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[...]

At its recent Confluence client and stakeholder event, Infosys outlined its overall business strategy, based on the belief that BPO as it is delivered currently will be replaced by business process as a service (BPaaS) delivered on virtual stacks within a few years. Here I take a quick look at the Infosys vision and its application within financial services. Infosys described the transition to [...]

Financial institutions are seeking to deepen their operational capital in order to drive down cost of operations, increasing fixed cost and reducing variable cost (non-linear cost reduction). Here we look at two examples of how institutions are achieving this by partnering with third party operations vendors. Capital Markets Client with Broadridge In this example, Broadridge is providing a p[...]

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[...]

In NelsonHall’s 2015 RPO Market Analysis report, innovation was identified as a key vendor selection criterion. RPO clients are increasingly seeking vendors who will continually introduce new ideas and recommend new services, with continuous process improvement. However, in our parallel RPO NEAT vendor evaluation study, when we interviewed clients of 15 leading RPO vendors, ‘innovat[...]

Infosys Q1 FY 16 results: Revenues were $2,256m, up 5.8% year-over-year (y/y) as reported, up 10.9% in constant currency and up 4.5% sequentially Operating income (EBIT) was $541m, a margin of 24.0%, a y/y decrease of 115 bps, and a sequential decrease of 173 bps. See here for the full results "I’m very pleased with our overall performance for the quarter” sai[...]

On July 3, Infosys announced it has been awarded a multi-year application development and management (ADM) services contract by Allied Irish Banks (AIB). As a strategic partner to AIB, Infosys will: Provide application development and management, and transformation and innovation services Set up a 200-seat facility in Dublin to house staff who will be transferring from [...]

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[...]

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[...]

Infosys is to acquire Panaya, a vendor of automation technology for enterprise software management, for $200m in cash. Panaya is a privately held company backed by hi-tech VC firms including Benchmark Capital, HPV and Battery. The transaction is expected to close before March 31. Founded in 2005, and formerly known as ChangeSoft Technologies, Panaya is based in Ra’anana, Israel and h[...]

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[...]

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 Property & Casualty Insurance BPO for the automotive sector. The NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) for P&C BPO in the automotive sector is now available to NelsonHall clients, and is also available[...]

In September we wrote an event note following Infosys European analyst meet on the principal message in the keynote address by new CEO Dr. Sikka “Renew the core business, innovate into new businesses” (see here). Earlier this month we attended Infosys’ U.S. analyst event and its Confluence customer meet in Orlando. Dr. Sikka was about 100 days into his role, and we were lookin[...]

NelsonHall’s latest CMS market analysis focuses on the increasing importance of transformational CMS, whereby a vendor not only takes over the running of a client’s call center processes, but seeks to optimize these processes to achieve the desired business goals of the organization. In the current market, the need to reduce cost while maintaining or enhancing customer satisfaction [...]

Infosys reported Q2 FY15 results today and new CEO Vishal Sikka took the occasion to share his strategic vision for the company. Sikka is quite an orator, for example declaring his aspiration for Infosys to once again be a bellwether of the IT services sector, and to achieving above average topline growth and margin. Anyone who was looking to learn something more about Sikka’s l[...]

NelsonHall recently attended Infosys’ European analyst and adviser summit held in advance of its “Confluence” customer event. Dr. Vishal Sikka has been in place as CEO for less than two months. During this time he has met with several dozen key clients, held senior exec meetings in Stanford University (his alma mater), visited nearshore delivery centers, including a BPO site i[...]

TCS, Infosys and SQS have recently published their calendar Q1 and H1 2014 revenues, and provided financial details on their software testing revenues (see notes below). In calendar H1 2014 (all numbers below are constant perimeter NelsonHall estimates): TCS: revenues were ~+24% to ~$612m (H1 2013: ~+23%) Infosys: ~+21% to ~$395m (H1 2013: ~+15%) SQS: + 9% to €129m (~$174m) (H1 2[...]

When you look at the financial performance of the four largest Indian oriented IT service providers (IOSPs) over the last four years, it becomes evident that there is a direct correlation between the level of topline growth they achieve and their expenditure on sales and marketing (S&M)…with EBIT margins benefiting from the strong topline growth. Let’s look at a few data points[...]

In addition to providing assessments of MPHRO vendor capability, the NelsonHall Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) for MPHRO, published July 29, 2014, http://bit.ly/1uDunOq supports an analysis of customer satisfaction within MPHRO by service line. Based on client interviews conducted globally covering vendors providing MPHRO across all regions, the analysis covers satisfaction within the [...]

What do Infosys’ Q1 FY 2015 results indicate about its current performance and its general health as a new CEO arrives? (a full breakdown of the results are available here) Revenue growth of 7.1% was in the 7% to 9% guided range for the full year, albeit at the low end. This was the third quarter in a row of decelerating growth, in both reported and constant currency gro[...]