this area of IBM, most CMS pureplays are currently achieving improving margins and revenue growth. With multi-channel delivery proving crucial in winning new contracts, and the increasing importance of big data and analytics in the value proposition, 2014 is set to be an extr[...]

In early December, Norfolk County Council and HP Enterprise Services announced a £26m, five-year contract to develop a cloud-based information hub for service integration and multi-agency collaboration in Norfolk. The ambitions go beyond the information hub with NCC having seen the light of good information management for achieving lasting operational efficiencies in the face of continuing b[...]

Latin America has become an increasingly popular destination for the customer management services (CMS) BPO industry in recent years, outperforming the global CMS market. Will this continue? NelsonHall expects the global CMS BPO market to grow at 3.7% CAAGR through to 2016 with Latin America growing at more than twice that. So what is driving that growth? Much of the growth from this region is [...]

Mouchel has announced results for FY 2013, for the period ending 30 September 2013:     Revenue was £555.3m       EBIT was £28.1m, a margin of 5.1%. Comparisons with the prior year were not provided as the company in its present from came into being in August 2012. For the new company, for the five weeks to the end of 2012 FY, revenue was[...]

As 2013 comes to a close, it’s time to recap on what happened in HR BPO this year. It has been a good year for HRO with overall contract activity up ~37% on 2012.  But, it was a year of two halves: H1 activity was down 16% y/y, but the market really picked up in H2, when announced contract activity nearly doubled as benefits administration vendors announced health exchange contract s[...]

Maximus has announced results for FY 2013, the year ending September 30, 2013. Revenue was $1,331m, up 26.8% as stated. Operating income was $188.2m, a margin of 14.1%, up 200 bps. FY 2013 revenue (and growth) by segment was: Health Services $862.9m (+28.6%) Human Services $468.4m (+23.6%). FY 2013 operating income and margin by segment was: Health Se[...]

The U.K. Cabinet Office recently briefed NelsonHall about progress with its shared services strategy. Shared services has been a recurring theme in the U.K. public sector’s drive for efficiency for many years. It has continued to rise in importance as a lever for cost savings in the public sector, driven first by the Gershon Review of 2004 and most recently, when the current government first[...]