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 [...]

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[...]

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. [...]

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.&[...]

Genpact’s Q2 2014 results show similar mid-single digit (5%) top line growth to Q1 (4.9%), in line with prior guidance for the year of 4%-6% (this has now been adjusted to 5-7% to include a revenue contribution from its Q2 acquisition of Pharmalink). But it is substantially below the 12.1% growth seen in 2013.   EBIT margin was 13.0%, down both sequentially (-7 bps) and y/y (-157 bps[...]

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 multi-process HR outsourcing (MPHRO). The MPHRO tool is available to NelsonHall clients and is also available for a limited period free-of-charge to strategic sourcing managers. In addition to a comparison of overall ve[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

NelsonHall recently attended a Genpact analyst forum in Boston, where we were keen to learn more about the changes in its strategy that Genpact announced in February to effect a major transformation of its business (see our blog “Genpact: Slow Progress on Transformation Strategy in 2013 - Unveils Next Phase of Plan: http://research.nelson-hall.com/blog/?avpage-views=blog&type=post&po[...]

Teleperformance has had an impressive quarter that might have resulted in 9.1% growth if it wasn't for the extremely unfavorable exchange rate fluctuations which resulted in an overall negative impact of €32.7m ($44.2m). Despite this Teleperformance achieved 3% y/y revenue growth in the quarter to €610m. Growth in the English-speaking market & Asia-Pacific SBU w[...]