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[...]

In the world of IT services, professional services, e.g. consulting, systems integration and application development, are a cyclical business. Spending growth – or decline – depends very much on GDP growth, corporate moral and investment intentions. Professional services growth has varied since on a quarterly basis, since 2008, between -8% to +9%, on a worldwide basis. IT outsourcin[...]

In March, after attending HP’s annual analyst event in Boston, we wrote a short piece on how HP Enterprise Services is building its “Advise, Transform, Manage” Positioning (see: http://bit.ly/U0oJ8p) Last week, we attended the HP EMEA analyst event in London, where the key theme was the “One HP” approach to market. NelsonHall’s interest is HP’s Ent[...]

NelsonHall’s annual HRO Market Forecast, 2014-2018, provides a forecast for the global HR BPO market by service line and geography. It includes:  The HR BPO market size for 2013 and the forecast through 2014 to 2018 The HR BPO market size and forecast for North America, specifically covering the U.S. and Canada; EMEA including U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Nordics &[...]

NelsonHall has just published its latest market assessment of Multi-Process HR Outsourcing. The report analyzes the characteristics of the market and identifies four major segments and looks at activity within each of these segments. One of these segments is multi-country standardization segment, where we have seen a big shift in the proportion of global contracts and regional contracts a[...]

After a quiet year of acquisitions in the contact center outsourcing market in 2013, 2014 activity so far has been more inline with what we’ve come to expect of this market in terms of the volume of acquisitions. Most of the acquisitions so far this year have been to enhance, and in some case establish, geographic presence, for example: Webhel[...]

The banking crisis clearly meant that the banking industry needed to change. However, those changes have not yet been realized. Prior to the crisis banks were focused on selling new products (e.g., structured products) into mature markets. From 2008 to 2013, banks shifted focus to focus on emerging markets to sell existing services to emerging middle classes. Since 2013, banks have been consolidat[...]

Provision of analytics is important for Learning BPO (LBPO) providers to be able to demonstrate ROI for clients. The late Don Kirkpatrick, who passed away in May at age 90, developed back in the 1950s four levels to evaluate learning effectiveness. Taking a look at these levels, starting with the lowest: Reaction; evaluation about how the participants felt about[...]

NelsonHall recently spoke with management from Virtual Operations, a privately held Dallas, TX-based provider of consulting, implementation and technical services around robotic process automation (RPA).  The company was founded in 2012 by Dan Hudson and Matt Smith who had previously worked together at OnTarget Partners and other ventures.  We asked them about the growth that they a[...]

Per NelsonHall’s HR Outsourcing Confidence Index (HROCI), around one third of HRO contracts signed in Q4 2013 were for services in multiple countries. There were multi-country deal signings across all HRO service lines, the highest number being in RPO and payroll. RPO In 2013 nearly one third of all deal signings were multi-country, up from a quarter in 2010. M[...]

NelsonHall recently attended Call Center Week in Las Vegas. 2014 was the 15th year of this event, which had 1,800 attendees and 120 booths. It’s hot in Las Vegas in June - and the event covered some hot topics! Using Analytics to Improve CSAT I participated in two well attended sessions on analytics, which took different approaches to the same topic. The session sponsored [...]

Yesterday, Infosys ended a period of speculation and announced it had appointed its next CEO and MD, Dr. Vishal Sikka, who had resigned early last month from SAP, where he was a former board member.  Dr. Sikka’s selection as Infosys' next CEO had been touted by the Indian press soon after the news of the resignation of BG Srinivas, who many had felt had been one of the two top [...]

Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Google+, the list goes on . . .  the need for both B2C and B2B enterprises to establish and foster a social presence has evolved from a nice to have to an essential capability . . . yaaawn! We’ve heard this so many times that we are at risk of ignoring it, like irritating boy band lyrics. But unlike the boy band lyrics, there is some truth to the message. [...]

Sopra and CS Communication & Systèmes, a French IT services vendor, have announced a multi-tiered agreement: CS is to proceed to a €12m convertible bond issuance (maturity 5 years, conversion price per share: €3.6; interest rate: 4%; delivery: July 2014). As part of this issuance, Sopra agreed with DUNA & Cie, th[...]

Bloomberg reports that Sprint and T-Mobile U.S.A. are close to a merger whereby Sprint would acquire T-Mobile U.S. for $40 a share (up 17% from the current $34), valuing the company to $31bn. Deutsche Telekom (DTAG), which holds a 67% stake in T-Mobile U.S.A., would receive 27.5% in cash, 27.5% in Sprint stock and retain a 12% stake in T-Mobile U.S.A. T-Mobile U.S.A. had 2013 revenues of $24.4b[...]

TrueBlue announced on Monday it is to acquire U.S. based RPO and MSP provider SeatonCorp. TrueBlue is a specialist staffing organization that supports staffing and also provides onsite management services which will complement the RPO, MSP services of SeatonCorp. The SeatonCorp business beng acquired includes its:  RPO businesses: PeopleScout (U.S based)&nb[...]

NelsonHall recently attended CGI’s global analyst event in London. The key messages in CEO Michael E Roach’s keynote were the success with which CGI is executing on its "Buy and Build" profitable growth strategy and that the expected benefits of the merger are now becoming more visible. At the same event last year, CGI indicated some of the measures it was applying to impr[...]

IBM announced today a new portfolio of cloud-based offerings called IBM Cloud Business Solutions. Now the last three words don’t in themselves give away too much as to exactly what is on offer - but IBM is taking assets from across IBM Group, including consulting services from GBS, pre-built assets from IBM Research, IBM software, advanced analytics, and cloud infrastructure delivered v[...]

Tech Mahindra Testing Services (TMTS) recently provided insights on the work it is doing to expand automation outside of test execution to newer areas. Part of the company’s rationale in increasing the level of automation is based on statistics showing testing teams suffer testing cycle delays regularly, representing 31% to 69% of their testing time. Testing delay result from a variety of[...]

Atos is to acquire France-headquartered technology vendor Bull for €620m in an all cash transaction. Atos offers €4.9 per Bull share, a premium of 22% over May 23’s closure price of €4.01. The offer is conditional on Atos receiving 50% and 1 shares. The largest shareholders of Bull, Crescendo Industries and Pothar Investments, which own a 24.2% stake in Bull, ha[...]