Blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin – we know about our physical make up... what about our digital make up? What does our Code Halo say about us? And more importantly – who does it say it to? How is this “changing the rules”? Yesterday, Cognizant launched its book: Code Halos, which looks at the way in which our digital composition is changing the way industries operate. T[...]

Last week, MphasiS announced the launch of its next generation Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRS) service, in partnership with legal process outsourcing (LPO) provider Mindcrest, to its North American BFSI client base. Services within the scope of the offering include: Contract remediation Document review Consent order fulfillment Corporate compliance research. MphasiS will [...]

Last week, MphasiS announced the launch of its next generation Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRS) service, in partnership with legal process outsourcing (LPO) provider Mindcrest, to its North American BFSI client base. Services within the scope of the offering include: Contract remediation Document review Consent order fulfillment Corporate compliance research. MphasiS will [...]

Infosys BPO has launched its Process Progression Model (PPM), a framework aimed at assessing current process maturity and providing a roadmap for process transformation. In particular, PPM acts a high level dashboard and common reference model for communicating with clients. Infosys PPM has been in active use with Infosys BPO clients for approximately 6 months, succeeding the company's &quo[...]

Webhelp is to acquire SNT, a Netherlands based CMS vendor. SNT has 3,500 agents across eight sites in Europe with revenues of 77m. The combined company will be called Webhelp SNT following the acquisition which is to be completed in twelve months.  This acquisition will give Webhelp a significant Dutch presence and will bolster its global agent headcount to ~21,500, and increase its a[...]

The theme of last week’s IBM Connect Conference was Energizing Life’s Work. There was also a concurrent Kenexa World Conference which joined the IBM Connect general sessions. When IBM acquired Kenexa for $1.3bn in December 2012 (with Kenexa integrated into IBM’s Software Group and operationally aligned to IBM GPS), much was written at the time of how this would strengthen IBM&[...]

Firstsource has just announced its strongest quarter since FY 2013. Revenue was up 12.1% y/y to Rs. 7,998m (~$128m) and margins increased 210 bps y/y to 9.3%. The margin improvement is due in part to Firstsource’s consolidation of unprofitable accounts in both its customer management business and in domestic accounts in India and Sri Lanka. Telecoms and media, Firstsource&r[...]

Serco has updated its guidance for 2013 and 2014 following its clearance by the U.K. government to bid for new contracts.  Serco expects a mid-single digit percentage organic decline on 2013 revenue due to: Lower levels of incremental work won across the group to date Attrition from contracts lost such as electronic monitoring Volume reductions in its Australian immigration detent[...]

Wipro is to acquire mortgage due diligence and risk management services provider Opus Capital Markets Consultants LLC (Opus CMC) for $75m to enhance its mortgage BPO capabilities. (See tracker article #201521 for acquisition details). Wipro's existing mortgage BPO capabilities include: 850 FTEs in origination and administration BPO BPO services in loan originations and administratio[...]

TSYS' full year 2013 revenues (including reimbursables) were $2.1bn, a growth of 14.0%. The underlying fundamentals of the business (number of accounts on file and transaction volumes) grew aggressively in 2013, increasing 13% and 15% respectively.  In 2013 TSYS continued to enjoy strong revenue and earnings growth. Growth in the merchant business is continuing[...]

2013 proved to be an exciting year in benefits administration.  In the U.S., much of the focus was on corporate health exchanges for active employees while the U.K. was focused on auto-enrollment (AE).  Specific highlights of the year in the U.S. included: Aon Hewitt: added 15 clients to its corporate health exchange (total number of clients is at 18) Mercer: added 52 clients [...]

NelsonHall recently attended a briefing by the Cabinet Office Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) about the new Crown Commercial Service (CCS). This has replaced Government Procurement Service (GPS) and is to become the most comprehensive government procurement services provider in Europe. It is to address the market in a more coherent fashion by organizing into domains and segments but operating as[...]

Convergys is to acquire Stream Global Services for $820m.  With anticipated combined CY 2013 revenues of ~$3bn (Stream ~$1bn, Convergys ~$2.045bn). Convergys will this year become the second largest CMS BPO pure-play by revenue globally, close to Teleperformance (expected CY 2013 revenues of $3.26bn). The purchase price of $820m represents ~80% of Stream’s annual revenues but an impr[...]

BPO becoming more strategic is a major theme among the major BPO trends for 2014. The latter includes: 1. BPO will increasingly contribute to the “C-level” vision and not just fine tune operations 2. BPO will increasingly morph into “business services” 3. BPO governance will become more partnership-oriented as BPO is incorporated within client Global Bus[...]

Customer management services (CMS) is no longer the red-headed step-child of the BPO world.  In spite of the exit from this area of IBM, most CMS pureplays are currently achieving improving margins and revenue growth. With multi-channel delivery proving crucial in winning new contracts, and the increasing importance of big data and analytics in the value proposition, 2014 is set to be an extr[...]

Per NelsonHall’s blog of December 12, 2013 was a healthy year for HRO, with overall contract activity up ~37%. We now take a look at what we can expect in 2014 by HRO service line. MPHRO We predict the Global MPHRO market will grow at mid-single digits CAAGR through 2017 The Shared Service Transformation segment will continue to grow mainly as a result of contract expansions and ren[...]

Latin America has become an increasingly popular destination for the customer management services (CMS) BPO industry in recent years, outperforming the global CMS market. Will this continue? NelsonHall expects the global CMS BPO market to grow at 3.7% CAAGR through to 2016 with Latin America growing at more than twice that. So what is driving that growth? Much of the growth from this region is [...]

NelsonHall recently visited the Capgemini BPO center in Campinas, Brazil, about 100 kilometers to the northwest of the city of São Paulo. Capgemini’s Campinas center is part of a network of BPO centers in Latin America, the others being in Guatemala City; Santiago, Chile; and, most recently, Blumenau, also in Brazil. We had had the privilege several years before to visit the Guatemala[...]

HP Enterprise Services (ES) has announced fiscal Q4 2013 results, for the period ending October 31, 2013: Revenues were $5,759m, down 9.3% y/y, and down 1% sequentially EBIT was $255m, a margin of 4.4% down 223 bps y/y. Fiscal Q4 2013 revenue (and y/y and sequential revenue growth) by service type was: Infrastructure technology outsourcing $3,563m (-9%, -3%) Application and bu[...]

Atos has unveiled its Ambitions 2016 plan in whch it has detailed how two of its key service lines (Managed Services and Systems Integration) will evolve over the next three years. Managed Services Managed Services (MS) is planning to grow at a 5% 2013-2016 CAGR with a slight organic growth. The unit has stabilized (organic growth 2011: +1.7% ; 2012; +2.4%;[...]