NGA’s Broadening Offerings

Liz Rennie, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

Last week we attended the Advisor & Analyst Summit with NGA where CEO Adel Al-Saleh presented the highlights for FY2013 (up to 30 April 2013) and described the company as an “IP-led HR services company.” Focus was given to the company’s ability to support global payrolls, whatever the HRIS platform, as NGA supports multiple platforms such as Workday, SuccessFactors, PeopleSoft, Oracle and SAP. Further, NGA announced that BPO agreements are in place with all the above-mentioned technology companies.

NGA serves all size companies and is particularly focused on global enterprise clients. Multi-country BPO HR/payroll is where NGA sees growth. Over the last year NGA experienced flat revenues, the downturn in the consulting was cited as the main reason; however, EBITDA was up by 8.6% to $157m. Workforce administration and global payroll were cited as areas which were experiencing growth. A “sweet-spot” client would be a client who wants its IT to be managed and requires service components for HR administration and/or payroll.

New wins and renewals for FY 2013 were cited as Aer Lingus (Irish HRO client based on ResourceLink), Textron (PeopleSoft renewal), Pirelli (40 countries in scope), State of Texas, McGraw-Hill and Orica.

FY 2014 priorities

• Evolve the client-centric coverage. This means to increase the reporting and visibility of customer satisfaction to drive this higher
• Drive the maturity of global delivery capabilities
• Evolve the transformation consulting services
• Invest and launch key IP platforms, including:
  – Global payroll
  – Service center tools & utilities
  – euHReka – Preceda – ResourceLink – Moorepay
• Increase traction of key partnerships:
  – Workday
  – SuccessFactors-SAP
  – Oracle.

NGA already has more than 8 clients utilizing the Workday platform.

NGA presented its Global Delivery Model, which demonstrates the maturity and scale of NGA’s global delivery, including approximately 1.2k employees in Manila, 1k in Kochi, 100 in Dalian, China, 150 in Katowice, Poland, 500 in Granada, Spain and 200 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. These centers have been undergoing a center standardization based on Six Sigma to improve alignment.

NGA’s depth of knowledge is evident in the 8 IP components presented, including its NGA Service Catalogue, Global Statutory Center, ePIM Implementation Methodology, SunEXo (to track payroll status), ScopeHR (to configure scope), Online Reference Guide (for processes and instructions), Global Standard Training and Global Process Framework.

Being an IP-led HR services company, NGA has to clearly articulate the value of the IP to the client and then ensure that the IP roadmap is closely following its client’s needs. Furthermore, increasing technology capability with a broader partner ecosystem could bring further challenges, such as:

• Finding the right technical solution for a client without confusing them; especially where they are simply asking for a service
• When the IP becomes less technology centric, NGA could lose some of the depth of knowledge that is already built into the IP.

NGA continues to be a company that is flexible to the needs of its clients. In this current climate companies need agility in HR solutions, services, prices and (now more than ever) technology. NGA offers a global delivery network that is experienced and always hungry for more business.

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

The Intricate World of HRO Provider Partnerships

It is uncommon to see a multi-process HR outsourcing (MPHRO) provider with a go-it-alone strategy.  Beyond the services a particular MPHRO service provider considers core, you will usually find other select HRO vendors. The option to operate in a networked HRO supply chain environment can be a valuable choice.  Some benefits include:

• Providing clients with the option of selected best-of-breed software applications with the primary provider managing the interfaces and integrations under one contract
• Investing in what the MPHRO vendor does best and offering a wider range of service options through partnerships
• Entering new geographies faster with less investment, an option especially seen in knitting together global payroll and increasingly in multi-country RPO
• Buying time to develop more robust internal offerings
• Creating a pool of potential investments or M&A targets.

This week, NorthgateArinso (NGA) and Workday announced a partnership to bring multi-country payroll to the Workday cloud.  Workday 16 customers will have the option to access NGA’s payroll processing capabilities in 51 countries through NGA’s new euHReka Inclusion Framework.

Workday, launched in 2006, is one of the first and largest start-ups to provide a SaaS-only HR ERP. Revenues are estimated to be  ~$150m this year with ~210 customers, most in the mid-market, but some are large market clients with 55k to 100k employees.  Still U.S.-centric in revenues and clients, Workday is expanding into the U.K. and Canada and plans to expand further in Europe in 2012. Workday is in a fast growth mode, targeting a 100% increase in revenues for 2012. It is busy selling, implementing new clients, and building out a full suite of HR and financial cloud-based ERP services. In the meantime, it can offer clients greater options via its partner network. In addition to NGA, other partners for multi-country payroll include ADP, Patersons, and SafeGuard World International.

Another example comes from Ceridian, which is expanding its investment and service partnership with Dayforce. The two have been partnering since 2009 to offer InView, a platform SaaS solution that blends Ceridian’s payroll, human resources, and benefits administration offerings with Dayforce’s workforce management software application. The expanded InView HR and Self-Service is to be released in 4Q 2011 and new payroll functionality is on track for 1Q 2012.

InView is starting out quickly as a successful partnership. Ceridian set a target of 300 clients for the first year and exceeded that number in six months. As more clients go live, the partnership will have to carefully balance service with growth to ensure long-term success.

HRO vendor partnerships are not always successful and must be carefully structured and managed, especially when the vendor partners may well compete with one another in some markets or services. With care, this can be a strategy with benefits for clients and the HRO vendor partners.

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, 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.

NorthgateArinso Getting SaaS-y Starting with e-Learning Content

NorthgateArinso (NGA) has just announced its euHReka Inclusion Framework to provide transparent access to third party providers, HR professionals, and associated resources.  The euHReka platform includes payroll and talent management SaaS for learning, recruitment, performance management, compensation management, and succession planning.  It serves 80 clients and 800,000 employees, and is available in 100 countries and 32 languages.

Although NGA has been providing learning BPO (LBPO) since its acquisition of Convergys’ HR Management business in March 2010, and since learning is already a part of its euHReka platform, the company is aware of the heightened demand for e-learning content in the market.  Consequently, NGA’s first partnership on the new framework is with SkillSoft to add e-learning content to euHReka.  Subsequent content and applications will include:

• Compensation data
• Benefits programs
• Job boards
• Professional social networking sites.

NGA is wise to begin with e-learning.  In NelsonHall’s LBPO market analysis, published Q4 2010, traditional instructor-led classroom training (ILT) is expected to be reduced from ~50% of the market in terms of revenue to 40% by 2012 due to the explosion of e-learning.  As a result, content development is also rapidly growing.  NelsonHall’s LBPO report ranks content development second behind learning administration in terms of LBPO revenue and ahead of delivery, technology, and consulting. 

Some examples of e-learning contracts this year include:

• Accenture with HSBC
• Genpact with JobSkills in India for a 5-year content development contract (note: approximately 85% of Genpact’s courses are provided via e-learning)
• Edvantage Group with Yara International for safety e-learning (note: Edvantage Group’s H1 2011 financial results showed a 31% increase in sales and double-digit revenue growth y-o-y with EBITA increasing 168% to 5.9m NOK, compared to 2.2m NOK in H1 2010).

I believe we will continue to see significant increased demand for e-learning content for years to come, which will be further magnified by mobile learning (i.e., m-learning), especially for accessing content for self-paced e-learning when out of the office.  However, e-learning will not replace the uptick expected for virtual instructor-led training (VLT) because of the need to actively participate and focus on the learning task at hand in VLT.  I’ll write more about contracts for VLT and web 2.0 learning portals at a later date.  In the meantime, further analysis on the useage of e-learning by region and other associated information is available from NelsonHall.

Gary Bragar, HR Outsourcing Research Director, NelsonHall

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

HRO: Are you Violently Good at the Talent Process?

In following up on my recent talent management (TM) blog, Building HRO Business Value, I spoke with Marianne Langlois, Global Process Executive with NorthgateArinso (NGA).  Marianne agreed that TM has been on the back burner for many companies, but now she sees growing interest. It may even be that TM is one of several paths to climbing out of crisis.

With several lost years, simmering issues of an aging skilled workforce and new generations entering the workforce are heating up. Surveys show that succession planning has become a critical concern of senior business leaders. Creating succession plans is fine, but there is too often a cycle of identifying and/or hiring top talent and then losing them within two years.  If this is happening, then whether the tools and processes are home grown or “best of breed” doesn’t matter because they are not adding full value to the business.

We do not need to make the case here for the value of a holistic and integrated talent management system and process supported along with, as Marianne says, HR partners who are “violently good at the talent process.” We do need to discuss how to get there from where many companies are now: scattered with underutilized tools, disconnected processes, islands of related data, as well as what roll HRO plays.

For NGA, the underlying HR system is key because it helps bring all of the data together to monitor and manage talent and workforces across the enterprise. Core HRIS and payroll is a necessary part of the whole, and the sooner the base is considered, the faster and more direct the value added TM services can be built. With today’s many HR system options, TM can be added now or later as a module, hung off the side as a specialty system, or even connected via a cloud-based SaaS application.

In this environment, are organizations willing to do more than talk? Yes. For example, a major global pharmaceutical company is working with NGA to build the integrated TM platform it needs, including letting go of their earlier investments in TM systems that were not connected or fully used.

Renewals are a great opportunity for TM. NGA is working with major clients that came with the Convergys acquisition last year on plans for the future. Fifth Third Bank will be continuing with NGA for another seven years and it will also be moving to the next generation of HRO services based on SAP HCM and euHReka.

With clients looking for integrated and streamlined systems and data across the enterprise and around the world, vendor, product, and service selection need to keep glob-ability in mind. Can you get a unified view of your top talent and their compensation, appraisals, laterals and promotions, as well as development plans and activities?

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

NorthgateArinso Proving Success with Legacy Convergys Clients

When NorthgateArinso acquired Convergys’ HR management business in March 2010, my first reaction was that this was a really good deal for NorthgateArinso because it would be gaining some big brand name clients in the U.S.  Some wondered whether NorthgateArinso would be successful in retaining these legacy clients, but I was optimistic for two reasons.

First, it is mainly the same legacy Convergys employees supporting these clients, most transferred to NorthgateArinso with the acquisition.  It is well-known that the most successful ingredient in an outsourcing relationship is how well the client and service provider can work together and have an effective relationship / partnership.

Back in October 2008, I attended the Convergys Industry Analyst Day in Cincinnati where Thomas Neltner, VP of HR at Fifth Third Bank, was a guest speaker.  Thomas spoke about why Fifth Third chose Convergys, its services outsourced, and benefits obtained, including 99% utilization of employee self-service and 40,000 transactions turned paperless.  So it is no surprise to me that this week Fifth Third agreed to extend its contract with NorthgateArinso for an additional seven years.

The original contract with Fifth Third was signed in October 2003 for five years.  Services provided to the bank’s 20,000 employees included:

• Payroll administration and processing
• Compensation administration
• Performance management support
• Benefits administration
• Time and attendance management
• Implementation of recruitment technology and a self-service web portal.

In May 2007, the contract was extended for an additional five years for 21,000 employees and services were added including recruiting and specialized staffing and employee and manager self-service.  Now, the seven year extension through 2019 also includes upgrading the banks current SAP HCM platform to NorthgateArinso’s euHReka technology platform.

euHReka is also based on SAP but is a preconfigured multi-tenant platform that is fully integrated in providing HR and payroll services. In addition, it is used as a multi-country payroll solution, although that won’t be needed with Fifth Third, but you never know what the future may bring, which brings me to the second reason why I was optimistic about NorthgateArinso’s ability to renew legacy Convergys clients.  That is, similar to how customer service is a core competency of legacy Convergys, the same is true for technology and systems integration at NorthgateArinso.  This is a strong combination that NorthgateArinso can capitalize on when other contracts with marquee clients such as DuPont and Johnson & Johnson come up for renewal in the years ahead.  It will also help with winning new business!

Gary Bragar, Lead HRO Analyst, NelsonHall

SaaS Solutions Continue to Emerge for HR

There’s little question that Software as a Service (SaaS) Internet-based solutions hosted by an external vendor offer a wide range of benefits to buyers including: 1) Access to a single database from any location; 2) No need for additional hardware other than existing laptops or desktop PCs; 3) No need to pay for maintenance and upgrades, as compared to in-house systems or ERP solutions; 4) No IT staff required for support or other needs; 5) The system can be accessed by users anytime 24x7x365; 6) When used across multiple locations and geographies, one system allows for standardization and efficiency, increasing compliance and lowering costs; and 7) Bottom-line reduced costs in service delivery.

But is SaaS a panacea for HR’s service delivery needs? In a word, no.  SaaS by itself is not a remedy for completely eliminating a buyer’s internal HR staff or an organization’s propensity to outsource, particularly in the mid to large market. That’s why we will continue to see an increasing array of SaaS and HRO services-bundled offerings from vendors supporting a wide range of HR processes including benefits administration, health and welfare administration, HRO analytics, RPO, outsourced training and payroll.

That said, examples of the SaaS components of these solutions include:

• MidlandHR’s iTrent software is a web-based, integrated HR and payroll system which helps its clients tackle HR issues such as payroll, talent management, succession planning, recruitment and absence management

• NorthgateArinso’s euHReka OnDemand supports HR administration and payroll processes, preconfigured for more than 50 countries, and talent management processes in 24 languages, on a single integrated platform

• Patersons, a global payroll provider, uses SaaS developed in-house to deliver payroll to companies in 160 countries via a global network of providers

• Cornerstone OnDemand is a SaaS offering that supports talent management, performance management, succession planning, learning management, compensation management, social networking and reporting and analytics (note: ADP and Cornerstone entered into a partnership in mid 2009 to enhance its talent management capability)

It’s important to note here that service providers are muddying the waters a bit by referring to their offerings as SaaS, on-demand or managed services. And while there are differences among the three – a topic we’ll cover in a future blog – suffice it to say that NelsonHall expects the volume of “SaaS-esque” contracts to significantly increase over the next several years. For data points and statistics, we’ll soon be reporting the results of our Q409 Outsourcing Confidence Index which includes a focus on “Proportion of contracts signed which were platform-based.” Stay tuned!

Gary Bragar, Lead HRO Analyst, NelsonHall