A couple of weeks ago, Hinduja Global Services (HGS) announced that it is to acquire Mphasis' Indian domestic BPO division for Rs. 17 crore. For around $2.7m, HGS will pick up seven contact centers in Noida, Raipur, Indore, Mangalore, Pune and two buildings in Bangalore, with a total seat count of 6,400, and ~7,500 employees - and a business that was generating around $22m in annual revenue. T[...]

French CMS vendor Groupe Acticall is to acquire Sitel Worldwide, buying the 86% stake owned by Onex for ~$55m including an earn-out component. Groupe Acticall has financing for the acquisition from Société Générale and BNP Paribas It comes as no surprise that Onex is selling its stake in Sitel. What is perhaps a surprise is the size of the company making the acquisit[...]

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[...]

Two common themes in the marketing collateral of vendors providing Customer Management Services (CMS) are the use of analytics and transformation.  For analytics, a popular claim is the use of big data for predictive modeling within contact centers. But is it really happening? The reality is that, while certain vendors are using data for simple predictive modeling, this is still a distinct[...]

Germany’s fiscal success story presents an interesting value proposition for the local customer management services (CMS) BPO market. Real GDP in Germany grew by 1.5% in 2014 and current forecasts indicate that, driven by a strong labor force, high consumption and favorable energy prices, Germany should be able to maintain this level of growth through 2015 and accelerate to around the 2.0% m[...]

In the last twelve months we have more customer management services (CMS) BPO investment in South Africa, including  Webhelp setting up centers in Cape Town and Johannesburg with an agent headcount approaching 1,000 Capita transitioning part of its O2 support to Cape Town in the form of a ~1,400 seat operation. One (of many) attributes that make South Afr[...]

NelsonHall recently attended CSS Corp’s analyst day and OneWorld conference. The overriding theme of the day was a reinforcement of the company’s direction; CEO Tiger Ramesh emphasized his ambition for CSS Corp to become the leading global tech support service provider, as emphasized in the company’s new by-line “Wired to Support”. A new leadership team has been [...]

Sitel has been awarded a two year 800 FTE CMS contract by Danish telecom provider TDC, following an initial contact that was made with twelve potential suppliers in November 2013. This is TDC’s largest foray into outsourcing its CMS function by agent number and by total value, with headcount representing approximately one third of total CMS capacity. The contract includes the transfer of [...]

With like-for-like growth of 10.3% this is another strong quarter for Teleperformance although it continues to be challenged to its exposure to exchange rate fluctuations in the LATAM region resulting in reported revenue growth of 4.1%. Its Brazil business is contending with a stalling economy and a sharply depreciating currency, although it is still profitable and[...]

After three months of talks, Teleperformance is to acquire Aegis' U.S, Philippines and Cost Rican operations for $610m. The transaction will involve the transfer of 19,000 agents (18,000 work stations) in 16 centers, representing ~$400m in annual revenues.  Aegis will bring to Teleperformance the following operations: The U.S: nine sites with ~5,300 total seats The Ph[...]

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[...]

Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Google+, the list goes on . . .  the need for both B2C and B2B enterprises to establish and foster a social presence has evolved from a nice to have to an essential capability . . . yaaawn! We’ve heard this so many times that we are at risk of ignoring it, like irritating boy band lyrics. But unlike the boy band lyrics, there is some truth to the message. [...]

Firstsource has just announced its strongest quarter since FY 2013. Revenue was up 12.1% y/y to Rs. 7,998m (~$128m) and margins increased 210 bps y/y to 9.3%. The margin improvement is due in part to Firstsource’s consolidation of unprofitable accounts in both its customer management business and in domestic accounts in India and Sri Lanka. Telecoms and media, Firstsource&r[...]

Work at home agent (WAHA) CMS BPO specialist Arise Virtual Solutions announced this week it is hiring 6,500 WAHAs (who will be equivalent to 3,250 FTEs) across Arizona, North Carolina, Texas, Michigan and Virginia. This marks a turnaround for Arise after what was a difficult 2013 marked by loss of volume in some key contracts and delays in new signings. These hires will represent a 26% increase[...]

Sitel has restructured its sales team, in August last year it centralized its sales team and hired a head of commercial activity who is involved in all major contracts. At the moment Sitel has 83 account managers excluding a five person sales team in the U.K. whose remit is to fill 1-10 seat excess capacity in centers. Revenue growth from new business last year was offset to an extent by Sitel&rsq[...]

Brent Council’s new hologram receptionist got a mixed reception from pundits last week. Love her or hate her, Shanice, the hologram, is here to save costs while improving sign posting for visitors to the council. The council estimates cost savings of >£17k a year. In another recent development, in July 2013 Capita was awarded a customer contact management services contract extens[...]