EquaTerra Pulse Survey Results - Q1

The much anticipated results of EquaTerra BPO service provider’s pulse survey for 1Q2007 and predictions for 2H2007 have finally been released. The survey presents many interesting and valuable insights to the BPO industry players. The survey covered key process areas in outsourcing, call center, F&A, human resources, information technology and procurement. Global players polled in the survey include Accenture, ACS, Ariba, CapGemini, Convergys, Covansys, CSC, ExcellerateHRO, Getronics, Hewitt, HP, IBM, Infosys, mercer, Outsource Partners International, TCS and Unisys. The survey does not capture any quantitative market size information. However, it does capture changes in demand, scope, capacity and related key market indicators. The survey is mainly focused on US and Western Europe. Below are the highlights of the survey pertaining to HRO:
* HRO occupied one of the 3 leading market segments, ITO and FAO being the other two segments.
* Leading HRO processes identified from the survey include payroll, Benefits, HRIT
* Demand continues to grow for HRO despite change in demand growth slipped in 1Q07
* HRO service provider capacity remains tight and deal pursuit selective
* Increased HRO contract complexity is hurting the demand growth and market uptake.
* Demand trend for HRO slipped by 15% to 41% taking the HRO to second place in the overall outsourcing demand.
* HRO functional demand ranking is in line with 4Q06 at 30%
* Demand for recruiting and Talent management has been growing
* Recruitment and Talent management are still more often unbundled from larger HRO deals. Same is the case with Learning and Training services
* Transactional process outsourcing continue to be higher while growth in demand for training and learning in HRO suggest that buyers are continuing to expand outsourcing into more knowledge-centered areas.
* Service provider capacity constraints are impacting the HRO market, for at least the last six quarters, following the rapid growth in 2004-2005.
* Competitive sourcing defined as outsourcing multiple processes within a functional area is becoming more common
* The emergence of Indian service providers is both a driver and manifestation of buyers’ interest in multi provider sourcing
* In HRO areas like RPO, the trend is for buyers to outsource the processes that in the past were typically out of scope to specialist firms while directing more traditional HRO processes to legacy providers
* The HRO market, particularly for large global deals remains challenged
Source: EquaTerra
For more information on EquaTerra’s research efforts, please contact Stan Lepeak @ +1 203 458 0677 ; stan.lepeak @ Equaterra.com

Secova Opening Second Knowledge Center

The California based HR and Benefits Management services company, Secova, is planning to open its second knowledge center in Chennai, India. It also plans to raise its headcount from the current 300 to 400 by the year end, reports Economic Times.
Secova has added 12 new clients in 2006; including four fortune 500 companies helping it to post a decent 50% annualized growth during the same period. Secova serves companies of sizes ranging from 5,000 to over 50,000 employees.
Secova offers dedicated benefits management services to companies and is hopeful for a big share in the $12 billion benefits administration market.
According to reports, the company processes over 80 million eligibility records, $1 billion in Health care premiums, and manages over 450 vendor/carrier relationships annually.

Infosys Not Making The Grade?

Interesting developments are taking place post Hewitt Best Employers - India 2007 survey. In fact the news update in regards to this survey posted on our blog as well as other web sites are making rounds in Orkut corporate community groups like Infosys. Members of these communities who are reportedly employees of these respective groups in majority are discussing the why and why not’s post survey. We consider these discussions as a very important input in judging the logical validity of the survey and add a realistic scenario. It is, however, no doubt that Hewitt survey is considered to be the best survey and almost all corporate giants respect the survey. However, the reason why we try to give importance to the employees’ voice in discussion forums like Orkut, Hewitt survey results are also calculated taking the employee engagement into consideration for the best employers list. Hence the employees’ voice forms a major weight to the survey in determining who is who.
In the discussions being held in Infosys community group on Orkut, the members of the group are wondering why Infosys could not find a place in the Top 25 best employers list in the Hewitt survey. The majority of the scraps being posted reveal that the work culture and the HR policies are way beyond in Infosys making it an eligible winner to the survey. Some members are of the view that Infosys might have chosen to be away from the survey for its own reasons which can only be confirmed by Hewitt. Another discussion doing rounds in Orkut is some reportedly anonymous employees of Satyam are not agreeable to the fact that Satyam computers is chosen to be the second best employer in Hewitt’s Top 25 employers list. They opine that Satyam is trying to send wrong signals to the investors, new joiners and the media about its HR policy. Although these remarks are being made by members in Orkut who may or may not be the employees of these organizations, if what they say is true, it is time for our Indian IT giants to make a self introspection towards their HR system and their approach towards employee satisfaction, especially Satyam. HRO MANAGER would try to get these questions clarified with the IT giants and place their responses on record in this blog.
Disclaimer: The above are just views posted based on the members voice extracted from Social networking platform, Orkut, and neither HRO MANAGER nor its group company is responsible for the authenticity and validity of the discussion in Orkut or other websites. Our Job is restricted to bring a discussion point based on what is the talk of the industry.

Arinso Contracts With PMI

Arinso International, a leading provider of HR outsourcing services, announces that it has been selected to provide payroll and time management services to Philip Morris International (PMI) for over 20,000 employees within Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Central asia, reports Marketwire.
The agreed duration of contract is 6 years. Arinso will provide the payroll and Time management services through its euHReka platform, A SAP HCM- based solution.

Nelson Hall Research

Nelson Hall, a global BPO analyst firm, announced its latest research titled HR Issues and Initiatives: 2007. In this research, the firm pointed out that HR organizations are turning to be more strategic in nature, shifting their focus from cost-reduction to talent management improvement exercises, reports PRNewswire.
The summary of key HR initiatives for 2007 detailed by the firm in brief:
* Talent management initiatives, including improvements to recruitment processes, changing remuneration schemes to reduce staff turnover, new training initiatives, improved identification of, and reward for, good performance, improvements to absence management procedures, and employee turnover reduction initiatives
* Streamlining HR processes and rebalancing the location of HR service delivery. The latter involves both the development of common processes and the centralization of HR and also increasingly the introduction of local HR staff to assist in removing the barriers between HR and employees
* Cost reduction initiatives including reducing numbers of HR personnel and rationalizing benefits costs
* Sourcing initiatives to rebalance HR services between internal and external service delivery.

Best India Employers 2007

Hewitt Associates announced the much awaited India Best Employers for the year 2007 results of the survey conducted during September ~ December 2006 in association with Economic Times. The results have revealed that almost all sectors are performing well beyond expectations. IT sector continues to maintain its presence in the list, old economy sector makes a major comeback and BPOs are also making it into the big list. The survey also reveals that the top priorities for CEOs in India are vision, customers and people. Talent retention and effective leadership are considered to be the major factors that most impact an organization’s ability to succeed in the business, the survey reveals.
The methodology of the survey is a three step process. First, the CEO of the participant company has to fill a questionnaire which basically collects information on the CEO’s philosophies and approach to managing people. Second, People Practices Inventory (PPI) gathers information on HR policies and practices influencing the management of people in an organization. Thirdly, Employee Opinion Survey (EOS) gathers information on how employees are connected to the organization. In other words how engaged they are towards the organization.
Best Employers list 2007:
1 Aditya Birla Group
2 Satyam Computer Services Limited
3 Marriott Hotels India
4 Eureka Forbes Limited
5 Cisco Systems (India) Private Limited
6 Godrej Consumer Products Ltd.
7 Agilent Technologies Ltd.
8 Standard Chartered Scope International - India
9 Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.
10 Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.
11 Wipro BPO
12 Covansys (India) Private Limited
13 Ajuba Solutions India Private Limited
14 Pantaloon Retail India Limited
15 Text 100 India Pvt. Ltd.
16 Dominos Pizza India Limited
17 Ford India
18 Becton Dickinson India Pvt. Ltd.
19 Hardcastle Restaurants Pvt. Ltd.
20 HCL Technologies Ltd.- BPO Services
21 Dr. Reddys Laboratories Limited
22 Johnson and Johnson Medical, India
23 GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Ltd.
24 HSBC
25 Monsanto India Limited

The Castleton Group

The Castleton Group, a full service HR Outsourcing company has been named to the Top 100 largest for-profit employers list of Business North Carolina for the year 2006, reports Carolinanewswire. The group employs 4,300 people in NC.
Commenting on the development, the group COO Jay McLamb said that “I am pleased that The Castleton Group has made this list alongside some of the finest companies in the state”. He added
“The list is a good indication of our growth and of our dedication to our clients, and those have always been top priorities at The Castleton Group.”

Standardized HRO

A new global initiative, OpenDoor HRO, to help standardize HRO industry practices is taken by a non-exclusive working group currently comprising representatives from Arinso, EquaTerra and SAP. The objective of this OpenDoor HRO is to help HRO buyers reach their outsourcing goals swiftly, effectively and efficiently. The goal of this initiative is to create a better understanding and alignment between HRO providers and buyers.
OpenDoor HRO offers free public access to a unique set of standardized specifications, documents and templates that can enable a buyer or provider to significantly reduce the time taken to realize a transaction and to obtain quality outsourcing service.
From our standpoint, we feel this is a welcome step from this working group which will surely help both providers and buyers as well. The more standardization we bring to HRO, the more transparent the process of HR Outsourcing becomes and hence the more chances of buyers coming forward to outsource their HR with more ease and reliability.
However the success of this initiative is largely dependant on how other HRO providers view this. Unless a large set of HRO provider groups join hands as part of this initiative, it would limit the real success of the very purpose of the initiative.

ACS Renews Contract With BC/BS

ACS announced that it renewed and expanded its outsourcing contract with Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Jersey, the state’s largest health insurer. Blue shield has been in outsourcing relations with ACS for more than 10 years, providing a variety of transactional services including claims data entry. Under the new contract, the annual claims service volumes are expected to increase by 80%.
“ACS has been a longtime business partner of ours and we are pleased to affirm our partnership by expanding the volume of business we entrust to them” said Jackie Jennifer, Vice President, Customer Service, Horizon BC/BSNJ.
“ACS has become a leading partner to healthcare payers through our ability to adeptly and accurately manage huge volumes of data, provide exceptional service to members and clients, and consistently deliver superior performance that maximizes cost efficiency”, said Tom Blodgett, ACS Senior Managing Director, Business Process Solutions. “Our depth of expertise, experience, and capability in the healthcare BPO arena blends very well with our integrated BPO and ITO capabilities, and we are pleased to be putting all of this to work for Horizon BCBSNJ”.

Altos Consulting Security Survey

In a survey on the security controls done by Altos Consulting and the National Computing Centre in the UK, the following are the major points of relevance:
* More than 80 percent of businesses found to have their IT security controls across different locations
* Just seven percent of respondents had such measures fully integrated within their business
* More than half of those questioned are not putting any security emphasis on their hiring policies despite staff being widely acknowledged as the major source of such breaches
* HR function within companies should have a more clearly defined role regarding enterprise risk management policy and enforcing employee adherence

Cross Media Acquisitions

In a news release from HRO Today, it was announced by Cross Media CEO Elliot Clark that Cross Media LLC acquired HRO Today, HRO Europe, FAO Today Magazines and their online properties from Outsourcing Today LLC. Outsourcing Today is owned by Harry Feinberg and Jay Whitehead. It was also stated in HRO Today that Larry Feinberg will now be focusing on consulting to outsourcing companies on mergers and acquisitions. HRO Today is best known to HRO industry in presenting HRO Superstar Awards.

New Goals for Convergys HR Head

In a recent interview published in CRMBuyer, Convergys new Vice President of Human Resources, Clark Handy, talks about his challenges as a head of HR for a global HR services company and the opportunities and primary goals before him. During the interview, to answer a question on his initial goals as head of HR at Convergys, Mr. Handy stated “We want to increase the talent management pool and we have a number of initiatives, like the ones I just mentioned, to do that. We want a global company that has managers at all levels prepared to grow through the organization. This means they are prepared to take international assignments and work on cross-country and cross-functional teams. And as we pursue a lot of large global HRO customers, it provides many opportunities globally for these managers”. His goals are just evidence to the fact that Talent Management is a growing concern for HR professionals. Unless effective strategies to address it efficiently and consider it a primary goal of any HR manager in any organization, it is quite difficult to increase the workforce productivity for that organization, considering the factors of high attrition and other global HR concerns.
Mr. Handy also stated on HRO challenges that the faster the transition process of any HRO, the more we can increase employee productivity helping the HRO strategy to be a big success.
Related Posts: Talent Management is a growing concern for HR Profs
Talent Management -Healthcare concerns

Youdecide.com Employee Benefits Products

YouDecide.com, Inc., a leading provider of voluntary employee benefit products and services and a division of Vbenx Corporation, has acquired RewardsPlus of America Insurance Agency,Inc. , a subsidiary of RealLife HR. The purchase includes the Agency’s SureDeduct/SurePay technology, which is the company’s industry-leading, single-slot payroll deduction technology. The acquisition adds a voluntary customer base of more than 150,000 active employees, including 20 major accounts, averaging 8,000+ employee populations.