During the summer of 2023, we met with Mohammed Sijelmassi, Sopra Steria’s CTO and Digital Transformation Office head and discussed how Sopra Steria was deploying internally and helping clients externally with GenAI and LLMs. Earlier this month, we met with Mr. Sijelmassi again to assess Sopra Steria’s progress on its transformation, its work with clients, and use cases. [...]

  Sopra Steria is the latest vendor to announce a significant investment in GenAI/LLMs and its incorporation into its software engineering platform (Ingine). We recently met with Mohammed Sijelmassi, who holds two roles at Sopra Steria: CTO and Digital Transformation Office. We discussed how Sopra Steria is deploying internally and helping clients externally with GenAI and LLMs. [...]

  We recently talked with Sopra Steria about its work and capabilities around big data and analytics. The company has created a Data Science CoE (or Technology Stream in Sopra Steria’s terminology), which brings specialized services and expertise to the various in-country systems integration (SI) business units, focusing on its key accounts and bringing vertical knowledge. Sop[...]

  While Sopra Steria may be known for its execution excellence and its investment in delivery industrialization, it had not really invested in creating accelerators and IP. Then, early last year it launched its Digital Enablers program with accelerators in mind. The company followed a slightly different approach to some of its peers in India, and initially focused on providing its d[...]

  We recently met with Sopra Steria to discuss the broad topic of intellectual capital and accelerators. We came away impressed with Sopra Steria’s approach that is both very new (launched early 2017) and also broader in focus than technical accelerators. Earlier this year Sopra Steria launched its Digital Enablers initiative. Digital Enablers has several aspects: creatin[...]

  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[...]

Sopra Steria announced recently its 2015 results (click here for more information on the recent results). The results contained a number of surprises. Our key take-aways from the results are discussed below. Strong Financial Performance in French Operations in Spite of Merger Credit is due to Sopra Steria’s management in managing the rapid turnaround of Steria France in spite of i[...]

NelsonHall recently visited one of Convergys’ Intelligent Contact (IC) centers in Belfast, Northern Ireland. IC originally started life as LBM in 1996, then was acquired by Stream in 2013, which was itself acquired by Convergys in 2014. IC is a specialist sales division of Convergys, consisting of agents across multiple centers in Belfast and Greater Manchester, performing a mix of outb[...]

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[...]

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[...]

By Vicki Jenkins and Mike Cook A year ago Convergys acquired fellow contact center vendor Stream, making it the second largest CMS BPS provider by revenue behind Teleperformance. NelsonHall CMS analysts Vicki Jenkins and Mike Cook caught up with key members of Convergys’ leadership team on the anniversary of the acquisition to discuss how the new organization is shaping up. The importa[...]

Sopra recently updated NelsonHall on its application management (AM) capabilities. In 2013 Sopra generated ~€393m revenues from AM, or ~29% of its total revenues. The company is a top application management vendor in its domestic market, along with Accenture, Capgemini, Atos CGI, and IBM. Key AM clients of Sopra include Airbus, Orange, SFR, Crédit Agricole, EDF, Auchan, SNCF, BN Pariba[...]

The H1 results from the European majors Atos, Capgemini, Sopra, all France-headquartered, are now in - also those of Sopra, about to merge with Steria. So what does this tell us, about the progress of these firms and the state of the European market and what should we expect in H2 2014? The average constant currency revenue growth experienced by these firms in H1 2014 was 1.4% with Steria and S[...]

The NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) for Payroll Outsourcing is now available to NelsonHall clients, and is also available for a period free-of-charge to buy-side organizations through NelsonHall and through its partners SIG and SSON. The NEAT tool for Payroll Outsourcing is part of NelsonHall’s “speed-to-source” initia[...]

After a quiet year of acquisitions in the contact center outsourcing market in 2013, 2014 activity so far has been more inline with what we’ve come to expect of this market in terms of the volume of acquisitions. Most of the acquisitions so far this year have been to enhance, and in some case establish, geographic presence, for example: Webhel[...]

NelsonHall recently attended Call Center Week in Las Vegas. 2014 was the 15th year of this event, which had 1,800 attendees and 120 booths. It’s hot in Las Vegas in June - and the event covered some hot topics! Using Analytics to Improve CSAT I participated in two well attended sessions on analytics, which took different approaches to the same topic. The session sponsored [...]

Convergys closed the acquisition of Stream on March 3, 2014. Its Q1 2014 reported results include contributions from Stream for the month of March. Revenue wsas $606m, up 23% y/y. Excluding the four week contribution of ~$86m from Stream, revenue was u- 5% y/y EBIT was $22m, an EBIT margin of 3.6%, down 376 bps y/y End of Q1 2014, combined footprint of contact cent[...]

Sopra Group is to acquire Steria for an all-share transaction valuing Steria at €722m. The acquisition is presented as a merger of equals. Sopra's rationale for the acquisition includes: Expanding its geographical presence from France to the U.K., Germany and Norway Gaining a new service portfolio in BPO services and IM. Sopra is to launch a public exchange [...]

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[...]

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[...]