Bertelsmann, the parent company of Arvato CRM Solutions, has announced plans to combine Arvato CRM with the CX services business of the Pan-African Saham Group. The joint venture will have 50/50 ownership, with ~ €1.2bn combined annual revenues and ~48k employees in 25 countries. The deal is expected to close in January 2019. Saham Group & partnership history Founded in 1995 in [...]

  Recently, I had a chance to visit Arvato’s U.K. and Ireland HQ in Slough, ~20 miles (30km) west of London, to witness its customer experience operations and how the company is applying digital channels and automation. A mix of public and private sector clients Arvato U.K. & Ireland provides customer experience services, finance and accounting (record to report, order [...]

Last week Aon Hewitt announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to sell nearly all the businesses within its Outsourcing segment (including benefits administration, HR BPO, and Workday cloud HR services) to Blackstone. Initially, it may appear that this is a step backwards from some of its prior acquisitions, including Hewitt in 2010 for benefits administration, Exult in 2004 for HR B[...]

Following several years of growth, the HR outsourcing market continues to ride the crest of the wave, and is gearing up for a prosperous 2017 following investments across all service lines. We will shortly be publishing an in-depth blog on HRO predictions for 2017, but first I take a quick look at what happened in 2016 to lay the foundations for things to come, specifically in payroll services[...]

In the third and final blog in the series examining the benefits administration market, I take a quick look at what health & welfare (H&W) services vendors have done recently to improve the participant experience. Historically, choice within employer-sponsored health plans has been limited, and the need to provide an engaging participant experience was non-existent. Employers’[...]

In this, the first of three blogs on the current benefits administration outsourcing market, I take a brief look at what’s been happening in H1 2016. Benefits administration accounted for ~40% of HRO contract activity in the first half of 2016, with a heavy emphasis on renewals and contract extensions. Approximately 90% of contracts were from private sector organizations, with a stron[...]

It’s no secret that employee engagement levels remain low. Gallup found that the number of employees engaged in the U.S. remained at around 32% in 2015 (13% worldwide). Furthermore, over the last five years, employee engagement levels have remained relatively consistent, floating between 29% and 32%. While there are many reasons why employees are disengaged, organizations need to be proac[...]

For the last year, Fidelity has quietly been operating Fidelity Health Marketplace, a private benefits exchange, for a small number of SMEs in Massachusetts and New York. Fidelity Health Marketplace is a natural progression for Fidelity, which has been providing H&W services to large market organizations since 1995. Fidelity Health Marketplace is a one-stop shop that assists companies with [...]

Over the last few years, ADP has ramped up its capabilities beyond payroll to focus on other areas of HR, including benefits administration and RPO, making it well-equipped to handle the main HR functions. This is important because many organizations, from SMEs to large companies, are looking to minimize the number of suppliers they deal with – though only if quality of service is not c[...]

I recently attended Ceridian’s annual client event in Las Vegas with the assumption that the event would revolve around Dayforce.  And it did, but I was also pleasantly surprised to learn how Ceridian is tying Dayforce and LifeWorks, Ceridian’s EAP and wellness offering, together. Over the years, I’ve watched Ceridian shift from a mostly services-oriented organi[...]

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 [...]

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[...]

Recruitment Process Outsourcing Last week, I zeroed in on specific market activity within the payroll, learning and RPO service lines. Today, I am taking a closer look at H1 2013 activity in benefits administration and MPHRO and considering what we should expect in H2 2013 based on NelsonHall’s recent HRO Confidence Index. Benefits Administration Contract signings aside, t[...]