May 25, 2016, by Rachael Stormonth
Yesterday evening provided what was possibly the biggest surprise in the IT services industry for some time: the news that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is spinning off its Enterprise Services business via a Reverse Morris Trust (RMT) to HPE shareholders, for the business to be able to merge with CSC in a tax-efficient manner.
Firstly, here are a few of the details of the transaction, which [...]
May 23, 2016, by Rachael Stormonth
Next year will mark Capgemini’s 50th anniversary, and it is looking to its U.S. operations to spearhead a reinvention as a next generation IT and business process services provider, one where it positions as an innovator that is bold and capable of acting at speed in helping clients optimize and disrupt the way they do business. This is reflected in an aspirational statement for th[...]
May 11, 2016, by John Willmott
NelsonHall has recently attended both the WNS analyst session in New York and Infosys Confluence in San Francisco. It may seem trite to suggest that their chosen locations reflect the differing approaches to the market being taken by the two firms, but there are some parallels.
Sector domain focus
While Infosys is taking a horizontal approach to taking emerging technologies to the next level[...]
May 09, 2016, by Rachael Stormonth
Since his appointment as CEO of Infosys, a key message of Dr. Vishal Sikka has been that automation and AI are about the ‘amplification’ of the human, and that this has been true of technology for centuries. Here is one of many similar bold visionary statements made during his early months: “we see an opportunity to launch a great human revolution, where we are able to achieve mu[...]
May 04, 2016, by Rachael Stormonth
At Atos’ recent industry analyst event in Boston, the first time it had held such an event in the U.S., we expected the focus would be its expanded presence in the U.S. following its acquisition of Xerox’s ITO business last June, with an update on the integration, and plans for further development in the U.S. But this was a global rather than a regional event, and Atos had much more to[...]
Feb 18, 2016, by Paul Connolly
For over a decade, freemium has been the ubiquitous business model for fledgling internet firms and the developers of smartphone apps. Users sign up for free to enable basic features, and are then drawn into subscribing to various levels of premium functionality. More recently, the freemium model has been the subject of considerable attention in the B2B market research space, with some rather extr[...]
Feb 16, 2016, by Rachael Stormonth
Last week, Cognizant released results for Q4 and full year 2015. At first glance, results looked strong. Q4 revenues were $3,232.5m, up 17.9% y/y, up 16% in CC, and adjusted operating margin was 19.6%, up 18 bps y/y and in the middle of the company's target range of 19%-20%.
If we look at Q4 2015 revenue performance in Cognizant’s two largest vertical groups:
Financial Services,[...]
Feb 12, 2016, by NelsonHall Analyst
Wipro announced yesterday it is to acquire Tampa-based HealthPlan Services (HPS) from Water Street Healthcare Partners for $460m, including a $20m deferred consideration.
HPS' 2015 revenues were $223m. It has achieved a CAAGR of 38% in the last three years, driven both from adding new healthcare payers and from the increase in individuals or groups eligible for[...]
Jan 04, 2016, by Rachael Stormonth
The first working day in 2016 started with the announcement of the appointment of Abid Neemuchwala as CEO of Wipro, with TK Kurien’s elevation to Executive Vice Chairman, still reporting directly to Azim Premji.
Today’s announcement was not a huge surprise; Neemuchwala’s arrival from TCS in March 2015 as COO was perhaps more unexpected in that he was an external appointment, a[...]
Dec 04, 2015, by John Willmott
In my previous blog on automation in BPO, I argued that, despite all the hype, the current implementation of robotics process automation (RPA) is little more than a labor arbitrage play, enabling the business to run with increased efficiency using existing technology and offshoring frameworks. So where does automation in BPO go from here?
RPA is essentially execution of repeatable, rule-based t[...]
Dec 04, 2015, by John Willmott
There is currently a huge amount of hype around use of automation in BPO, and many commentators seem to forget that the early BPO contracts were often driven by organizations with inadequate/creaking legacy IT systems using BPO as an enabler to combine replacement of legacy systems with an operations and process improvement layer.
These early transformations were also frequently seen by both cl[...]
Dec 04, 2015, by John Willmott
In this, the third and final blog in this series on BPO automation, I take a look at where the BPO market currently stands and where it’s going next.
Well, the use of workflow and platforms to surround and supplement the client’s core systems has been well-established for a period of years. BPO has worked relatively well in these environments. The vendors largely have process models[...]
Nov 15, 2015, by Rachael Stormonth
Will CSC invest nearly $1.2bn in M&A in the space of a few months?
Or will Capita progress with a bidding war?
CSC has sent a letter to the Xchanging board outlining its interest in making a cash offer of 170p per share for Xchanging stock. This would constitute a premium of 6.3% over Capita’s October 14 offer of 160p per share. CSC’s offer is dependent on Xchanging not [...]