Sitel has been awarded a two year 800 FTE CMS contract by Danish telecom provider TDC, following an initial contact that was made with twelve potential suppliers in November 2013. This is TDC’s largest foray into outsourcing its CMS function by agent number and by total value, with headcount representing approximately one third of total CMS capacity. The contract includes the transfer of [...]

Cognizant is to acquire TriZetto, a healthcare ISV in the U.S., for $2.7bn in cash. TriZetto has a headcount of 3.7k (Cognizant at end of H1 2014: 187k.4). In its last 12 months, TriZetto had $711m in revenues and a non-GAAP operating margin of 18.4% (Cognizant in 2013: 20.6%). TriZetto LTM revenues breakdown by service/product line is: Payer software: 40% (~$277m) Consulting: 23% (~[...]

TCS, Infosys and SQS have recently published their calendar Q1 and H1 2014 revenues, and provided financial details on their software testing revenues (see notes below). In calendar H1 2014 (all numbers below are constant perimeter NelsonHall estimates): TCS: revenues were ~+24% to ~$612m (H1 2013: ~+23%) Infosys: ~+21% to ~$395m (H1 2013: ~+15%) SQS: + 9% to €129m (~$174m) (H1 2[...]

Last week, Mercer released preliminary results from its annual national survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans 2014, which discussed health benefit cost expectations for 2015.  Some of the key findings of the survey included: Health benefit costs per employee will increase ~3.9% on average in 2015 or ~5.9% if employers make no changes to their health plans for 2015 Around 32% of em[...]

Concentrix recently briefed NelsonHall about its positioning now that it has essentially completed its acquisition of the former IBM BPO capabilities around customer management services and also some industry-specific services (excluding mortgages, which IBM retained). For details of this acquisition, see "IBM Exits CMS and Most Industry-Specific BPO: Divests Business to Synnex Corp" at:[...]

Alliance Data is to acquire Conversant for $23bn to expand its digital marketing services capabilities. The acquisition will be paid for half in stock and half in cash (at tendering shareholders' discretion). Post closing, Conversant will operate as a part of Epsilon, a digital marketing services division of Alliance Data. The transaction is expected to close in Q4 201[...]

Companies today are increasingly looking to Wellness programs as a means of meeting their business objectives. It’s a two sided-approach and benefit. First, the cost of employees missing work due to sickness, diseases and stress-related illnesses can be significant in terms of healthcare costs and productivity. Per Towers Watson, employer healthcare costs are expected to increase 4.4% [...]

TeleTech recently briefed NelsonHall on its growing healthcare sector business. A few years ago, TeleTech shifted its go-to -market strategy from being capability-led to sector-led. One of its key target sectors is healthcare, where TeleTech’s focus is U.S. tier 1 health insurance payers, providers and life sciences companies, also the personal health products sector. [...]

Mastercard, First Data, and TSYS have partnered with Apple to enable Apple Pay for mobile payments. Apple Pay is a mobile payment service. Apple Pay works with iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and Apple Watch through an NFC antenna design, a dedicated chip called the Secure Element, and Touch ID security. Apple Pay can be set up by users with their credit or debit card on file from their iTunes Store acco[...]

EVRY has announced that it is considering strategic opportunities including a sale. EVRY is in theory an attractive target: the company has a sizable presence in a region with short- to mid-term growth potential: It is the largest IT service vendor in Norway ($1bn in revenues, excluding its financial services unit). Norway, with an economy that is heavily influenced by oil & ga[...]

When you look at the financial performance of the four largest Indian oriented IT service providers (IOSPs) over the last four years, it becomes evident that there is a direct correlation between the level of topline growth they achieve and their expenditure on sales and marketing (S&M)…with EBIT margins benefiting from the strong topline growth. Let’s look at a few data points[...]

In a case that has been unfolding for several years now, and which heated up in early May, Accenture on August 1 assumed responsibility for administering Medicaid claims in the state of Texas. Accenture’s first award as a state’s primary fiscal agent was announced in the wake of a dispute between Texas and  Xerox over its process for reviewing Medicaid dental c[...]

Wipro has updated NelsonHall on its ServiceNXT initiative. ServiceNXT aims to increase productivity in both IT infrastructure management and application management contracts. ServiceNXT is based on: Usage of Wipro IP and recommended COTS tools across the client’s operation for various tasks including ITSM, change management, demand management, problem management Analytics, based on d[...]

The latest large partnership and implementation of Workday was announced August 13, 2014 by CSC who will establish a consulting practice enabling clients to transition to Workday, and also deploy Workday internally to ~70k employees globally. The move to launch Workday consulting and implementation practices, often alongside HR BPO capability, has already achieved considerable momentum. Similar[...]

Chesnara plc, the life assurance consolidator, has awarded a life & pensions BPO contract renewal to HCL Insurance BPO Services Limited ('HCL') which consolidates the services provided in the existing arrangements and which extends the service for a further 11 years. The service scope across the various books remains unchanged, as do the broad service levels. HCL’s original co[...]

T-Systems recently updated NelsonHall on its virtual desktop service offering, Dynamic Workplace, its new brand name for Future Workplace, a virtual desktop offering introduced in 2013. T-Systems Dynamic Workplace was introduced to address client needs for virtual desktop and mobility overall, based on a centralized approach to applications and data. T-Systems with this offering has taken sever[...]

Overall H1 HRO M&A activity is up year-over-year, and acquisition activity has increased in nearly all service lines except learning.   While learning M&A activity was high in H1 2013, this year, M&A activity in H1 2014 was strongest in the benefits administration market, and it’s occurring in both the U.S. and U.K. as vendors strengthen their DC contribution capability.&[...]

CSC recently briefed NelsonHall on its SAP Next-Gen offering, unveiled in June 2014. CSC’s SAP practice is relatively large within CSC (headcount 7.7k, ~10% of CSC’s overall 80k). CSC has recently engaged in a service portfolio refresh to increase its differentiation through more specialized SAP-related services. This differentiation relies on adoption of automation tools and enhanc[...]

Sopra recently updated NelsonHall on its application management (AM) capabilities. In 2013 Sopra generated ~€393m revenues from AM, or ~29% of its total revenues. The company is a top application management vendor in its domestic market, along with Accenture, Capgemini, Atos CGI, and IBM. Key AM clients of Sopra include Airbus, Orange, SFR, Crédit Agricole, EDF, Auchan, SNCF, BN Pariba[...]

IBM has patented a technique to allow users to dynamically choose or change the location where public and private cloud data is stored.This is clearly a very important development in legitimizing cloud use for production applications, where country and industry regulators can take a very strong view on the geographies in which data, particularly customer data, can be stored. Potentially th[...]