I recently had the opportunity to meet with the Alorica executive team for an update on the integration of its recent acquisition, West Corporation’s Agent Services business.

In March 2015, privately held Alorica acquired West’s Agent Services business for $275m in cash. In 2014, the Agent Services business generated ~$580m in revenue. Alorica anticipates $1.2bn in combined revenue for 2015, making it a top 10 CMS player globally.

West will continue its focus on the healthcare sector, and on analytics and technology, retaining its specialist agent services businesses, Health Advocate (a health plan advocacy services provider which utilizes agents, purchased in June 2014 for ~$265m), and its business-to-business, and cost containment services.

Alorica’s acquisition of West’s Agent Services business will:

• Expand its services offering, adding receivables management and direct response, outbound business, and consumer sales services
• Enable it to enter new sectors including healthcare, utilities, and government, and enhance its presence in the communications, retail, travel, financial services, and consumer products sectors
• Increase its delivery capabilities: Alorica will gain ~25.3k employees from West’s Agent Services business, of whom ~1.5k are nearshore (Jamaica and Mexico), ~5.4k offshore (in the Philippines) and ~18.4k in the U.S., of whom 5k are work at home agents (WAHA).

Over the past 5 years, Alorica has completed two other transformational acquisitions. They were:

• In 2010, Georgia-based Ryla, Inc., a provider of outsourced customer care. Alorica gained a significant number of employees from the acquisition
• In 2010, Florida-based PRC, LLC, a provider of outsourced customer care. Alorica increased its global footprint and gained ~10K employees from the acquisition.

Five months into the West acquisition, Alorica CEO Andy Lee described how he founded Alorica 16 years ago with $10k and a vision, back when it was ‘all about surviving’. Fast forward to 2015, and Alorica has gone from a ~$600m to a $1.2bn company with the West acquisition, and is launching a new brand campaign to create a new corporate identity.

Looking ahead, Alorica is aiming for 5% revenue growth in the next year. Lee’s goal is for Alorica to become number one CMS vendor (by revenue) serving North America.

Alorica highlighted its four core competencies as revenue generation, customer care, technical support, and receivables management, the latter being integrated from West into some of Alorica’s legacy clients. Alorica anticipates receivables management to be its highest area of growth over the next year. In future Alorica may also consider offering full revenue cycle management to its clients.

Entry to New Industry Sectors & Increased Delivery Footprint

The acquisition of West Agent Services allowed Alorica to enter two new industry sectors: healthcare and utilities. In healthcare it obtained contracts with two of the three largest healthcare insurance payers in the U.S. Coincidentally, both vendors were shortlisted for one of those healthcare deals, West having come out on top. The utilities business it acquired from West includes small contracts only, but Alorica plans to grow its utilities business.

The acquisition included a small amount of client overlap, mostly in the telecommunications/cable/satellite industry sectors. However, Alorica has been able to provide benefits to the overlap clients such as new site options and additional WAHA delivery. 

Alorica’s WAHA delivery footprint was enhanced significantly through the West acquisition, growing from ~800 to ~5.8k home agents. All of the agents are currently based in the U.S., but based on client demand, Alorica may consider WAHA delivery from Mexico as well. Alorica will leverage the West at Home platform, Spectrum, to manage and grow its WAHA agent delivery capability, allowing agents to create their own schedules.

There are few overlaps in terms of delivery. In most cases, the acquisition has created an opportunity to fill open capacity. Jamaica and Mexico were new delivery locations added through the acquisition, and Alorica now has 48K employees working from 72 locations.

Summary

This is a pivotal growth move for Alorica, and the company was able to point to several examples of clients benefiting from the move, including:

• A legacy U.S. retail client is now adding WAHA services from West to solve e-commerce staffing peaks, and is also taking advantage of West’s more sophisticated collections offering
• A legacy U.S. telecommunications client is now using the WAHA delivery to cover peak times, starting with a small pilot
• Another large U.S. telecommunications client, finding itself out of capacity with West Agent Services, was able to add brick and mortar capacity through Alorica.

This acquisition has more than doubled Alorica’s revenue, increased its headcount especially for WAHA delivery, added new service offerings such as direct response and receivables management, increased its delivery footprint, and expertise, and allowed for entry into the healthcare and utilities sectors.