The BFSI industries are increasingly looking to intelligent automation (IA) to address key challenges in their business. A recent NelsonHall survey of 50 BFSI executives found that they perceive that IA is able to replace manual processing and human decision-making, allowing the bank’s operations to decouple processing volumes from headcount. Key benefits respondents expect to [...]

  NelsonHall has commented several times on how vendors have been introducing AI into their QA/software testing activities; for example, to enhance defect analysis and prediction. We have talked less about the use of RPA because it did not seem to bring much innovation on top of what testing software products already offer. Testing software products have been around for over 20 year[...]

  Here I look back at how M&A activity has impacted the IT services industry over the past year and make a few broad predictions for the type of activity to be expected in the next twelve months. 2016 had been marked by some large M&A announcements, with: Hardware companies moving out of services:  HPE announcing the sale of Enterprise Services to CSC (completed i[...]

HCL has undertaken ~200 use cases spanning finance & accounting, contact, product support and cross-industry customer onboarding, and claims processing, using products including Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, UiPath, WorkFusion, and HCL’s proprietary AI tool Exacto. This blog summarizes NelsonHall’s analysis of HCL's approach to Business Process Automation coveri[...]

  As discussed in my blog of April 12, 2017, the mortgage processing industry in the U.S. is challenged to remain profitable because, from 2012 to 2016, loans outstanding grew 1.8% per year, while processing costs grew at 7.3% per year. This is leading to industry consolidation and operational restructuring. A recent example of a BPS vendor consolidating in order to drive greater effic[...]

  NelsonHall recently completed an analysis of the digital transformation capabilities and offerings of selected IT services vendors. While all vendors are investing in offerings under the ‘digital transformation’ umbrella, their investments range from industry-focused offerings using proprietary IP, to packaged solutions, to digital strategy consulting. One area of focu[...]

  At HCL’s recent adviser and analyst event, #HCLBigLeap, I spoke with their banking industry executives about HCL’s strategy and activities designed to drive application maintenance and modernization services, and specifically about the key ISV partnerships that are enabling this. Background HCL was founded in 1976, and had a strong focus on manufacturing during its [...]

This is the third in a series of blogs looking at how business process outsourcing vendors are applying RPA in the insurance sector. HCL provides closed book life insurance outsourcing services, and is currently engaged in RPA initiatives with three insurance clients. In order to capture customer data in a smarter, more concise way, HCL is using ‘enhancers’ at the front end, prov[...]

HCL Technologies’ (HCL) twitter hashtag for its recent adviser and analyst event in Sweden was #HCLBigLeap, which led us to expect to hear some big news items. The jam-packed sessions did provide an overview of many recent and current developments – but the big news item was finally disclosed in an individual blog the following day (more of which later). We heard from many clients a[...]

The utilities sector is an important one for HCL. The company has worked with ~100 utilities and currently has 25 active utilities clients, with its utilities revenue primarily from the U.S., U.K., and Australia. To focus further on this sector, HCL has enhanced its capability to offer end-to-end and BPaaS-based services through a number of partnerships and is now going to market targeting[...]

When you imagine how manufacturing companies might be making use of the Internet of Things (IoT), chances are the first image that comes to mind is of factory robots. These and SCADA systems have been providing remote monitoring and management systems for many years, well before the term IoT was coined. And, as you’d expect, manufacturers are integrating IoT-based solutions into their M2M sy[...]

There has been a recent spate of acquisitions and partnerships among Financial Services BPS vendors which reveals interesting trends. These include the following deals from 2015: HCL and CSC: Two JVs were formed, whereby HCL will operate and expand the existing Core Banking business of CSC. The first JV will focus on account management and delivery governance while the second [...]

This is the second of three articles examining M&A activity in IT services during 2015. Last time we looked at how M&A activity was being driven by $10bn to $15bn vendors. This time we take a look at M&A around newer service offerings and digital transformation. The firms that are acquiring capabilities in digital services are vendors in good financial health that have mostly alre[...]

HCL began its robotics program in late 2013. Since then HCL has invested ~$1.5m in robotics, (ToscanaBot Automation Framework), via its HCL ToscanaBot center of excellence, which currently employs a team of ~25 personnel and is planned to grow to 50+ personnel by 2016. HCL estimates that its robotics practice currently has an FTE impact of around 2,000 with this expected to grow to ~8,000 FTE impa[...]

This week NelsonHall held its quarterly IT Outsourcing (ITO) Index webcast to report on the latest developments in ITO contract activity and present an analysis of spending activity for IT services, professional services (i.e. consulting and systems integration) and ITO. Background ITO Index data shows a steady (but non-linear) decline in Total Contract Value (TCV) from 2002 onwards. The lev[...]

By Amy Gurchensky, Liz Rennie and Gary Bragar With total HRO service growth in the high single digits in 2014, service providers are growing both organically and inorganically to meet clients’ needs. The primary reasons for M&A and partnerships across HRO service lines were to enhance service delivery capability (60%) and support geographic expansion (40%). Here we take a closer look [...]

By Amy Gurchensky, Liz Rennie, Gary Bragar 2014 was a busy year for HRO with ~60 partnerships, mergers and acquisitions combined. We now take a look at what to expect in 2015 and beyond for each HRO service line, including service offerings, market developments, and growth. MPHRO driven by continued shift to cloud-based platforms The Multi-Process HRO (MPHRO) market will grow with a mi[...]

NelsonHall, the leading global BPO and IT outsourcing analyst firm, has today launched a new tool to assist strategic sourcing managers in assessing vendor capability in Application Outsourcing (AO) services. This NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) is now available to NelsonHall clients, and is also available for a period free-of-charge to buy-side organizations through Nel[...]

Last week we looked at Infosys' quarterly results. It has been another busy week of quarterly reports from some of the Indian oriented service providers. How did five of them do? Syntel (Q3 CY14): Softness in Healthcare Greater than Expected Revenue was $228.3m, up 8.8% y/y, but slightly below consensus Operating margin was 29.8%, down 610 bps y/y, with less benefit from rupee depre[...]

Chesnara plc, the life assurance consolidator, has awarded a life & pensions BPO contract renewal to HCL Insurance BPO Services Limited ('HCL') which consolidates the services provided in the existing arrangements and which extends the service for a further 11 years. The service scope across the various books remains unchanged, as do the broad service levels. HCL’s original co[...]