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NelsonHall CMS Insight: October 2010

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Latest News and Developments

  • West Announces Q3 2010 Revenues Up 6% to $592.4m

    Oct 24, 2010 | Financial Results by John Willmott

    West Corporation has announced Q3 2010 revenues, for the period ending 30 September 2010, of $592.4m, an increase of 6.0% compared to Q3 2009.

    Organic revenues for Q3 2010 increased by 8.9% to $585.6m.

    Q3 2010 revenues (and revenue growth) by segment were:

    • Communications services $286.5m (+1.6%)
    • Unified communications $307.6m (+10.5%).

    Revenues for the first nine months of 2009 increased 0.9% to $1,788.8m. First nine months revenues (and revenue growth) by segment were:

    • Communications services $877.3m (-5.8%)
    • Unified communications $915.8m (+8.3%).

    Analyst comments:

    West reported a major scaling back of customer management services activity within consumer-oriented companies during the first six months of 2010 as companies focused on maintaining volumes within their in-house centers at the expense of third-parties. In addition, West's customer management services revenue growth is being impeded by the company's desire to maintain its margins.

    West is endeavoring to drive its WAHA services but although the company reports that WAHA has created new sales opportunities for West, it is finding that its customers in relatively up-market brands are relatively slow to adopt the model.

  • Teleperformance Enhances Desktop Environment to Support WAHA Services

    Oct 20, 2010 | New Offerings by John Willmott

    Teleperformance has launched an enhanced version of its agent desktop software, Teleperformance Desktop 3.5.

    Teleperformance has enhanced its agent desktop software to provide enhanced support for the work-at-home environment. The functionality within the new desktop includes:

    • Continuous video feeds of agent workstations to verify work and agent identity
    • Support for quick agent to supervisor alerts and private chats
    • RSS feeds.

    Analyst comments:

    The WAHA model continues to generate a high level of enthusiasm in terms of its ability to support increased organizational agility and flexibility of resource compared to traditional bricks-and-mortar based resourcing and to do this with high-quality resources.

    However, fears around security and governance are slowing down acceptance and these measures go beyond the initial steps of desktop process adherence and data security to ensure both agent compliance and support for agent learning on the job.

  • Transcom Announces Q3 2010 Revenues Up 7.6% to €144.5m

    Oct 20, 2010 | Financial Results by John Willmott

    Transcom has announced Q3 2010 revenues, for the period ending 30 September 2010, of €144.5m, an increase of 7.6% (+2.5% in constant currency) compared to Q3 2009.

    Q3 2010 revenues (and revenue growth) by service line were:

    • Customer management services (CRM) €123.9m (+11.6%) (+6.0% in CC)
    • Credit management services (CMS) €23.3m (-11.6%) (-13.8% in CC).

    Q3 2010 revenues (and revenue growth) by region were:

    • North (Denmark, Norway & Sweden) €37.4m (+22.6%)
    • West & Central €31.5m (-3.1%)
    • Iberia €23.9m (Spain, Portugal, and Chile) (-3.6%)
    • South (France, Italy, and Tunisia) €18.3m (-5.7%)
    • North America & Asia-Pacific €33.4m (+23.2%).

    Revenues for the first nine months of 2009 decreased 6.1% to €440.3m.

    Analyst comments:

    While Transcom's customer management services business was impacted by a seasonal decline in transaction volumes in Q3 2010, the business appears to have had a good quarter in Scandinavia and acceptable levels in business overall with the exceptions of France and the U.S.

    Transcom is continuing to focus on:

    • Driving growth in volume from current accounts, with 80% of growth coming from existing customers
    • Addressing underperformance and capacity problems in France and North America
    • Portfolio & technology transformation.

    Transcom has launched new marketing material using the logo "relationships. revenue, results" to stress the companies customer lifecycle capability from outbound customer acquisition, through customer service, retention, and cross-sell/up-sell, to collections. In addition the company has appointed new sales management in France.

    Transcom, like Teleperformance before it, has severe over-capacity in France - the company estimates that it could handle five times its current volume with its current French infrastructure - and is consolidating sites accordingly. The company is also closing its facility in San Antonio in the U.S. following a 20% volume erosion in its U.S. business. It is likely that a proportion of this business has been lost as a result of vendor consolidation to larger suppliers.

  • Aegis Acquires Actionline's Argentine Business to Develop Customer Management Services Delivery from Latin America

    Oct 19, 2010 | Mergers and Acquisitions by John Willmott

    Aegis has acquired Actionline's Argentinian business to enhance its customer management services capability in Argentina and support its International service delivery.

    Aegis is acquiring Actionline's customer management services business in Argentina but not its operations in Chile and Brazil. The company's Argentinian operations employ approximately 5,000 personnel within seven centers within five cities, namely:

    • Bs.As
    • Cordoba
    • Bahia Blanca
    • Mar del Plata
    • Tucuman.

    Actionline focuses on the telecoms, banking, insurance, and energy seectors within the domestic Argentinian market. However, Aegis is additionally looking to use Actionline's centers to serve both the U.S. market and non-English speaking markets in Europe.

    Analyst comments:

    Aegis has been one of the most acquisitive vendors, in an acquisitive business, during 2009 and 2010. This is the Aegis' fifth acquisition in addition to its failed bid for ICT Group.

    While the company has also diversified into F&A outsourcing with the acquisition of Ismart-Timex, four of the five acquisitions have been to strengthen the company's geographic coverage in customer management services, with this acquisition in Argentina following earlier acquisitions onshore in the U.S., in South Africa, and in Australia.

  • Sitel Partners with SATMAP to Match Call Center Callers with Agents

    Oct 19, 2010 | New Offerings by John Willmott

    Sitel has partnered with SATMAP to offer clients optimized call center routing services based on customer and agent characteristics.

    SATMAP software pairs call center agents with customers using demographic, psychographic and geographic variables, including gender, age, location and education, to connect calls with specific agents who are assessed as being most likely to succeed with a specific customer.

    Analyst comments:

    This is an important technology as customer management services increasingly seeks to deliver top-line benefits through customer retention, cross-selling, and up-selling. While one factor that has already been the subject of widepread optimization is the suitability of locations for specific types of customer and specific types of transaction, it is equally, or arguably even more, important to optimize the level of empathy betwen individual customers and agents. Arguably, in the long-term, this could replace optimization based on location as the primary mechanism for assigning agents to individual customer interactions.

  • ACS Acquires TMS Health To Enhance CMS BPO Offerings to Pharma and Healthcare Sectors

    Oct 15, 2010 | Mergers and Acquisitions by Rachael Stormonth
    industry: Pharmaceuticals

    ACS, a Xerox Company has acquired TMS Health, a healthcare teleservices vendor from private equity firm Palm Beach Capital.

    TMS Health, based in Boca Raton, Florida, has >600 employees deployed on the following customer interaction services:

    • Outbound calls to physicians to inform them on new pharmaceutical products and services
    • Direct to Consumer: handling consumer inquiries from pharma. sponsored print, Internet and television advertising. This division also handles customer support for medical devices and pharmaceutical products
    • Clinical trials: recruiting and screening patients for enrollment in clinical trials.
    • Pharmacy services: contacting pharmacists in retail pharmacies to provide up-to-date drug information, collect stocking orders and manage rebate processing.

    TMS brings with it 7 major pharmaceutical clients.

    Analyst comments:

    This acquisition considerably boosts ACS' capabilities in customer management services in the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare sectors.

    Customer management services is arguably the most complementary BPO service line to ACS' parent company's document management capability. Nonetheless, this acquisition indicates Xerox's ongoing commitment to building a strong widely based North American BPO business around ACS with this acquisition following the funding of the acquisition of ExcellerateHRO to strengthen ACS' North American benefits administration business.

  • Aditya Birla Minacs Deploys WorkFlex Manager to Enhance Intraday Staffing Management

    Oct 14, 2010 | New Offerings by John Willmott

    Aditya Birla Minacs has deployed WorkFlex Manager within a number of its call centers to automate intraday staffing management.

    The software is being used with the aims of improving intraday staffing effectiveness, reducing overhead, and assuring regulatory and/or contractual compliance.

    Analyst comments:

    Call centers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in managing their staffing arrangements to optimize both cost and agent deployment. Indeed while the units of provisioning may be somewhat restrictive in terms of bricks-and mortar based provisioning, the more widespread adoption of WAHA services will make agent provisioning increasingly granular.

  • ACS Awarded 4-Year Customer Management Services BPO Contract by 3 Italia

    Oct 02, 2010 | Contracts by Rachael Stormonth
    industry: Telecoms

    ACS has been awarded a 4-year customer management services contract by Italian mobile operator 3 Italia.

    Services to be provided include customer care services, handling inquiries on billing matters and technical questions. service delivery is from ACS' Latin American operations, headquartered in Córdoba, Argentina: operations acquired from Gruppo Multivoice in December 2008 prior to its own acquisition by Xerox.

    Analyst comments:

    This contract is significant:

    • Both in the U.S.-centric ACS winning a front office BPO contract in Europe, possibly benefiting from being part of the Xerox corporation
    • Also in the unusual nature of the global delivery from Latin America into Continental Europe, with Argentina being used for the provision of Italian language services into Italy.

    (NelsonHall will be publishing shortly an updated Key Vendor Assessment on 'ACS, a Xerox Company', following a recent analyst visit in New York. For details, contact paul.connolly@nelson-hall.com)

  • Firstsource Awarded 5-Year Customer Management Services Contract by Barclaycard

    Sep 30, 2010 | Contracts by John Willmott
    industry: Other Banking

    Firstsource has been awarded a 5-year customer management services contract by Barclaycard.

    The services to be provided by Firstsource commence on November 1, 2010 and include the provision of the majority of Barclaycard's credit card customer service, currently provided by Barclaycard's Teesside center, together with payment servicing, currently located in Wavertree, Merseyside.

    This contract complements a contract signed between Firstsource and Barclays U.S. credit card business in February 2008, whereby Firstsource provides customer care and collections support to Barclays U.S. cardholders from Barclays' operations center in Colorado Springs, CO.

    Analyst comments:

    Firstsource is continuing to strengthen its ability to offer onshore customer management services, with Barclaycard's Stockton center complementing the recent opening of a new contact center in Middlesborough. The company already provides onshore customer management services to a number of financial services and telecoms companies in the U.K.

    The company has also been strenthening its collections capabilities this year achieving PPMS certification in the U.S. where Firstsource works with six major credit card companies. The acquistion of Barclaycard's payment servicing operations on Merseyside will assist Firstsource in strengthening its ability to offer similar services to credit card companies in the U.K.

  • Sitel Awarded Contract for After-Sales Customer Support by John Lewis

    Sep 22, 2010 | Contracts by John Willmott
    industry: General retail

    Sitel has been awarded a contract for customer after-sales support by John Lewis in support of its U.K. electricals customers.

    The services supplied by Sitel include:

    • Implementation and management of a bespoke CRM system to centralize customer purchasing and after-sales information for access by John Lewis in-store personnel and Sitel contact center personnel
    • Handling phone and email support technical support and administration enquiries from electrical and technology customers.

    Analyst comments:

    Traditional retailers such as John lewis have traditionally had a very strongly store-based culture with customer service largely dependent on interactions with store-based personnel. However, even the msot traditional retailers now need to provide more sophisticated multi-channel customer service options to their clients and this contract is an interesting example of moving product after-sales support beyond the store and into a centralized multi-channel environment with the non-traditional channel handling being taken over by a third-party, rather than handled by store personnel.

Welcome to CMS Insight

Welcome to the latest "CMS Insight" article from NelsonHall.

CMS Insight complements the market analyses and vendor assessments within NelsonHall's Customer Management Services program by providing commentary and insight on key CRM BPO industry developments which impact your sourcing decisions.

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