In a surprise transaction, Office Depot announced the acquisition of U.S.-based CompuCom, an end-user computer specialist. The price is significant: ~$1bn, including $750m in cash and 45m shares of Office Depot, with the seller, PE Thomas H. Lee Partners, owning 8% of the share of Office Depot. Despite revenues of $10.6bn, Office Depot has a market cap of just ~$2bn. With the acqu[...]

  Fast Data is the emerging hot topic of discussion for business leaders seeking to get ahead of the next wave of data utilization. But Fast Data isn't just an evolution of Big Data; it's a market force unto itself that's asking more of traditional and start-up vendors in both traditional DBMS and AI. I spent a (surprisingly snowy) morning this week talking with AI and B[...]

    I recently talked with Wipro about its crowdtesting capabilities. Here, Wipro has a different positioning and service portfolio from crowdtesting pure-plays, with a stronger focus on automation frameworks (with its mobile website and app testing framework), and access to mobile device labs. QaaS: an aggregation of testing offerings at scale QaaS is an aggregation of s[...]

  NelsonHall recently attended Capgemini’s financial services analyst conference in Boston, where the company discussed its activities and roadmap for the industry, which is focused on digital services. Here I look at how digital services are now driving Capgemini’s financial services business, with client examples. Capgemini’s shift to digital financial services [...]

  I was privileged to be invited recently to a customer and analyst event in Budapest, Hungary hosted by Cielo. Great, I thought – I’ve never been there, maybe I’ll see the Danube and a few historic buildings. And from that perspective, Budapest did not disappoint; it was understandable why there were so many tourists visiting, enjoying the hot September weather. But [...]

The gig economy has been a recent trending topic. While the concept of gig workers is nothing new, the attention being paid to it is, especially since this is an area whose growth has been facilitated by the digital marketplace. Here, I take a quick look at the challenges gig workers present for HR. Gig workers present a challenge on several fronts, especially when it comes to managing[...]

  Last week, my colleague Amy Gurchensky wrote on the topic of ADP’s user-centric innovations paving the way for growth in its HR services business. Indeed, at its recent annual analyst event, CEO Carlos Rodriguez was keen to reiterate that ADP is a technology-enabled services organization, not a software company, and this was backed up by client case studies. Here I provide a su[...]

  NelsonHall is conducting an analysis of the needs of IT services clients to understand their IT and business priorities and how the growth of digital is impacting their business. In a survey of ~1,000 IT services clients across 17 industries and every region of the world, NelsonHall has identified distinct patterns of user intentions, both in terms of how clients plan to change their[...]

  This week, ADP held its annual industry analyst event in NYC, and as well as welcoming guests with apples to celebrate the arrival of fall, it also ushered in the season with significant news regarding its HR technology innovations. One thing is clear about the technology-enabled services company: its investments in innovation continue to accelerate, as it invested ~$450bn in FY 2017[...]

Capgemini's Carole Murphy   Capgemini has recently redefined its framework for Intelligent Automation, taking an approach based on ‘five senses’. I caught up with Carole Murphy, Capgemini’s Head of BPO Business Transformation Services, to identify how their new approach to Intelligent Automation is being applied to the finance & accounting function. &nbs[...]

  This month, NelsonHall will publish its annual software testing services report, focusing this time on digital testing, DevOps, and agile testing services. The main areas of the study include: Mobile testing UX testing, which is quickly expanding from its regulation-led accessibility testing offering to usability testing DevOps/continuous testing, which reflects i[...]

For years, the application of analytics in HR services has been heavily focused on descriptive information such as workforce demographics (e.g. average employee age, proportion of males to females, number of employees are nearing retirement, etc.) or talent management metrics (e.g. average time to hire, cost per hire, number of training hours per employee, etc.). In fact, ~90% of analytic[...]

Genpact announced another acquisition today, that of TandemSeven, a design thinking (DT)-led CX /UX innovation consultancy based in Boston, with offices also in New York and Chicago. This is Genpact’s fourth acquisition in the U.S. this year; all four clearly supporting the company's drive to radically evolve its portfolio from traditional BPS to a coherent set of offerings designed [...]

With many organizations turning to cloud-based ERP and HR systems to replace legacy, on premise systems, and more importantly as a means to enable organizational transformation, the demand for cloud-based HR services continues to grow. NelsonHall’s Targeting Cloud Based HR Services market analysis estimates the market to be ~$15bn in 2016, growing to ~21bn in the next five years. Thus[...]

Most Blockchain use cases have focused on reducing the need for (and cost of) infrastructure. And in Virtusa’s case, the vendor has focused on engagements where it can combine Blockchain technology with other emerging technologies such as QR codes, IoT, and encryption algorithms to deliver enhanced security and cost savings for environments lacking adequate supporting infrastructure. Her[...]

  NelsonHall recently caught up with Genpact to discuss their recent acquisition of OnSource and their plans to integrate it with BrightClaim – we were not surprised to hear that the two acquisitions are indeed connected, and part of Genpact’s strategy to introduce new digital process models in P&C insurance. To set the scene: Earlier this month, on the day of [...]

  There has been much hype about the growth of the gig economy in the U.K., but when you take a closer look, is it really anything new? And how is it likely to grow and change over the next few years? According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), March 2017, gig workers are defined as those workers who ‘trade their time and skills through the intern[...]

NelsonHall’s latest Multi-Process HR Services NEAT vendor evaluation included customer interviews to ascertain current satisfaction levels and future expectations across a range of criteria. Below is a selection of the findings from our interviews with multi-process HR services customers.  Principal issues & operational priorities The main issues and operational priorities cit[...]

NelsonHall recently published its 2017 Cloud-Based HR Services market analysis study and NEAT vendor assessment, as part of which we interviewed the clients of leading cloud-based HR services vendors to ascertain satisfaction levels across a range of service criteria. And while we found that cloud-based HR services were meeting client expectations in a few areas, those areas were mostly of lower i[...]

  We recently met with Sopra Steria to discuss the broad topic of intellectual capital and accelerators. We came away impressed with Sopra Steria’s approach that is both very new (launched early 2017) and also broader in focus than technical accelerators. Earlier this year Sopra Steria launched its Digital Enablers initiative. Digital Enablers has several aspects: creatin[...]