EVRY has announced its largest shareholders, Posten Norgen and Telenor Business Partner Invest are to sell their shares (representing a combined 70.24% of capital) to Apax Partners. Apax Partners has secured an additional 3.15% of EVRY shares from Folketrygdfondet (Norway’s government pension fund) and is to launch a NOK 16 per share all-cash public tender. The tender values EVRY at ~$6[...]

NelsonHall recently attended Luxoft’s first ever analyst event in New York. Luxoft is a young company - it was founded in 2000 - that is enjoying very fast growth (20%-25% depending on the year). For its FY 2015 it has guided on revenue growth of at least 28% (of which 25% organic) and an adjusted EBITDA margin in the 17% to 19% target range. Luxoft is targeting $1bn in annual revenues[...]

NelsonHall, the leading global BPO and IT outsourcing analyst firm, has today launched a new tool to assist strategic sourcing managers in assessing vendor capability in Property & Casualty Insurance BPO for the automotive sector. The NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) for P&C BPO in the automotive sector is now available to NelsonHall clients, and is also available[...]

NelsonHall recently met with SQS top management and discussed key priorities in the short, mid- and long-term. Short-Term: India and Delivery Network A short-term priority remains the integration and development of the former Thinksoft Global Services, now SQS India BFSI. The acquisition of Thinksoft increased SQS’ headcount in India to 1.9k or 54% of the overall global headcount. S[...]

On November 20, 2014 Xerox announced its acquisition of Intrepid Learning Solutions learning services to expand it learning services portfolio and capability. Intrepid Learning Solutions brings in capabilities that include: Consulting services, including development of learning strategies, measuring their effectiveness and benchmarking  Course curriculum design and development[...]

In the last twelve months we have more customer management services (CMS) BPO investment in South Africa, including  Webhelp setting up centers in Cape Town and Johannesburg with an agent headcount approaching 1,000 Capita transitioning part of its O2 support to Cape Town in the form of a ~1,400 seat operation. One (of many) attributes that make South Afr[...]

In September we wrote an event note following Infosys European analyst meet on the principal message in the keynote address by new CEO Dr. Sikka “Renew the core business, innovate into new businesses” (see here). Earlier this month we attended Infosys’ U.S. analyst event and its Confluence customer meet in Orlando. Dr. Sikka was about 100 days into his role, and we were lookin[...]

NelsonHall, the leading global BPO and IT outsourcing analyst firm, has today launched a new tool to assist strategic sourcing managers in assessing vendor capability in Managed Service Programs outsourcing (MSP) as it relates to contingent workforce management. Also available is NelsonHall’s first MSP market analysis report, “Targeting Managed Service Programs”. NEAT Vendor E[...]

NelsonHall recently attended an HP Enterprise Services (HP ES) analyst and adviser event in London focused on its European BPO business - on what was the first working day of its FY 2015. The tone was very upbeat: FY 2014 was a good year, with HP ES winning 11 out of the 12 BPO deals for which it bid, for an overall TCV of $1bn+ And management described its pipeline for FY 15 as “[...]

This is the final in a series of short blogs that look at various disruptive forces and their impact on BPO. The impact of all these disruptive factors is that BPO is now changing into something that the client has always wanted namely “High Velocity BPO”. In its early days, BPO was a linear and lengthy process with knowledge transfer followed by labor arbitrage, followed by process[...]

Randstad Sourceright Analyst Day 2014: RPO In High Gear Last week Randstad Sourceright held its first analyst event. Services covered included MSP, independent contractor solutions, technology, RPO, employer branding, veterans hiring initiatives, and career transition services. My focus here is primarily on Randstad Sourceright's RPO activity. RPO in High Gear In 2014 YTD Rand[...]

In our discussion, we’ve missed out lots of fashionable disruptors like mobile and cloud and these are indeed important elements within BPO. However, let’s be more futuristic still and consider the impact of the Internet of Things. Some examples of current deployment of the Internet of Things are as follows  Sector  Examples [...]

IBM recently held its annual IBM Alliances event, focusing on SAP and Oracle (other major IBM-wide partners include Microsoft, Infor, Cisco, Juniper Networks and Citrix). IBM Alliances manages major relationships with technology vendors that cross several IBM service lines, e.g. GBS, GTS, Systems & Technology, and Software. Those seven major partnerships are significant and command ~15% of ove[...]

BPO has always depended on partnerships with third-party software providers to provide supplementary platforms around client core systems to provide specialist functionality in areas like procurement, collections, & reconciliation handling. However, there is a danger that this can lead to a Heath Robinson (or Rube Goldberg) combination of applications, involving expensive software or SaaS[...]

There has always been a big divide between those suppliers that are comfortable handling voice and those suppliers that were comfortable handling data with very few comfortable with both. However, the impact of digital is such that it increases the need for voice and data convergence. A common misconception in customer service is that the number of transactions is going down. It isn’t, it[...]

There’s another disruptive force in BPO that no-one likes to talk about. It’s called labor arbitrage. Everyone is keeping a bit quiet about this one. It’s nothing like as sexy as robotics, or analytics, or SMAC, but it’s also a disruptive force. One side of labor arbitrage within labor arbitrage is relatively defensive, but in spite of automation and robotics, mature &ld[...]

Robotics has moved incredibly fast over the past year, but so has analytics. Analytics has been around in support of process improvement initiatives & Lean Six sigma projects for many years. It has also been present in areas like fraud analytics, which means at a personal level that you now have to re-instate your credit card most weeks. However, analytics is now becoming much more pervasiv[...]

This blog is the first of seven in a series looking at six disruptive forces and their implications for BPO. Some of these are widely talked about, others less so. This first blog sets the scene and looks at the impact of robotics. Subsequent blogs will consider the implications of: Analytics  becoming all-pervasive and increasingly predictive Labor arbitrage is dead – long live l[...]

Changes in banks’ regulatory capital requirements for businesses are leading banks to exit or downsize lines of business and increase the focus on other lines of business. Payments is an area where banks and non-banks are significantly increasing their commitments. Over the next five years the payments industry will change its entire shape, structure, and offerings. In the past, the complexi[...]

As reported in NelsonHall’s 2014 RPO market analysis, with a global shortage of talent predicted for the foreseeable future, RPO buyers will continue to seek specialists to attract candidates through the use of social networks and to create a pipeline of passive candidates (i.e. talent communities) to improve speed, quality of hire and retention of talent. Nine out of 10 companies in the [...]