NelsonHall recently visited Convergys’ contact center in Bangalore to learn more about its operations, and here I reflect briefly on three areas: The center’s ongoing channel shift to webchat An interesting development in the center’s analytics work An initiative to hire more women in an effort to have a more balanced workforce. Background Convergys Bangalor[...]

NelsonHall has reported previously on how Tech Mahindra is developing its performance engineering capabilities through its Tech Mahindra Performance Engineering (TMPE) practice. TMPE has transitioned its services portfolio from performance testing initially to performance engineering, shift-left, and production (see here), helping client organizations to take performance into account at the so[...]

The digital economy is significantly increasing expectations for speed of delivery as organizations strive to compete with agile, digital-native competitors.  In response, IT service providers and their clients are shifting to a continuous delivery approach that incorporates design thinking, agile application development & test, and DevOps – all connected and aligned with the desire[...]

  As earnings are released, it’s a good time to reflect on HR outsourcing trends by key service line. Here’s a brief round-up of market activity across payroll, RPO, and learning services in H1 2016. Payroll Payroll activity has been bustling in Europe YTD, with a strong emphasis on ramping up capabilities. SD Worx made two acquisitions to accelerate its growth across[...]

The rise of self-service provisioning and automation of public cloud environments gives companies autonomy in managing their infrastructure and flexibility in meeting fluctuating capacity demands. From the perspective of an IT service provider, however, if clients can provision new cloud environments in a few minutes and then use the same screen to orchestrate and manage that cloud environment[...]

Though Excelity Global is a new name and brand, Excelity was formerly the Asia Pacific payroll business of Aon Hewitt, which was acquired by Everstone Capital in 2015. I recently interviewed a Fortune 10 multinational conglomerate that has been an Excelity payroll outsourcing client in China since 2004 to understand its expansion plans in Asia Pacific. The company has a history of aggressive gr[...]

The media, and vendor marketing departments, have described RPA as a compelling technology for enterprises, based on its perceived ability to reduce operational cost. However, our review of case studies and BPS vendor offerings reveals a more complex set of drivers at work. Here I take a brief look at examples of the application of RPA in the banking sector. The banking industry has been ch[...]

In an earlier blog, we described how Tech Mahindra had expanded its performance engineering testing to embrace the Internet of Things (IoT), and here we take a look at how the company is handling another area of non-functional testing: software security testing. Tech Mahindra provides security services through its Cyber Security practice, a horizontal line of business. The practice has a headco[...]

This is the second in a series of blogs looking at how business process outsourcing vendors are applying RPA and AI in the insurance sector.   WNS’ RPA journey is moving quickly, with six pilots underway and five more ready to go. WNS has decided to wait on AI for the time being, in favour of developing its process automation capabilities, which has included the launch of eAdj[...]

NelsonHall recently attended Sitel’s European Customer Day in Paris. The event was an opportunity for Sitel to update the analyst community on the progress it is making with company restructuring following its acquisition by French BPO vendor Acticall, and to present to its clients and stakeholders a vision of the future – not just for contact center outsourcing, but for customer e[...]

Last week, EXL announced its acquisition of LISS Systems (LISS), a London-headquartered provider of policy administration software for the life, annuities and pensions insurance sectors. LISS will be integrated with EXL's insurance business unit. EXL has made employment inducement equity awards vesting over four years to nine new non-executive employees (all of LISS’s[...]

  Genpact recently hosted an advisor/analyst session at its new Innovation Center in Palo Alto. So why is a BPO specialist opening a center in Silicon Valley? Genpact is using the center as a hub for the development (and showcasing) of platform-based digital assets aimed at mimicking the industry disruptors by being based on standardized, simplified operating models and distributed tec[...]

Within its Lean Digital approach, Genpact is using digital and design thinking (DT) to assist organizations in identifying and addressing what is possible rather than just aiming to match current best-in-class, a concept now made passé by new market entrants. At a recent event hosted at Genpact’s new center in Palo Alto, one client speaker described Genpact’s approach to [...]

        Yesterday, SYNNEX Corporation, the $13.3bn parent company of Concentrix, announced it is acquiring Minacs for $420m. The acquisition brings approximately $400m of revenue and $0.53 per share non-GAAP earnings. Minacs adds to Concentrix ~ 21k employees, 15k seats and 35 centers in Canada, U.S., India, LATAM, Europe, and the Philippines. The combined Concentrix/M[...]

Earlier this year Virtusa acquired Polaris, now rebranded as VirtusaPolaris. Polaris was a mid-sized (~$300m revenue) ADM pure-play (it had spun off its Intellect software product unit in 2014) specializing in BFSI sectors (95% of revenues, NelsonHall estimate), in particular treasury and capital markets (~52% of revenues in Q4 FY 2016, the period ending March 31, 2016), corporate banking (~19%) a[...]

NelsonHall recently published its 2016 Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) market analysis and NEAT vendor assessment, as part of which we interviewed the clients of 19 RPO vendors to ascertain satisfaction levels across a range of RPO service criteria. And while we found that RPO is largely meeting or exceeding client expectations, there are a few areas that fall short of expectations and shoul[...]

Four years ago, at the time of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games, NelsonHall reported on the work Atos does for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) though its Major Events unit. See our previous commentary here. This week we visited its center in Barcelona to get an update on the work it is doing for the Rio Games starting next month, The Olympic Games remain a fantastic o[...]

  Here I take a look at how platform-based business process services (BPS) is yielding benefits for retail banks – specifically, delivering manual processes with greater efficiency, increasing automation, and delivering transaction products at scale. Delivering manual processes with greater efficiency Retail banking (RB) BPS is a large-scale, mature business with high adop[...]

  Smart Cities is one of the fastest growing segments within the burgeoning internet of things (IoT) outsourcing market. Currently worth just ~$140m, NelsonHall forecasts the global market for Smart Cities IoT outsourcing to grow by 75% CAGR over the next five years, taking it to ~$2.15bn by 2020. IoT is being applied in commercial buildings and homes, and in urban infrastructures s[...]

  RPO provider PeopleScout recently held a client forum to discuss key recruitment themes, one of which was a discussion around Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) led by Dr. Arin Reeves. This focused on the importance of D&I, including the tendency for diverse groups to outperform non-diverse groups in solving problems, and how D&I can support the hiring process. Tips on how [...]