The major capital markets custodian firms recently reported Q3 2015 financials. The custodians provide critical operations support to global capital markets, and their performance provides an early warning measure of the state of the capital markets industry in general. Here we look at the performance indicators for BNY Mellon, State Street, and Northern Trust, reflect on the implications for the [...]

Webhelp recently entered the Turkish CMS outsourcing market with the acquisition of Callpex, a move that is set to bring an additional €20m (~$20m) in annual revenue against its global revenue of ~$648m (2014 NelsonHall estimate). Callpex has 2,000 employees and 40 clients, and will bring with it logos in the BFSI, telecom, travel and automotive sectors, primarily in the domestic market. Thes[...]

One of the most laborious tasks faced by business planners is gathering relevant market size and forecast data as part of the annual planning cycle. Traditionally this has meant trawling through enormous documents, often referred to as the black books or bibles of the planners’ world. And then, finding that not all of the required market data is available in one place (or even at all), this [...]

The global learning BPO (LBPO) market was worth $2.9bn in 2014 and NelsonHall forecasts it to grow at 6.7% per annum, reaching $4bn by 2019. But what is the current pattern and nature of LBPO deals, and how are things changing? Recent LBPO activity has been largely from Europe, a trend which began to pick up in 2014. Activity is widespread across Europe, including the U.K., Germany, Nordics, De[...]

When Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) became more widely adopted a decade or so ago, the primary focus was on the following functions: Sourcing Recruiting Selection & Assessment Administration Onboarding. During the last few years vendors have added additional capability focused on helping clients improve their talent management capability, including: Talent strat[...]

IT security has never been more important, with levels of cybercrime continuing to climb and the adoption of cloud, mobile and IoT technologies increasing organizations’ ‘attack surface area’.  With organizations gathering more data than ever via digitization and big data, and attackers finding ever more sophisticated ways of targeting them, both the depth and breadth of att[...]

On October 14, the Xchanging board recommended a final cash offer by Capita of 160p per share. The offer, valuing Xchanging at ~£412m, represents a premium of ~44% to the closing price on October 2, 2015 (the last business day before the start of the offer period), 52% to the prior three-month average price and 64% to the one-month average price.  Capita states it believes the acquis[...]

NelsonHall has just published a market assessment on Analytics and Reporting (A&R) BPS in banking and capital markets (BFS). This is an emerging BPS market with few significant competitors, and adoption from only a few institutions who are tier 1 banks in mature markets. There are many vendors of point A&R solutions, but no standard or dominant vendor has emerged to manage the process valu[...]

The most important development in U.S. banking BPS in the last five years has just been announced (it may still not pass the U.S. Congress, but this analyst believes that too much pressure will be applied by industry for Congress to block it). The announcement is that the signatories to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have reached an agreement on the terms of the trade agreement and will no[...]

Capgemini Group recently briefed on its R&D services/product engineering testing capabilities in its Sogeti High Tech subsidiary. Background Sogeti High Tech (SHT) is a subsidiary of Sogeti (itself a subsidiary of Capgemini). It provides product engineering services (PES)/R&D services. The company has a background in servicing key aeronautic sector clients. The company has expanded i[...]

One recurring theme in recent conversations with CIOs has been their increasing interest in DevOps and their recognition of the importance of having the right culture. In fact, three C words: Culture, Collaboration, Communication. The general feeling is that if Agile is difficult, distributed Agile is challenging – and DevOps requires organizational rethinking. But, they agree[...]

On October 6th, NelsonHall held its quarterly IT outsourcing (ITO) Index webcast, presented by Dominique Raviart, Research Director for IT Services research. In Q3 2015, ITO bookings were down 30% year-on-year overall. In North America, bookings declined by 60% y/y, while Europe was up 60% y/y. Over the Q1-Q3 2015 period, ITO bookings were down 30% y/y overall. North America was down [...]

CSC has announced it has entered into exclusive negotiations to acquire Australian IT services vendor UXC for AU$1.26 per share, a purchase price of ~AU$428m (~US$300m). The transaction is subject to completion of a five-week exclusive due diligence process. CSC expects it to be finalized by February 2016. UXC is one of Australia’s largest independent publicly-owned IT services vendo[...]

At CSS Corp’s analyst day and OneWorld client conference in Santa Rosa, California, the theme was “Let’s Simplify”. CEO Tiger Ramesh opened the analyst day with a story about his own digital experience travelling to the conference, including buying his airline ticket online, and piloting a hotel phone app he used to select his room and take restaurant recommendations. He us[...]

ADP recently held its seventh annual industry analyst event in NYC at its Innovation Lab in Chelsea, providing a current business update, news of recent developments, and insights on what’s to come.   Overall, there has been growth across ADP’s cloud-based platforms, including RUN, Workforce Now, Vantage HCM, and GlobalView HCM, with the total number of clients reaching ~5[...]

Three questions are commonly being aired these days about the delivery of IT services in support of digital transformation initiatives. Having heard each of these being raised several times, we thought it is a good time to put them through a bit of a reality check. First up for examination... Is “Fail Fast, Move On” the Right Approach to Digital Transformation Projects? The [...]

Though we’re only just into fall, the nature of activity in the Benefits Administration market in 2015 provides important pointers to key strategic focus areas in 2016. In the U.S., the emphasis will continue around Health & Welfare (H&W) services, stemming from the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In 2015, tier two H&W specialists such as Businessolver and TASC launched ACA reporti[...]

HCL began its robotics program in late 2013. Since then HCL has invested ~$1.5m in robotics, (ToscanaBot Automation Framework), via its HCL ToscanaBot center of excellence, which currently employs a team of ~25 personnel and is planned to grow to 50+ personnel by 2016. HCL estimates that its robotics practice currently has an FTE impact of around 2,000 with this expected to grow to ~8,000 FTE impa[...]

Virtusa recently briefed NelsonHall on its Pegasystems application testing IP and service offering, and specifically the newly launched ADOPT testing framework, which illustrates the growing maturity of testing services offerings. Virtusa was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Westborough (Massachusetts) with large delivery facilities in India and Sri-Lanka. The company largely provides ap[...]

Last month Allegis Group announced it has combined GettingHired into its Allegis Global Solutions (AGS) business. GettingHired was acquired by Allegis Group in 2012, keeping its own brand, and is now being integrated into AGS’ talent offering, including RPO, in North America. GettingHired provides a talent pool made up of individuals with disabilities who are seeking to fill positions fro[...]