NelsonHall has commented several times about the role of platforms in quality assurance (QA) and how these are playing a central role in functional testing in the world of agile methodologies and continuous testing. Platforms take a best-of-breed approach to software components and rely, by default, on open source software, sometimes including expert functionality from COTS. In th[...]

  Tieto recently announced its intention to acquire EVRY. The company is offering 0.12 Tieto share and NOK 5.28 in cash per EVRY share. EVRY shareholders will receive €0.2bn in cash and 37.5% of Tieto’s capital, valuing EVRY to ~€1.4bn ($1.6bn). Also, Tieto is taking over the net debt of EVRY (NOK 6bn/$0.7bn). The acquisition will give birth to the largest Nordics-he[...]

  The BFSI industries are increasingly looking to intelligent automation (IA) to address key challenges in their business. A recent NelsonHall survey of 50 BFSI executives found that they perceive that IA is able to replace manual processing and human decision-making, allowing the bank’s operations to decouple processing volumes from headcount. Key benefits respondents expect to [...]

  In the world of testing services, crowdtesting stands out. While efforts towards automation are accelerating in testing services/quality assurance (QA), the perception that crowdtesting is labor intensive and relies on communities of tens of thousands of testers seems at odds with this. This perception is no longer valid: the crowdtesting industry has changed. Managing crowdtestin[...]

  I recently attended Korn Ferry’s RPO Client Advisory Forum, which was all about talent management. The theme was ‘unplugged’ and featured frank discussions about the RPO industry, including the challenges faced by the clients and service providers who attended from every region. Beyond RPO, Korn Ferry offers many complementary talent management services, includin[...]

  Blockchain has been a focus of technologists, VCs, and media pundits for several years now. However, to date, operational deployment remains minimal. Of all enterprises already working with blockchain, only a few percent have a scale operational deployment. Blockchain has seen three stages in its short history: Lab testing of the technology: 2014 to 2016. Key events include the[...]

  We recently talked to DXC Technology’s Analytics business line about its work with German premium car OEM BMW, its positioning in autonomous vehicles, and its differentiation strategy. BMW recently provided some light on the dynamics behind its Vision iNEXT autonomous car due to launch in late 2021. Vision iNEXT, BMW’s first autonomous vehicle, will offer Level 3 auton[...]

  This week Capgemini announced its intention to acquire Altran in an all-cash transaction of €14 per share. The €5.0bn transaction, which includes €3.6bn in cash and Altran’s net debt of €1.4bn, provides a 30% premium over the last month. Capgemini has secured the 11% stake from Apax Partners and expects to close the acquisition by the end of 2019. The acq[...]

  Crowdsourcing and different types of freelanced customer support models pre-date the current household names using these models in leisure and travel, personal transportation, and delivery services. Many of these early attempts died out because of poor business models, or remain effective today but in niche markets (e.g. gaming) or on a small scale (e.g. U.K. mobile network, giffgaff[...]

  NelsonHall has recently completed compiling and analyzing data from a survey of over 1k IT services buyers globally. This research is being published in a series of sector reports (all are available to subscribers here), spanning the 18 sectors analyzed, with geographic breakdowns incorporated within each. While completing these individual reports we noted several themes that were[...]

  Last week I attended PeopleScout’s annual client NEXT Talent Summit 2019. In the keynote address, President Taryn Owen noted that this event marked one year since its acquisition of TMP to strengthen its global RPO and talent advisory capabilities. TMP, which operated in the U.K. under the brand name TMP Worldwide, provides employer branding, recruitment marketing, and RPO serv[...]

  NelsonHall recently completed an in-depth analysis of advanced digital workplace services (DWS). This blog looks at some of the key findings from this research, in which we spoke both to leading IT services vendors and clients of their services. Changing workforce expectations are driving DWS transformation Organizations are deploying digital workplace services to improve produ[...]

  Dozens of influencers recently attended the WNS U.S. Influencer Day in New Orleans, where the theme was 'Co-create to Outperform’. Through general overviews of its approaches and through client presentations, the company provided insight into its recent success and its future plans. The backdrop for the conference was cheery, buoyed by 7% annualized growth over the prior fi[...]

  Following on from the Blue Prism World Conference in London (see separate blog), NelsonHall recently attended the Blue Prism World conference in Orlando. Building on the significant theme around positioning the ‘Connected Entrepreneur Enterprise’, the vendor provided further details on how this links to the ‘democratization’ of RPA through organizations. [...]

  At the recent TCS Innovation Day held in New York, NelsonHall had an opportunity to talk to TCS about how it approaches its research and innovation function, balancing longer-term open-ended research and more immediately applicable innovations to evolve how it delivers services. (For more on the event itself, see the blog by Andy Efstathiou here). TCS has developed an overall appr[...]

One of the first stumbling blocks of business process transformation is identifying meaningful automation opportunities. A typical process will have a management consultant, system expert, or Lean Six Sigma specialist to monitor manual processes for a set time, collect performance data, and make recommendations. Companies supplement this assessment with executive ideation sessions, operational[...]

  NelsonHall recently attended the IPsoft Digital Workforce Summit in New York and its analyst events in NY and London. For organizations unfamiliar with IPsoft, the company has around 2,300 employees, approximately 70% of these based in the U.S. and 20% in Europe. Europe is responsible for aproximately 30% of the IPsoft client base with clients relatively evenly distributed over the s[...]

NelsonHall recently attended the TCS Innovation Forum 2019 in New York. The forum demonstrated clear progress in TCS’ thinking and approach to Business 4.0 since last year’s conference – TCS has identified human engagement and buy-in with the principles of Business 4.0 as critical to successful implementation and value realization in business transformation. And human buy-in [...]

  NelsonHall recently visited Accenture at its Cyber Fusion Center in Washington D.C. to discuss innovations in its cyber resiliency offerings and the recent launch of its new digital identity tool, Zoran. Failings of existing role-based access (RBA) Typical identity and access management (IAM) systems control users’ access to data based on their role, i.e. position, compe[...]

Atos’ global analyst event in Boston in April came just a few weeks after its launch of a new 3-year plan ‘Advance 2021’ (Atos Digital Value Advancing Customer Excellence) about which we have written here. Key to Atos’ mid-term and longer-term growth is the effectiveness of its drive to align its operating model to be more industry and client focused. As such, we wer[...]