Kenexa’s Analyst Day and 7th World Conference – A Winner: Part 1

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

Kenexa’s October 16^th analyst day included:

• A conversation with CEO Rudy Karsan
• Product overviews
• Business unit highlights
• A customer panel
• One-on-one meetings with executives including Rudy and CMO Tim Geisert.

IBM’s acquisition of Kenexa, which is expected to close by the end of the year, could only be talked about in limited discussion. Kenexa employees will be integrated during 2013. Initially, IBM’s RPO business will be integrated into Kenexa’s RPO business and will be named IBM Kenexa RPO. The group will report into Rudy, who will then report into Alistair Rennie of IBM. Phase 1, occurring through 2013, will be business as usual with IBM as a new source of business for Kenexa, a very large channel. Phase 2 will be integration into IBM.

In addition to RPO, key assets Kenexa brings to IBM include SaaS, innovation, and the ability to get big data into IBM’s warehouses (e.g., Kenexa has 100m employee touches a year globally). Kenexa’s 2015 revenue projection will be doubled with IBM’s added social capabilities and analytics (IBM will demo this at its conference in January 2013).

Below is an overview of Kenexa’s new products and services that were presented by the respective product manager. The presentations also included videos and a one-page user-friendly brochure.

• RapidHire: 2x BrassRing’s high-volume hiring module (ideal for the retail, restaurant, and hospitality sectors)
• 2x Onboard: used in ~50% of contracts (including many global deals for cost savings and compliance), improves the employee experience (with mobile access available) by:
  • Making introductions before the employee’s first day
  • Helping new hires understand the culture
  • Conducting employment eligibility verifications for new hires
  • Providing new hire surveys, which can be scheduled at any time
  • Assisting internal employees and contractors who have been transferred
• 2x Perform: includes performance, succession, and compensation management
• Learning: includes a new social LMS, content management, and Hot Lava to develop content on all mediums (i.e., tablets, mobile devices, and PC’s)
• Engagement: highlights include a mobile feedback application that can be used for immediate feedback from meetings / events, employee surveys, and 360 degree feedback
• Global Talent Management: clients include Shell, Exxon Mobil, Walmart, BP, Yum (in China), and Huawei (in China); 2012 sales included the suite of recruitment, learning, and performance management; EMEA sales grew 40%, mostly from competitor conversions
• Compensation Management (part of 2x Perform): added ~500 new compensation clients YTD 2012 including Ernst & Young, Cox Enterprises, and Cracker Barrel.

For more information on these products and services, please see my prior blog entries, Kenexa’s vendor profile, and the NelsonHall database.

Kenexa is also continuing to develop its survey, assessment, and leadership development capabilities with recent contract awards including Amazon, Campbell’s, and Cargill announced October 16^th.

Stay tuned for part 2 later this week, which will include RPO highlights.

Interested in reading the latest HRO news from NelsonHall? Subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here.

Spotlight on Infosys BPO and HRO: Growing, Growing, and Growing

Amy L. Gurchensky, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

Since its inception 10 years ago, Infosys has experienced great growth and success. Its fiscal 2012 BPO revenues were $495m, more than tripling since the $147m it reported in 2007. To support its growing client list over this period, Infosys has nearly doubled its headcount to more than 21k employees and has added 16 international centers to the two centers it had in 2007.

 The company provides a balanced mix of horizontals from finance and accounting to sourcing and procurement to customer service, and of course HR.

In addition to its multi-process HR outsourcing (MPHRO) offering, Infosys’ standalone HR BPO offerings include:

• Payroll
• RPO
• Learning.

The company has a very strong HRO client base in North America, which accounts for 45%. The remainder of its HRO clients are fairly distributed between Asia Pacific (30%) and Europe (25%).

While Infosys’ HR technology offering is very strong, its HR BPO business has been steadily growing, and the company is aggressive with its target revenues for HRO over the next few years. With its planned growth initiatives, I believe it has a very good chance of meeting its targets due to its:

• High client retention rate
• Ability to expand existing contracts to grow with its clients
• Healthy pipeline with the possibility of a multi-process HR outsourcing (MPHRO) win in the near future.

My overall impression of Infosys at their recent analyst day was that they are genuinely nice warm people who really listen and are transparent. All qualities which I highly admire, and apparently qualities that are valued by two of its existing clients that came to speak during the analyst day:

• A North American headquartered banking and financial services company
• A U.S. headquartered media company.

Other reasons why these clients selected Infosys for BPO services included:

• Executive attention
• Trust to do the right thing
• A broad offering for future growth opportunities
• Flexibility
• Technology capabilities.

The lesson reinforced by these clients is that organizations are looking for service providers who listen and genuinely understand them so together, they can create a strong, lasting partnership where both companies prosper in their respective area of expertise.

Interested in reading the latest HRO news from NelsonHall? Subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here.

Infosys BPO Analyst Day: A Rounding Success

Although a little late, I wanted to give Infosys kudos for hosting a very informative and engaging BPO Analyst Day in late October, which included presentations by two very satisfied North American based clients.

First, I’d like to highlight the progress Infosys has made:

• From 2006 to 2011, BPO revenue has grown approximately five-fold with the number of clients increasing almost four-fold and global headcount increasing nearly six-fold
• Although I can’t disclose HRO revenues, they are rapidly growing globally, led by North America and followed by Europe
• BPO delivery capability is global from centers across North America, Latin America, South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

What particularly impressed me at the event was the lengthy discussion titled “Our people are our biggest assets,” led by managing director and CEO Swami Swaminathan. The topic may sound cliché, but it was from the heart because Infosys truly wants employees to have a career for life that’s achieved by:

• Leadership focus
• Performance-based compensation
• Recognition and reward
• Career planning and development
• Comfort with the working environment
• Pride in being an Infosys employee.

There’s too much good business information to capture in a short blog, but to summarize, Infosys is helping clients build tomorrow’s enterprise by:

• Enabling clients to transform their business
• Moving operations up the value chain, including Centers of Excellence with benchmarking and best practices
• Deploying new engagement models including business process as a service, technology enabled process automation, and cloud-enabled services
• Leveraging technology to create value including dashboards and customer portals.

Client presentations were by a large apparel retailer and a large global telecom.  The retailer outsourced both F&A and HR.  HRO services included platform-based BPO with PeopleSoft 9.0 and modules for core HR including self-service; benefits including annual enrollment; time and attendance; payroll; and components of the HR helpdesk. Its reasons for choosing Infosys included:

• Access to technology and tools to transform
• Quality of resources to support the account and its ability to work with the client to achieve its goal
• Cultural fit and reputation.

The telecom client outsourced to transform, leverage best in class processes, people and technology, and augment its sourcing group with new talent. F&A outsourcing included source to pay.

Concluding the day and joined by clients at the larger colloquium were two successful panel discussions.  The first was titled “Sustaining complex change” and included the buy-side from Montreal, Charming Shoppes Inc., and Cisco.  I had the pleasure of facilitating the second discussion that was titled “What is the defining role of HR in shaping tomorrow’s business: Globalization, convergence, social media, and talent management.  This panel included the buy-side from Charming Shoppes and Transfield Services.

In all, it was a very impressive day to round out numerous analyst events I attended in 2011, and this one will be memorable!

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

Interested in reading the latest HRO news from NelsonHall? Subscribe to our newsletter by emailing amy.gurchensky@nelson-hall.com with “HRO Insight” as the subject.