NelsonHall recently attended a cloud computing event hosted by IBM, its first such event in Europe since it introduced a new segment structure at its investor briefing in February. With this new structure in place, plus the recent addition of revenue disclosures for cloud from each segment, we were interested in the extent to which IBM is combining its relevant cloud capab[...]

Yesterday, the people of the U.K. did what many thought unlikely, and voted the nation out of the European Union (EU). And while the wider political ramifications surrounding ‘Brexit’ start to unravel, what might be the impact on talent acquisition and the related outsourcing industry?  It’s still unclear what kind of agreement Britain and the EU will negotiate post-B[...]

The traditional inbound phone sales process is giving way to a multichannel environment, where the customer is in control – usually visiting the company website first and expecting to connect with a sales rep immediately, more commonly over webchat, and then deciding on a purchase. The challenges for customer service teams are two-fold: Training agents to sell via chat, with all the re[...]

This is the first in a series of blog articles looking at how business process outsourcing vendors are applying RPA and AI in the insurance sector. First up: Wipro.     Wipro started its automation journey in the late noughties and has since gone on to set up a dedicated RPA practice, and also developed its own AI platform, Wipro Holmes. Currently, Wipro is principally partn[...]

Last week, NGA HR held it fifth annual U.S. analyst event at which it described the key elements of its strategy, including a focus on foundational HR processes, helping clients on their journey to digital HR, and differentiating through flexible global delivery and technology platforms. NGA HR also placed significant emphasis on ‘client centricity’ across every sector it operates in. [...]

Increasing emphasis on improved customer experience is driving customer management services (CMS) outsourcing deals to evolve, with vendors providing domain expertize, analytical insights, transformational capabilities, and access to new channels/technology across the entire contract duration. On the client side, this translates into working with fewer vendors sourcing multiple functions and geogr[...]

Mindtree recently briefed NelsonHall on its work in testing automation, in particular on its Dynamic Test Engineering Platform (DTEP) IP which the company launched in 2015. With DTEP, Mindtree is centralizing access to several IPs and accelerators and hosting them on the cloud or on premise. DTEP, which automates the testing life cycle, includes several elements: Test support services i.e. d[...]

This week, HGS announced the launch of their DigiCX suite of digital solutions, which integrates web self-service, live support via chat, text, social media, and voice, and optimizes the CX with analytics and automation. When it embarked on this latest phase in its development a year and a half ago, HGS consulted NelsonHall “to help validate our direction, sharpen our solution approach, and [...]

Infosys has briefed NelsonHall on several automation testing initiatives based on analytics, AI/machine learning and robotics. The software testing services industry continues to impress with its level of investment in IP and automation. Gone are the days when testing service vendors were talking about their testing frameworks and set of standalone accelerators and test case repositories. [...]

Andy Lee, Alorica founder and CEO, shared with me last summer that his goal was to become the number one CMS vendor (by revenue) serving N. America. Well, now he is closing in on that goal, with Alorica entering into a stock purchase agreement to acquire Expert Global Solutions (EGS). With EGS, we estimate Alorica’s pro forma 2015 North American revenues are ~$1.8bn, closing the re[...]

In August 2015, we asked ‘Is CGI Ready to Pull the Acquisition Trigger?’It’s been four years CGI’s last big acquisition (Logica), and CGI watchers are still waiting to see what big move CGI will make next. Here I take a look at what’s driving CGI’s growth plans, and what we should expect next. As a consolidator, CGI positions on taking a long-term strategic v[...]

NelsonHall recently had a discussion with the head of the Integrated Engineering Services (IES) unit of Tech Mahindra regarding its 2016 acquisition of Pininfarina (along with parent company Mahindra & Mahindra). Turin-based Pininfarina is an icon in the world of automotive design, having serviced the likes of Ferrari for 80 years. It is a company of relatively limited size (€87m in 2015 [...]

Yesterday evening provided what was possibly the biggest surprise in the IT services industry for some time: the news that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is spinning off its Enterprise Services business via a Reverse Morris Trust (RMT) to HPE shareholders, for the business to be able to merge with CSC in a tax-efficient manner. Firstly, here are a few of the details of the transaction, which [...]

NelsonHall recently visited Sitel at their contact center in Chennai to experience operations at first hand and to discuss the evolving CMS outsourcing industry. Only five months ago, in December 2015, the South Indian floods hit Chennai and access to the Sitel center was blocked. Over 70 employees stayed behind in the office at Ramanujam IT Park, where the company provided beds and food, while tr[...]

Much of the current buzz in the industry continues to be centered on RPA, a term currently largely synonymous with automation, and this technology clearly has lots of life left in it, for a few years at least. Outside service providers, where its adoption is rapidly becoming mature, RPA is still at the early growth stage in the wider market: while a number of financial services firms have already [...]

Next year will mark Capgemini’s 50th anniversary, and it is looking to its U.S. operations to spearhead a reinvention as a next generation IT and business process services provider, one where it positions as an innovator that is bold and capable of acting at speed in helping clients optimize and disrupt the way they do business. This is reflected in an aspirational statement for th[...]

KellyOCG held its second annual analyst event in Chicago last week. The event covered KellyOCG’s full suite of HR service offerings, but here I take a closer look at MSP and RPO and specifically at the advisory and analytics services that are driving growth in these areas. KellyOCG is the outsourcing and consulting group of Kelly Services Inc., and represents the largest growth segment of[...]

Cielo held its annual RPO analyst event at its Milwaukee headquarters and service center last week. Cielo is one of the leading RPO providers in terms of revenue, number of hires, candidate focus, talent management focus, and global growth. It made 134k hires in 2015, with 130 clients in 69 countries. And with the addition of its newest service center in Buenos Aires, Cielo now has delivery center[...]

Accenture recently briefed NelsonHall on its new Omni-Channel Testing Platform (OCTP), an accelerator that sits at the intersection of Accenture’s Digital and Testing businesses. This is a reflection of the fact that software testing services are no longer confined to custom applications and COTS, but are now well integrated into the digital world, a process that started some three to four y[...]

NelsonHall has recently attended both the WNS analyst session in New York and Infosys Confluence in San Francisco. It may seem trite to suggest that their chosen locations reflect the differing approaches to the market being taken by the two firms, but there are some parallels. Sector domain focus While Infosys is taking a horizontal approach to taking emerging technologies to the next level[...]