• RPO businesses: PeopleScout (U.S based) and HRX (Australian based) serving international customers
• ​Contingent workforce and MSP offerings: Staff Management | SMX business 
• Admission services to colleges and universities: StudentScout.

The acquisition will make TrueBlue one of the the largest industrial staffing firm in the U.S. The transaction is expected to be completed in Q3 2014. TrueBlue's pro forma 2013 revenue is expected to increase by $600m to approximately $2.3bn.

The announcement represents a significant service expansion for TrueBlue. The staffing services of TrueBlue will be enhanced through RPO and MSP services provided by SeatonCorp. SeatonCorp only recently went through a major geographical expansion through its acquisition in February 2014 when it acquired HRX, an RPO comany with presence in Australia and New Zealand. The combined Seaton RPO practice comprises ~1,500 employees supporting RPO clients across 68 countries. Expanding globally through acquisition was natural progression.  

A close alignment between the companies in the nature of the businesses is evident. TrueBlue principally support non-management roles; this aligns well to the SeatonCorp's profile where 55% of all permanent hires in its RPO practice are for non-managment. Working in the similar sectors of  airline, financial services, retail, manufacturing, and transportation of the SeatonCorp business complements TrueBlue's staffing focus in the industries of construction, manufacturing, transportation, aviation, waste, hospitality, retail, and renewable energy industries.

Staffing capabilities are increasingly being enhanced by other RPO/MSP providers who look to broaden sourcing approaches, as competition for finding talent is ever increasing.

The Learning business process outsourcing BPO tool is available to NelsonHall clients at http://research.nelson-hall.com/sourcing-expertise/hr-outsourcing/ and is also available for a limited period free-of-charge to strategic sourcing managers.

The tool covers a number of learning business situations including organizations seeking talent development, learning process transformation, cost reduction and multi-country learning.

Suppliers of Learning business process outsourcing covered by this NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) include Accenture Learning Services, Aon Hewitt, Aptara, Capita, Expertus, Genpact, GP Strategies, HCL, IBM Global Services, Infosys, Intrepid Learning Solutions, Neeyamo, NIIT, NGA Human Resources, QA, Raytheon Professional Services, Seertech Solutions, Talent2, Tech Mahindra, TrainingFolks, and Xerox Learning Services.

The NEAT (NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment) tool for Learning BPO is part of NelsonHall’s “speed-to-source” initiative.  The NEAT tool sits at the front-end of the vendor screening process and consists of a two-axis model: assessing vendors against their “ability to deliver immediate benefit” to buy-side organizations and their “ability to meet client future requirements”.

The NEAT analyses themselves are based on a combination of vendor and client interviews. The vendors are scored against a wide range of criteria, establishing a number of scenarios, each with different weightings to represent a different business situation or client business need.

To add further value in speeding up the sourcing process clients are able to input their own weightings and tailor the tool to their requirements. So they might say:  “This set of weightings for this business need looks about right to me but I want to place more emphasis here". With this interactive tool, they can tailor the weightings to meet their own specific sourcing requirements.

Effective-People and Effective-Learning offer HCM technology for:

• Recruiting
• Onboarding
• Compensation
• Succession planning
• HR analytics.

The acquisition includes capabilities around sales and support of the SuccessFactors BizX platform. The companies are partners with SuccessFactors and SumTotal.

GP Strategies continues to make acquisitions to strengthen its service offerings and global capability. This is GP Strategies fourteenth acquisition in the last four and a half years, and its 23rd since 2006. Combined with organic growth, including its large multi-year global learning BPO (LBPO) services contract with HSBC, NelsonHall estimates that since 2009, GP Strategies has more than doubled its LBPO revenues. Once fully implemented and deployed across HSBC affiliates globally, GP Strategies anticipates that HSBC will be its largest client.

Learning is an integrated and integral component of talent management. According to NelsonHall's Q4 2013 LBPO market analysis, vendors continue to strengthen and integrate their talent management service and technology offerings. SaaS talent management continues to accelerate across all HRO service lines, including combined with LBPO. Client learning spend will continue to accelerate for job skill training and professional development for purposes of attraction, development and retention of talent.

The acquisition is expected to close by the end of March 2014.

Expect GP Strategies to continue acquisitions to expand its global capability and its HCM services.

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 renewals with existing clients, but the Multi-Country Standardization and Core Business Focus segments have the highest growth rate 
• MPHRO offerings will continue to be structured around a core model with recruitment services as the most popular add-on as companies focus on adding back talent; in the near-medium term, demand will increase for learning, performance and compensation administration
• Increased partnership activity, primarily for technology, with acquisitions focused on strengthening existing standalone HRO offerings (typically by vendors with $400m+ in HRO revenues)
• Higher levels of multi-shoring from offshore vendors as clients demand onshore and nearshore support; Philippines and China will grow as preferred offshore locations
• Workday use will increase as MPHRO providers such as Aon Hewitt market this platform as part of its offering
• Proportion of mid-market clients will continue to grow making up the greater share of new contracts and MPHRO pipelines

Benefits

• The global benefits administration market will grow at mid-high single digits CAAGR through 2017
• Demand for DB and DC core services will primarily consist of second generation contracts and beyond; H&W administration as well as additional H&W services, specifically health insurance exchanges and health and wellness services, will grow as a result to control costs and comply with changing legislation
• Vendors will increase headcount and add chat services from onshore centers to enhance delivery strategies
• Multi-country benefits admin activity by MNCs will continue to grow moderately with providers that can leverage existing benefits brokerage and consultant relationships

Learning

• Learning BPO (LBPO) market will grow at mid-high single digit CAAGR through 2017, led by the Government sector
• Selective LBPO contracts continue to outpace full LBPO, led by content development, including the conversion of ILT to e-learning. However, full LBPO continues its resurgence as clients re-invest in learning but do not want to rebuild their internal learning organizations and instead seek greater value by outsourcing a larger share of their learning if not in its entirety
• Client learning spend accelerates for job skill training and professional development for purposes of attraction, development and retention of talent
• Vendors continue to strengthen and integrate their talent management service and technology offerings. SaaS talent management continues to accelerate combined with LBPO and across all HRO service lines
• Clients budget for social learning and seek LBPO vendors for collaborative technology. Within two years, clients will also seek help to monitor and measure the effectiveness of their social learning programs
• ILT continues to remain important but e-learning delivery continues to exceed ILT, including increased usage of VLT for geographically dispersed workforces and m-learning to access content for self-paced e-learning on smartphones and tablets

Payroll

• Solid mid-single digit global growth, led by Latin America and Asia Pacific
• Compliance is increasingly important to reduce risk by ensuring adherence to ever-changing tax laws and regulations, for both domestic and multi-country payroll
• Multi-country payroll continues double-digit growth as MNCs look to standardize and consolidate onto one global platform with one vendor for consistency of process, technology and service for increased efficiency
• Mid-market outsourcing continues high growth due to demand for platform-based payroll
• Pricing is per payslip or per employee per month and is expected to decrease due to pricing pressures from payroll buyers
• Where MPHRO services are provided, payroll will continue to be the initial footprint

RPO

• RPO will continue to be the fastest growing HRO service, with mid-teen CAAGR through 2017
• Vendor consolidation and partnerships continue to expand into new geographies to meet demand for global RPO
• Talent shortages deepen resulting in increased employer branding and talent pool development. Vendors increasingly help their clients with a more robust on-boarding process that includes new hire and employee engagement, employee surveys, and retention strategies. More vendors perform internal hiring of employees for their customers and also play a larger role in recommending progression of employees
• Blended RPO and MSP, including temporary hiring, increases to develop optimal workforce strategies
• For deeper insight, please see NelsonHall’s Targeting RPO market analysis published soon

Pinstripe and Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) RPO Presentation

Keys to success include:

• Client view of Pinstripe and BI as one recruiting team; they don’t differentiate - all recruiters that work onsite are given BI laptops. BI created a partnership with commitment to shared leadership and accountability
• Pinstripe Impression Center: 77,725 interviews scheduled, 452,609 impressions made. No call goes unanswered and there is a 96.1% FCR; the remaining 4% of calls are returned within 3 minutes. Service providers go above and beyond, e.g. ATS knowledge to assist candidates and hiring managers
• Hiring manager surveys recently introduced: a 58% response rate with a 10% improvement within 9 months in every area including planning and admin, execution of recruitment plans, candidate quality and diversity
• SLAs updated at least annually
• Development of talent pools
• 4% increase in CSAT scores since Taleo implementation
• From 2012 to 2013, sources of hire increased:
  • Direct sourcing 53%
  • Career fairs 40%
  • University recruiting 15%
• Employee referral program implemented with monetary payments for referrals resulting in hires

The RightThing, an ADP Company and Goldman Sachs Presentation

Goldman Sachs has been a client of ADP for 40 years, in a relationship that began with payroll. Below are a few RPO successes comparing before and after implementation of RPO:

Prior to RPO:

• Jobs were not posted on the company website, there was no social media presence and no data on company brand and its recruiting practice
• A body shop approach was used with a couple hundred recruitment coordinators who were not being managed, all doing their own thing
• Less than 40% recruiter time was focused on recruiting

Since Implementation of RPO:

• Went from 19 talent systems in 2008 to 6 in 2013, implemented a new career site, a strong social media presence, conducted extensive research on brand perception, implemented transaction level pricing and improved career progression
• Prior to outsourcing 100% of recruiters were onsite, after outsourcing ~50% onsite and 50% offsite at its centralized service center in Findlay, Ohio, resulting in significant cost savings. Findlay supports the New York and London recruiting teams
• When a recruiter leaves it now takes 2 days to replace, used to be a couple months
• Functions performed internally are client relationship management, candidate management, job offers, SME escalation
• Functions performed by The RightThing offsite in Findlay Ohio  are scheduling, screening, offer letter
• Functions performed onsite by The RightThing: data quality and management, candidate management, sourcing and screening
• Job Funnel on Goldman Sachs career site: 2.2m visitors, 495k resumes received, 135k interviews, 7.3k hires
• In addition to RPO, hiring of contingent workers also performed
• Looking at expansion into Europe and Asia. Europe is currently supported out of the U.S

ManpowerGroup Solutions Briefing

• New partnership with Technomedia for implementation of its ATS and to support RPO in ~50 countries where ManpowerGroup Solutions has current contracts. Technomedia technology can reduce implementation time by 30-60% pending client configuration
• Anticipating low double-digit revenue growth in 2013
• All regions have at least double sales pipeline y/y, with strong growth in Colombia, Peru, Malaysia, Italy, Netherlands
• In Q1-Q3 there were 60 new contracts worth $250k+ revenue each, including multi-country contracts in 10 countries and another in 22 countries. Latest contracts include:
  • An IT provider for MSP and RPO in 17 countries
  • A U.K. Engineering Services provider for MSP and RPO with expansion into Europe
  • For a Manufacturer, professional hiring volume distributed across 37 countries
• Approximately half of all RPO contracts are full service / end-to-end RPO

Randstad Sourceright Briefing

In September 2013, launched a "Recruiting and Innovation" CoE. Additional CoEs include:

• Employment branding, mobile and social media
• Assessments
• Compliance and Diversity
• Technology

New RPO “360” services currently being implemented in select RPO clients and to be launched in the next few months to measure effectiveness and identify improvement opportunities in client recruiting operations include:

• EmployerView360: social media and branding snapshot; measures an employer presence across social media channels and identifies opportunities to strengthen the brand
• RecruitingCompliance360: OFCCP compliance check
• SourcingView360: sourcing operations healthcheck; determines the maturity of candidate sourcing and identifies opportunities for improvement
• TalentMeasure360: screening and selection toolbox assessment.

The Payroll business process outsourcing BPO tool is available to NelsonHall clients at http://research.nelson-hall.com/  and is also available for a limited period free-of-charge to strategic sourcing managers.

The tool covers a number of payroll business situations including organizations seeking multi-country payroll, cost reduction and improvement of employee experience.

Suppliers of Payroll business process outsourcing covered by this NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) include ADP, Capita, Ceridian, CGI, Genpact, HP Enterprise Services, HR Access, Infosys, MidlandHR, Mouchel, NGA Human Resources, SafeGuard World International, SD Worx, Talent2, and Tata Consultancy Services.

The NEAT (NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment) tool for Payroll BPO is part of NelsonHall’s “speed-to-source” initiative.  The NEAT tool sits at the front-end of the vendor screening process and consists of a two-axis model: assessing vendors against their “ability to deliver immediate benefit” to buy-side organizations and their “ability to meet client future requirements”.

The NEAT analyses themselves are based on a combination of vendor and client interviews. The vendors are scored against a wide range of criteria, establishing a number of scenarios, each with different weightings to represent a different business situation or client business need.

To add further value in speeding up the sourcing process clients are able to input their own weightings and tailor the tool to their requirements. So they might say:  “This set of weightings for this business need looks about right to me but I want to place more emphasis here". This enables sourcing managers to use the service as an interactive tool via the web and tailor it to meet their own specific sourcing requirements.

• Processing of gross to net
• Data entry, both manual and electronic
• Provision of automated or manual calculations
• Checking of input, validation, sensibility checks, investigation and resolution
• Employee payments by BACS, EMTs subject to customer authorization
• Provision of interfaces
• Production and distribution of payslips
• Provision of employee self service
• Employee help desk, etc.

Several key drivers for this outsource were included in NelsonHall's Q2 2013 payroll BPO market analysis:

• Compliance and risk management: remaining fully compliant with current and changing legislation. For example, UK General Insurance stated Real Time Information (RTI) compliance and transitioning has not been an issue as it was automatically included as part of the outsourced service. In sum clients are able to remove the risk of payroll accuracy, timeliness of payments, data security, legislative compliance and system and infrastructure issues
• Strength of the payroll solution, including technology, in this case MidlandHR's iTrent platform. As is common in most payroll outsourcing contracts, UK General Insurance was looking to automate paper-based processes and provide employee self-service, allowing employees online access to their pay statements and associated data. Additional self-service aspects of iTrent modules selected by the client include absence management and holiday requests, travel and expense forms, updating of employee data and access to learning
• Freeing HR resources by saving time on administrative functions, enabling the client to focus on its strategic objectives. In the case of UK General Insurance this means focusing on strategies aligned to organizational business goals, including workforce optimization and employee engagement.

Additional client drivers identified in Nelsonhall's study include:

• A multi-country / global payroll platform managed by a single vendor
• Standardization and centralization of processes and technology, leading to increased efficiency; applicable to single and multi-country payroll and applicable to all clients, including those who have recently gone through an M&A
• Reduction and control of costs.

If you are a buyer or provider of payroll services, what were the primary drivers that led to the decision to outsource in your contract?

U.S. based Pinstripe, established in 2005, serves North American domestic and multinational clients who have employees in Latin America. U.K. based Ochre House serves clients across EMEA and Asia Pacific.

Pinstripe Ochre House began partnering in 2009. Its partnership has been one of the most successful across the RPO industry with a number of joint multi-region clients. Given their success, why merge and when does it makes sense to do so? Before answering this let's first look at a couple of the main reasons why companies partner:

• Expansion of geographic capability
• Addition and/or strengthening of services.

In the case of Pinstripe Ochre House, the former was the primary reason for partnering and what made it so successful is the sharing of similar values and focus on providing complementary talent management services.

What Pinstripe Ochre House will gain are more global clients. According to NelsonHall's 2012 RPO market analysis, there is increasing growth in multi-country RPO. Approximately 20% of announced RPO contracts since 2011 have been in two or more continents. Pinstripe Ochre House will be able to accelerate its expansion of multi-region contacts.

Mergers are also beneficial for vendors as opposed to partnerships as:

• Existing clients can be targeted. In this instance for geographic expansion with already having a proven track record
• Infrastructure already exists in-country.

Examples of other M&As of RPO capability proving successful are:

• Randstad acquiring SFN Group in 2011 which included SFN’s RPO business Sourceright Solutions
• In 2012 Talent2 became private, jointly owned by Morgan & Banks Investments and Allegis Group.  The combined RPO business allegistalent2, which began working together in partnership in 2010 has several multi-region clients including American Express
• ADP acquiring The RightThing in 2011, enabling ADP to provide RPO, both as a standalone service and also as part of its MPHRO offering
• IBM's December 2012 acquisition of Kenexa. One new global RPO client has already been obtained, another renewed and several letters of intent obtained in IBM's growth markets.

Whether from a client or vendor point of view, what are some additional benefits you’ve seen of a merger over a partnership?

Looking at some recent contracts, starting with Raytheon Professional Services (RPS). In H1 2013 RPS announced

• A simulation-based training endorsement by the American Heart Association (AHA). Simulation-based training will be available to the AHA's ~5,000 member hospitals and care organizations
• A multi-million dollar contract with General Motors in Korea to manage content development and training administration services for GM Korea's sales, non-technical after sales and technical dealer personnel

In July 2013 GP Strategies was awarded a multi-year, multi-million dollar global LBPO services contract with HSBC. Initial deployment is planned for the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Hong Kong. Additional geographies will be deployed through September 30, 2014. Once fully implemented and deployed across HSBC affiliates globally, GP Strategies anticipates that HSBC will be its largest client.

NelsonHall is in the process of completing its 5th global Learning BPO market analysis and has learned of several other vendors, including Xerox Learning Services Accenture, IBM and Aon Hewitt, winning LBPO contracts recently. Verticals where we are seeing activity include retail, telecoms, oil & gas, and hi-tech.

Why the increased activity? The market analysis will provide a deep dive, but for now a few reasons include:

• Job skill development
• Investment in talent, including leadership development
• Improved business results

Is your company making an investment in learning and are you doing it internally or with the help of an outsourcing provider?