Vendor Analysis
published on Dec 18, 2014
Report Overview:
Sykes initially entered the WAHA market in mid 2011 in an effort to provide flexible staffing to clients with volatile demand peaks.
Who is this Report for:
NelsonHall's WAHA CMS profile on Sykes is a comprehensive assessment of Sykes' WAHA CMS offerings for organizations and capabilities, designed for:
- Sourcing managers monitoring the capabilities of existing suppliers of customer management services (CMS) to serve organizations, and identifying vendor suitability for CMS RFPs
- Vendor marketing, sales, and business managers looking to benchmark themselves against their peers
- Financial analysts and investors specializing in the support services sector.
Scope of this Report:
The report provides a comprehensive and objective analysis of Sykes' WAHA CMS capabilities, and market and financial strength, including:
- Identification of the company's strategy, emphasis, and new developments
- Analysis of the company's strengths, weaknesses, and outlook
- Revenue estimates
- Analysis of the profile of the company's customer base including the company's targeting strategy and examples of current contracts
- Key client case studies
- Analysis of the company's offerings and key service components
- Analysis of the company's delivery organization including the location of delivery locations.
Key Findings & Highlights:
In July 2012 Sykes acquired Alpine Access for ~$150m. Alpine Access was a private company founded in 1998 and based in Denver, Colorado. In 2011, Alpine Access generated revenues of $103.5m, and CMS services represented over 90% of this. The company operated out of 40 states in the U.S. and eight Canadian provinces, with approximately 5k agents spread throughout North America. Before being acquired by Sykes, Alpine Access was held by private investors including venture capitalist firm Stolberg Equity Partners.
Prior to the acquisition, Alpine had undertaken small-scale recruitment process outsourcing and learning process outsourcing engagements. The company generated large numbers of applicants for positions, and undertook recruitment and virtual training services for home-based agents, for a number of buy-side companies requiring agents themselves. In addition, Alpine provided a SaaS-based talent management platform, including a hosted talent acquisition platform and a talent development platform; specifically this platform was a proprietary high volume ATS (applicant tracking system) and eLearning solution.
At the time of the acquisition, CMS services represented over 90% of Alpine Access' annualized revenues.
Sykes has rebranded Alpine Access to Sykes Home, and now employs ~7k WAHA agents. Sykes Home grew by 19.2% during 2013, three times the growth rate of Sykes' brick and mortar services.