Key Findings & Highlights:

WNS, headquartered in Mumbai, India, is a provider of business process management (BPM) and transformation services.

Formed in 1996 as a captive center for British Airways, the company has grown both organically and through acquisitions, throughout its history.  In 2003 WNS began offering BPM services and over the next several years, made acquisitions to boost its service offerings for finance, banking, mortgages, claims, etc. In 2006, WNS became one of the first BPM providers listed on the NYSE.

In 2008, WNS acquired BizApps, gaining capability with SAP ERP for finance and accounting.  By early 2012, WNS began to evaluate the HR services market and launched an offering, shortly thereafter, adding both single process and multi-process HR services clients, including payroll services. WNS’ first comprehensive multi-process HR services deal was with a construction company in the Middle East for workforce management, payroll, training and development, resourcing, and analytics services. Since its launch, WNS has grown its HR and payroll services business organically.

Today WNS’ delivers HR outsourcing services to ~15 clients; its offerings include:

• Process outsourcing: including HR administration, payroll administration, compensation and benefits, talent acquisition, and talent management
• Process transformation consulting: including organizational change roadmap that enables business outcomes, operational excellence consulting, and actionable insights consulting
• Digital transformation: including integrated HR systems, integrated analytics platforms and dashboards, real-time interactive dashboards, and mobile-first apps
• HR analytics and reporting: including variable analytics, intuitive analytics, and predictive & prescriptive analytics, including digital solutions.

WNS provides a fully managed payroll services offering, which can support end to end payroll administration, up to and including contact center services.

WNS' payroll offering is inclusive of the following services and scope, including: 

• Time and attendance management
• Employee payroll data maintenance
• Benefits and deductions
• Build to gross
• Gross to net payroll processing
• Pre/post payroll validations and reconciliation
• Disbursements and pay slip delivery
• Payroll tax services: e.g., statutory returns, taxation, and year-end activities
• Payroll accounting and reporting
• Payroll helpdesk (L1 and L2 voice and email support)

WNS' payroll services are available as a standalone offering (~60% of clients) or as part of a more comprehensive HRO (HR Outsourcing) or FAO (Finance and Accounting Outsourcing) contract.  While ~40% of its multi-process HR clients include payroll services in scope, WNS derives many of its payroll clients as part of a broader finance and accounting deals.

WNS offers full consult to operate model for its HR services, meaning it can provide transformation consulting, platform and BPO implementation, digital enablement, and ongoing support for HR platforms and services.    

WNS payroll offering is part of its wider multi-process HR services offering; its other HR services include:

• Workforce administration
• Compensation and benefits 
• Talent acquisition
• Talent management

WNS leverages a platform-agnostic approach to its HR and payroll service delivery, primarily operating on client owned platforms, or platforms of its payroll technology partners (e.g., ADP, CloudPay, Ramco, TMF, etc.). ~50% of WNS's HR and payroll services clients operate on a cloud platform.

WNS has invested in and built a portfolio of advanced digital enablers, capabilities, and technology, and it focuses on leveraging automation and cognitive capabilities to enhance its HR service delivery and enable transformational outcomes for its client base. WNS' digital offering includes transformation consulting, platform deployment, RPA, and AI solutions, and advanced predictive analytics.

WNS has 700 employees dedicated to delivering its HR services and solutions, with 110 (~16%) dedicated to payroll delivery.

WNS as an organization has 57 delivery centers globally, with five centers focused on HR and payroll services delivery. However, it can support clients in each geography as required from its network of centers (e.g., leveraging Romania for voice/language capability in EMEA). WNS leverages a highly offshore model, with India its primary delivery location with four centers.

WNS supports payroll services for ~60 countries through its resources, with the capability to support over 100 through partners.   Its largest client footprint is ~55 countries and with its client base averaging ~7 countries in scope. ~70% of WNS payroll contracts are single country in scope, with ~30% including a global, multi-region scope.

WNS primarily targets upper middle market, and large, enterprise-sized multinational organizations for its payroll and broader HR services. It also actively targets its existing BPS clients for its multi-process HR services. Its largest payroll client is over 45K employees.