Mastercard and Visa are taking very different approaches to the payments market, resulting in very different operating outcomes. Mastercard is focusing on growth in emerging markets and merchant acquiring (especially consulting services for merchants); Visa is pursuing mature markets with aggressive cost control and sales incentives to drive revenue growth.  Top line results for [...]

Be it in support of healthcare, the London market or consulting capabilities, the U.K. insurance BPO market is seeing a lot of acquisitive action from four major players who have already made significant acquisitions in the H1 2014.  Starting with two of the most acquisitive vendors in insurance BPO: Innovation Group and Quindell continue to build operational scale Earlier this month, A[...]

With like-for-like growth of 10.3% this is another strong quarter for Teleperformance although it continues to be challenged to its exposure to exchange rate fluctuations in the LATAM region resulting in reported revenue growth of 4.1%. Its Brazil business is contending with a stalling economy and a sharply depreciating currency, although it is still profitable and[...]

The NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) for Payroll Outsourcing is now available to NelsonHall clients, and is also available for a period free-of-charge to buy-side organizations through NelsonHall and through its partners SIG and SSON. The NEAT tool for Payroll Outsourcing is part of NelsonHall’s “speed-to-source” initia[...]

Xerox Services has had a challenging half year: In Q1 it announced it was taking an impairment charge ($80m for the year) related to HIX platform impairment (see here for discussion). In Q2 it lost the Texas Medicaid contract. The impact of this is significant (around 1.5% of revenues): Q2 2014 Services contract renewal rate was 63%, well below the company’s target range of 85% to 90[...]

Wipro announced its Q1 FY 2015 results today (for full details see here:). Bit of a mixed bag from Wipro this quarter, generally positive, but with a few areas where we would hope to see improve over the next few quarters. Looking at overall topline performance, revenues were towards the higher end of prior guidance of $1,715m-$1,755m, and the 9.6% reported y/y growth was[...]

Cognizant recently announced a F&A BPO contract award by facility management services group ISS, covering its operations in the Nordics. This is the third F&A BPO client win for Cognizant in the Nordics. The first award was with Volvo, announced March 2011, followed by one at Norway Post, in partnership with local partner Visma, in July 2011. Cognizant’s clie[...]

TSYS has announced Q2 2014 revenues, for the period ending June 30, 2014, of $538.1m, up 34.2% year-over-year. Revenues including reimbursables were $602.0m up 30.4% year-over-year. Q2 2014 revenues (and revenue change) by activity, excluding reimbursables, were: North America: $233.2m (+8.7%) International: $84.7m (+10.6%) Merchant services: $108.3m (-4.1%) [...]

EXL recently announced the acquisition of Albany, NY-based Blue Slate Solutions. Blue Slate, founded in 2000 by CEO Rick Barnett, has from its inception focused on data driven business consulting and services. Today, with a staff of 35, it focuses on developing simplified data models and business processes for health insurers (~85% of its business, including large insurers and Medicare contractors[...]

Tieto's Q2 2014 revenues were €386.4m, down 7.3% y/y, and down 1.3% y/y at constant currency. (for full details see here)  Q2 2014 revenue (and growth both on an actual and CC/organic basis) by service line was: Managed Services: €132m (+5%, +9%). Half of the CC organic growth this quarter resulted from hardware reselling as part of a large IT infrastruct[...]

In case anyone has missed the phenomenon that is TCS, it has achieved over 16% y/y growth in four of the last five quarters (with “just” 15.3% in the fifth). This quarter, it reported a y/y increase of nearly $530m in revenue. If TCS continues at this pace – and management commentary is of a strong pipeline – then revenues this fiscal year should be around $15.5bn. TCS has [...]

I recently attended Ceridian’s annual client event in Las Vegas with the assumption that the event would revolve around Dayforce.  And it did, but I was also pleasantly surprised to learn how Ceridian is tying Dayforce and LifeWorks, Ceridian’s EAP and wellness offering, together. Over the years, I’ve watched Ceridian shift from a mostly services-oriented organi[...]

How Talent2 addresses the HR Cloud SaaS puzzle with payroll Talent2’s cloud-based HR SaaS with integrated payroll services offering now represents 25% of the company’s HR/payroll revenues. Its revenues have been growing at ~10 % per annum and NelsonHall expects cloud based HR SaaS with payroll services to represent 30% of Talent2’s HR/payroll revenue by 2015. Talent2’[...]

What do Infosys’ Q1 FY 2015 results indicate about its current performance and its general health as a new CEO arrives? (a full breakdown of the results are available here) Revenue growth of 7.1% was in the 7% to 9% guided range for the full year, albeit at the low end. This was the third quarter in a row of decelerating growth, in both reported and constant currency gro[...]

TCS recently briefed NelsonHall on the intelligent testing system (ITS) it launched in April 2013 in an effort to automate tasks across the software testing lifecycle. It intends to  expand usage of test automation from test execution to include other tasks e.g. test design and test support services such as test data management and service virtualization. ITS integrates COTS tools e.g. Inf[...]

The HRO market is always buzzing with activity. With the first half of the year over, it’s a good time to examine the key trends by service area. Benefits Administration: Benefits administration was a hotbed of activity in H1!  Contracts were awarded across various service lines in the U.S. as well as in the U.K. There was a solid stream of pensions and retirement administration c[...]

Per NelsonHall’s learning BPO market analysis and concurrent client interviews conducted as part of the NelsonHall Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT), both providers and buyers (current and prospective), will be pleased to know that learning BPO is largely meeting and exceeding client expected benefits in six out of seven criteria sought by clients. Based on interviews with LBPO client[...]

After three months of talks, Teleperformance is to acquire Aegis' U.S, Philippines and Cost Rican operations for $610m. The transaction will involve the transfer of 19,000 agents (18,000 work stations) in 16 centers, representing ~$400m in annual revenues.  Aegis will bring to Teleperformance the following operations: The U.S: nine sites with ~5,300 total seats The Ph[...]

Wipro has partnered with the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) to launch a hosted multi-tenant reconciliation utility. Each partner will provide:  LSE: UnaVista platform (proprietary platform which provides transactions, reconciliations, reporting, etc.) The platform overs all instrument types and is used by ~1,000 financial institutions  Data center hosting[...]

The Russian parliament has passed a law to require internet companies to store the personal data of Russia users inside the country’s borders. Although the bill has passed through the Duma, it still needs to be pass in the Federation Council of Russia and President Vladimir Putin before it comes into effect. If put into law, all internet companies operating in Russia will be required to s[...]