This is an update on my last blog on the impact of COVID-19 on the financial services industry. Since then, I have interviewed many more industry executives both at banks and at operations services vendors. Industry responses are still muted, but clear signs are emerging that banks will be focused on prioritizing those activities which maintain continuity and support adaptation [...]

  We recently talked to Shishank Gupta, the practice head of Infosys Validation Services (IVS), about how the practice is adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis. Of course, the initial focus has been on employee health, helping clients, and enabling its employees to work from home, getting access to tools, applications, and connectivity. The QA practice i[...]

  One of the memes during the COVID-19 crisis asks ‘who led the digital transformation of your company?’ with the options of ‘the CEO’, ‘the CTO’, or ‘the virus’. The global emergency has severely impacted CX, forcing many organizations to shut down or limit their contact center operations when they are most needed. A side effect is that,[...]

  NelsonHall predicts that by 2022, 35% of insurance industry carriers will be in the process of adopting AI technology across multiple use cases within the enterprise. This is based on NelsonHall survey data from the insurance industry that tracks adoption of both RPA and AI (NLP/ML/DL) technology across the property & casualty, health insurance, and life & annuities insurance[...]

  High employee attrition rates are the norm in contact centers, with companies maintaining a constant recruitment, training, and onboarding pipeline. As generations X, Y, and Z come to represent the majority of the workforce, these new workers have different career aspirations, work values, and learning styles. For CX services providers with global delivery networks and demand for spe[...]

    The recent OnePlace2020 digital conference was an opportunity for Benefitfocus to launch its 2020 strategy and to increase awareness of the benefits marketplace. Its vision is to improve lives with benefits, timely in light of the current global pandemic. Ray August, President and CEO, shed light on the fact that health care costs per employee have grown faster than wa[...]

  NelsonHall was recently invited to present at NASSCOM Technology & Leadership Forum 2020, one of my last foreign trips for some time, I suspect. While in India, in addition to presenting, participating on panels and conducting interviews, we had an opportunity to sit down with leaders from across the IT services landscape as well as venture beyond the Grand Hyatt Mumbai to delive[...]

  COVID-19 is impacting banking operations and, as a consequence, related business process services (BPS). Banks are already restructuring operations to address the emerging challenges from COVID-19 (see below for those challenges). The changes are just beginning and will continue to evolve over at least the next four months. While the global adaptation to COVID-19 will take much longe[...]

  Ultimate Software recently held its annual Ultimate Connections client event in Las Vegas, drawing over 4.5k client and partner attendees from across the UltiPro HCM ecosystem. Attendees’ interest had been piqued by the announcement a few days before that Hellman & Friedman-owned Ultimate Software and Kronos plan to merge, forming one of the largest global cloud technology [...]

  User experience and user interface (UX/UI) consulting and design has traditionally been focused primarily on external, customer-facing web properties. However, the scope and focus of experience design services has expanded as companies realize design thinking and experience-centric design has greater applicability than solely in interfacing with users. In this vlog, David McIntire pr[...]

  We recently had an update from NTT DATA regarding its Salesforce services activities across the different countries it operates in. At a global level, the company’s priority is to scale up its Salesforce services capabilities, with recruitment as a priority. Salesforce keeps making horizontal M&As at a fast pace while verticalizing its software products. NTT DATA is mirr[...]

  As businesses brace for the effects of the Covid-19 virus, one direct impact is already happening: the mandatory shift to work-at-home (WAH) in China created the world’s biggest remote working experiment. In CX services, this health hazard is putting the WAH model top of mind for both providers and clients. While virtual work has been gaining traction in the last few years, thi[...]

  As a “Gen-Xer” I look back over my career and can identify four out of ten organizations that had an incredibly positive influence on my life. What made that 40% stand out was that, despite economic market forces, technological change, evolving customer/consumer habits, and skills shortages (as new technical jobs evolved), they successfully adapted to change. They also ev[...]

Read Part 1 here.   Q&A Part 2 JW: What are the main supply chain flows that supply chain executives should look to address? JJ: Traditionally, there are three main supply chain flows that benefit from automation: Physical flow (flow of goods from, e.g., from a DC to a retailer, the most visible and tangible flow) – some more obvious than others, such as parcel[...]

  Introduction Supply chain management is an area currently facing considerable pressure and is a key target for transformation. NelsonHall research shows that less than a third of supply chain executives in major enterprises are highly satisfied with, for example, their demand forecasting accuracy and their logistics planning and optimization, and that the majority perceive there t[...]

  In a recent blog, we highlighted how Cognizant approaches the testing of connected devices. Testing connected devices brings new challenges to QA at two levels: conducting hardware testing and automation. Cognizant’s TEBOT IP is based on a combination of traditional test automation (mostly based on Selenium test scripts) and hardware powered by a Raspberry Pi, triggering physic[...]

  At the end of January 2020, NelsonHall attended Teleperformance’s global analyst meeting in Mumbai. Here are some insights into the company’s progress since the Intelenet acquisition in October 2018 and the formation of Teleperformance Digital Integrated Business Services (D.I.B.S.). Repositioning as a knowledge partner Teleperformance’s reorganization in 2019[...]

  Having stepped back into an HR analyst role at NelsonHall, it’s clear to me that we can’t emphasise enough the increasing importance of talent and the need to leverage more technology in the HR function to be competitive. These two themes are unlikely to surprise. Over the last six months, I’ve heard how big companies such as large IT firms are experimenting with sh[...]

  We recently talked to test IO, the crowdtesting vendor that was acquired by EPAM Systems last April. We wanted to understand the crowdtesting positioning of the company, learn more about the User Story crowdtesting offering launched in December 2019, and understand how test IO fits within the larger EPAM organization. Founded in 2011, test IO today has 200 clients, many in the ret[...]

  Banks have been aggressively transforming their operations to a digital delivery model. It is well known that a key driver, across all industries, is the need to attract new, primarily young, customers who prefer omnichannel interaction with vendors and demand high-quality CX in their business interactions. Less well known are two key drivers that make speedy transformation imperativ[...]