Since his appointment as CEO of Infosys, a key message of Dr. Vishal Sikka has been that automation and AI are about the ‘amplification’ of the human, and that this has been true of technology for centuries. Here is one of many similar bold visionary statements made during his early months: “we see an opportunity to launch a great human revolution, where we are able to achieve mu[...]

For professionals involved in BPS activities, it might be a surprise that software testing (ST) shares a lot of similarities with BPS. Like many forms of BPS, ST is labor intensive – the largest software testing vendors now have up to 30k career testers and 20k has become the new norm. Like BPS, ST has adopted process improvement in a big way. And like BPS, ST is looking at process auto[...]

There is currently a huge amount of hype around use of automation in BPO, and many commentators seem to forget that the early BPO contracts were often driven by organizations with inadequate/creaking legacy IT systems using BPO as an enabler to combine replacement of legacy systems with an operations and process improvement layer. These early transformations were also frequently seen by both cl[...]

In this, the third and final blog in this series on BPO automation, I take a look at where the BPO market currently stands and where it’s going next. Well, the use of workflow and platforms to surround and supplement the client’s core systems has been well-established for a period of years. BPO has worked relatively well in these environments. The vendors largely have process models[...]

In my previous blog on automation in BPO, I argued that, despite all the hype, the current implementation of robotics process automation (RPA) is little more than a labor arbitrage play, enabling the business to run with increased efficiency using existing technology and offshoring frameworks. So where does automation in BPO go from here? RPA is essentially execution of repeatable, rule-based t[...]

One of the most laborious tasks faced by business planners is gathering relevant market size and forecast data as part of the annual planning cycle. Traditionally this has meant trawling through enormous documents, often referred to as the black books or bibles of the planners’ world. And then, finding that not all of the required market data is available in one place (or even at all), this [...]

"We are making progress in some areas, but we know we can and should do better in other areas. Our direction is unchanged; we are making several shifts in the way that we execute against it” Ursula Burns. On Friday, Xerox announced results for Q2 2015 (for full details, see here): Xerox Services revenues were $2,569m, down 3.1% y/y (on continuing operations), up 1% in CC Segm[...]

A couple of weeks ago, Hinduja Global Services (HGS) announced that it is to acquire Mphasis' Indian domestic BPO division for Rs. 17 crore. For around $2.7m, HGS will pick up seven contact centers in Noida, Raipur, Indore, Mangalore, Pune and two buildings in Bangalore, with a total seat count of 6,400, and ~7,500 employees - and a business that was generating around $22m in annual revenue. T[...]

French CMS vendor Groupe Acticall is to acquire Sitel Worldwide, buying the 86% stake owned by Onex for ~$55m including an earn-out component. Groupe Acticall has financing for the acquisition from Société Générale and BNP Paribas It comes as no surprise that Onex is selling its stake in Sitel. What is perhaps a surprise is the size of the company making the acquisit[...]

In 2012 Genpact was starting to get behind the curve. Many of its competitors had caught up with the need for process framework methodologies and it was struggling to combine its IT assets with its business process services business. In addition, despite its focus on process excellence, Genpact sometimes lacked depth of domain expertise with the result that its execution was variable across accoun[...]

While organizations across retail, consumer goods and, in particular high-tech, continue to face cost pressure, their attention is increasingly moving to addressing their competitive positioning and innovation in product development, particularly to meet the needs of developing economies. Indeed there is strong pressure to enter new territories in both the high-tech and CPG sectors. Noneth[...]

BPO contract TCV in Q1 2015 continued the improvement in contract activity seen in Q4 2014, with BPO TCV picking up and gaining momentum over the past two quarters following relatively low levels of BPO TCV awarded in Q2 and Q3 2014. In particular, Q4 2014 showed a 6% improvement in BPO TCV year-on-year, with BPO accounting for 31% of total outsourcing TCV. Q1 2015 BPO TCV performance then impr[...]

NelsonHall’s Business Process Services (BPS) Confidence Index is a quarterly index of confidence to monitor changes in industry confidence in the global business process services market. The objectives of the quarterly “BPS Confidence Index” are to identify: Whether the demand for business process services has strengthened or softened in the past quarter Expectations o[...]

Sopra Steria has announced its financial results for 2014, focusing on its profitability performance (revenues were previously published in February). Our key takeaways from the announcement are discussed here. U.K. Will Continue to Outperform Other Sopra Steria Geographies in 2015 Sopra Steria U.K. had phenomenal growth in 2014 (+18.2% organically) to ~€859m. Profitability was high (ad[...]

Germany’s fiscal success story presents an interesting value proposition for the local customer management services (CMS) BPO market. Real GDP in Germany grew by 1.5% in 2014 and current forecasts indicate that, driven by a strong labor force, high consumption and favorable energy prices, Germany should be able to maintain this level of growth through 2015 and accelerate to around the 2.0% m[...]

Analysis of NelsonHall’s U.K. outsourcing contracts for 2014 shows that outsourcing is becoming more sophisticated in a number of key areas across both service delivery and contracting. Within service delivery: The role of Cloud was increasingly evident with for example the first HR BPO contracts based on Workday software emerging in BPO and IaaS contracts in support of SMEs becoming c[...]

Q4 2014 results from the top five U.S. headquartered securities services firms indicate that revenue growth for securities and custody services is slowing down. The two largest global custodians, BNY Mellon and State Street, along with Citibank, reported revenue decline in calendar year Q4 2014. The figures below show change in securities services revenue versus the prior quarter (q/q[...]

Tech Mahindra has agreed to acquire SOFGEN to enhance its core banking systems integration (build, run, operate) capabilities. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of March. Swiss-headquartered SOFGEN is a specialist in Avaloq and Temenos platforms and also has capabilities in TCS BaNCS and Misys. SOFGEN has 450 employees, including >70[...]

In the last twelve months we have more customer management services (CMS) BPO investment in South Africa, including  Webhelp setting up centers in Cape Town and Johannesburg with an agent headcount approaching 1,000 Capita transitioning part of its O2 support to Cape Town in the form of a ~1,400 seat operation. One (of many) attributes that make South Afr[...]

This is the final in a series of short blogs that look at various disruptive forces and their impact on BPO. The impact of all these disruptive factors is that BPO is now changing into something that the client has always wanted namely “High Velocity BPO”. In its early days, BPO was a linear and lengthy process with knowledge transfer followed by labor arbitrage, followed by process[...]