NelsonHall recently visited Convergys’ contact center in Bangalore to learn more about its operations, and here I reflect briefly on three areas: The center’s ongoing channel shift to webchat An interesting development in the center’s analytics work An initiative to hire more women in an effort to have a more balanced workforce. Background Convergys Bangalor[...]

The digital economy is significantly increasing expectations for speed of delivery as organizations strive to compete with agile, digital-native competitors.  In response, IT service providers and their clients are shifting to a continuous delivery approach that incorporates design thinking, agile application development & test, and DevOps – all connected and aligned with the desire[...]

  As earnings are released, it’s a good time to reflect on HR outsourcing trends by key service line. Here’s a brief round-up of market activity across payroll, RPO, and learning services in H1 2016. Payroll Payroll activity has been bustling in Europe YTD, with a strong emphasis on ramping up capabilities. SD Worx made two acquisitions to accelerate its growth across[...]

The rise of self-service provisioning and automation of public cloud environments gives companies autonomy in managing their infrastructure and flexibility in meeting fluctuating capacity demands. From the perspective of an IT service provider, however, if clients can provision new cloud environments in a few minutes and then use the same screen to orchestrate and manage that cloud environment[...]

Last week, EXL announced its acquisition of LISS Systems (LISS), a London-headquartered provider of policy administration software for the life, annuities and pensions insurance sectors. LISS will be integrated with EXL's insurance business unit. EXL has made employment inducement equity awards vesting over four years to nine new non-executive employees (all of LISS’s[...]

This is the first in a series of blog articles looking at how business process outsourcing vendors are applying RPA and AI in the insurance sector. First up: Wipro.     Wipro started its automation journey in the late noughties and has since gone on to set up a dedicated RPA practice, and also developed its own AI platform, Wipro Holmes. Currently, Wipro is principally partn[...]

Andy Lee, Alorica founder and CEO, shared with me last summer that his goal was to become the number one CMS vendor (by revenue) serving N. America. Well, now he is closing in on that goal, with Alorica entering into a stock purchase agreement to acquire Expert Global Solutions (EGS). With EGS, we estimate Alorica’s pro forma 2015 North American revenues are ~$1.8bn, closing the re[...]

It has been a year since private equity firm Everstone Capital purchased Aon Hewitt’s APAC payroll business. The most obvious change is the rebranding to Excelity Global, but behind the scenes, the company has been working hard to transform its payroll business to meet market demand. At the time of the acquisition, Excelity’s offering was focused solely on a full payroll services mo[...]

Over the last few years, the global benefits market has continued to evolve as vendors have launched offerings to address the needs of multinationals. Essentially, there have been two main approaches: Providing global brokerage and consulting services Providing a global technology offering with optional local administration services. The global brokerage and consulting model has been [...]

It’s no secret that employee engagement levels remain low. Gallup found that the number of employees engaged in the U.S. remained at around 32% in 2015 (13% worldwide). Furthermore, over the last five years, employee engagement levels have remained relatively consistent, floating between 29% and 32%. While there are many reasons why employees are disengaged, organizations need to be proac[...]

Wipro announced yesterday it is to acquire Tampa-based HealthPlan Services (HPS) from Water Street Healthcare Partners for $460m, including a $20m deferred consideration. HPS' 2015 revenues were $223m. It has achieved a CAAGR of 38% in the last three years, driven both from adding new healthcare payers and from the increase in individuals or groups eligible for[...]

The cloud-based HR services offering contains many of the same services that traditional HR BPO/multi-process HRO (MPHRO) suppliers have provided, plus a few new components. Services can be divided into the three broad categories of pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment services: Pre-deployment services include HR cloud consulting, focusing largely on HR SaaS technology selection a[...]

For the last year, Fidelity has quietly been operating Fidelity Health Marketplace, a private benefits exchange, for a small number of SMEs in Massachusetts and New York. Fidelity Health Marketplace is a natural progression for Fidelity, which has been providing H&W services to large market organizations since 1995. Fidelity Health Marketplace is a one-stop shop that assists companies with [...]

For years, Aon Hewitt has been focused on strengthening its HR outsourcing capabilities around its principal offerings of benefits administration, HR BPO/multi-process HR outsourcing (MPHRO), and RPO services. However, over the last year, Aon Hewitt has sold several businesses as part of a larger restructuring plan: Payroll in Asia Pacific was acquired by Everstone Capital and is now operati[...]

NelsonHall’s latest Customer Management Services market analysis report, ‘Targeting CMS in High Tech’, identifies the need for increased customer service quality as the number one market driver. This is followed closely by cost reduction in second place, with increased revenue generation (through subscription sales, renewals, and paid-for technical support) third. The report a[...]

The U.S. healthcare payer BPS market is relatively mature, but is also shifting towards changes driven primarily by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the growing Medicaid and Medicare population, and advancements in technology offerings. Activity is primarily driven by the need for claims administration support with the use of automation services, member engagement services, and improved clinical ana[...]

I recently presented at the CCA’s annual Convention in Glasgow, Scotland. One of the key themes was ‘The Digital Game’, with sessions examining how organizations are responding to demand for digital customer services as part of the ongoing transition from call to contact centers. The future of customer engagement was illustrated using examples of newer channel usage, including vi[...]

As the year winds down, it’s a good time to reflect on the significant activities in the HRO market in 2015 and consider the likely shape of things to come in 2016. Overall, HRO contract activity is up ~11% y/y in 2015.  Renewals and contract extensions account for 25% of that activity, vendor changes ~20%, and new deals 55%. Regional and global multi-country contracts continued[...]

Sitel celebrates its 30th anniversary in a year in which it was acquired by French-based Groupe Acticall, whose controlling shareholder Creadev is the entrepreneurial investment arm of the Mulliez family. Sitel had been looking for an investor for more than a year, while the Mulliez family was planning to build a global platform and saw Sitel as an opportunity to fulfill that goal. At its recent a[...]

The global learning BPO (LBPO) market was worth $2.9bn in 2014 and NelsonHall forecasts it to grow at 6.7% per annum, reaching $4bn by 2019. But what is the current pattern and nature of LBPO deals, and how are things changing? Recent LBPO activity has been largely from Europe, a trend which began to pick up in 2014. Activity is widespread across Europe, including the U.K., Germany, Nordics, De[...]