The explosion of connected devices and IoT products promises a greater volume of technical support interactions and increased customer demand for proactive and always-on assistance through the lifecycle of a product. In turn, these requirements force customer experience (CX) providers to be involved with the product manufacturers at new levels, participating in development and testing, sales g[...]

Unsurprisingly, given its investment in, and focus on, Watson, IBM declared at a recent Alliances Analyst Day that 2016 is 'the year of cognitive'. The intent of the meeting was to look broadly at how IBM is working with its key alliance partners, including SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, and it is clear that IBM’s focus is on incorporating cognitive capabilities and broadening th[...]

In this, the first of three blogs on the current benefits administration outsourcing market, I take a brief look at what’s been happening in H1 2016. Benefits administration accounted for ~40% of HRO contract activity in the first half of 2016, with a heavy emphasis on renewals and contract extensions. Approximately 90% of contracts were from private sector organizations, with a stron[...]

  NelsonHall estimates the Smart Energy IoT outsourcing market to be worth ~$260m in 2016, sitting third behind the Connected Car and Smart Manufacturing IoT markets. Smart Energy is of major importance, with government policy around the world strongly influencing its widespread adoption, and here I take a brief look at the background of the Smart Energy IoT market, and at some of the [...]

Over the last few months, I have held discussions with a number of leading customer management services (CMS) vendors and their clients regarding the increasing need for advanced analytics to drive step changes in customer experience (CX). Here, I reflect on the changing role of analytics as they take centre stage as the key to disruptive CX. How times have changed When I first participa[...]

  Mid-market adoption of Managed Service Provider (MSP) programs is seeing high growth driven by the increasing need to manage costs, along with greater uptake of the direct hire MSP model (which is more common in mid-market organizations where there is a limited need to use specialist agencies). Here I take a brief look at the launch of a new mid-market MSP offering from Allegis Globa[...]

I attended Cognizant’s biannual analyst event in New York recently and spoke with their head of blockchain consulting. Cognizant has been investing heavily in services and technologies to enable the digital enterprise, including the blockchain technology stack. Eighteen months ago, Cognizant began developing blockchain assets based on various open source frameworks, and today they have o[...]

A bumper summer for NEAT vendor evaluation projects across HRO, Insurance BPS, Banking BPS, CMS, and IT Services. Plus news of NelsonHall's Buyer Intelligence Group. Many businesses experience a lull during holiday season, but for NelsonHall, summer 2016 has been non-stop, with the release of seven NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation & Assessment Tool (NEAT) projects in June, July, and August.[...]

  Employer branding has become an integral component of an effective talent strategy. It is synonymous with a company’s reputation as an employer, portraying the image of what the company is like to work for. The purpose of properly conveying and clearly communicating an employer’s brand is essential to attract, engage, develop, and retain the best talent for an organizatio[...]

To most non-testing experts, software testing services are a dull but necessary activity, whose main driver for growth has been the creation of testing factories in India. And yes, there is a significant element of this. At NelsonHall, we continue to be surprised by software testing service providers’ ever expanding service portfolio, the level of investment in proprietary accelerators t[...]

On 22nd August, Teleperformance announced the acquisition of interpretation services provider LanguageLine Solutions (LLS) for $1.52bn. LanguageLine was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Monterey, California. In 2015 it had revenues of $388m and adjusted EBITDA of $147m, and the company is expected have revenues of between $400m and $450m in 2016. It has ~8k interpreters, 92% of whom&[...]

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[...]

NelsonHall has reported previously on how Tech Mahindra is developing its performance engineering capabilities through its Tech Mahindra Performance Engineering (TMPE) practice. TMPE has transitioned its services portfolio from performance testing initially to performance engineering, shift-left, and production (see here), helping client organizations to take performance into account at the so[...]

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[...]

Though Excelity Global is a new name and brand, Excelity was formerly the Asia Pacific payroll business of Aon Hewitt, which was acquired by Everstone Capital in 2015. I recently interviewed a Fortune 10 multinational conglomerate that has been an Excelity payroll outsourcing client in China since 2004 to understand its expansion plans in Asia Pacific. The company has a history of aggressive gr[...]

The media, and vendor marketing departments, have described RPA as a compelling technology for enterprises, based on its perceived ability to reduce operational cost. However, our review of case studies and BPS vendor offerings reveals a more complex set of drivers at work. Here I take a brief look at examples of the application of RPA in the banking sector. The banking industry has been ch[...]

In an earlier blog, we described how Tech Mahindra had expanded its performance engineering testing to embrace the Internet of Things (IoT), and here we take a look at how the company is handling another area of non-functional testing: software security testing. Tech Mahindra provides security services through its Cyber Security practice, a horizontal line of business. The practice has a headco[...]

This is the second in a series of blogs looking at how business process outsourcing vendors are applying RPA and AI in the insurance sector.   WNS’ RPA journey is moving quickly, with six pilots underway and five more ready to go. WNS has decided to wait on AI for the time being, in favour of developing its process automation capabilities, which has included the launch of eAdj[...]