HRO Inflection Points

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

Everywhere around us inflection points are occurring. Inflection points are a sign that change is occurring that will create a new order of things. Whether we see them, understand their long-term implications, and leverage them to our advantage is another issue.

Social Inflection Points Impact HRO

Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two issues impacting marriage law that will change who is entitled to marriage-related federal benefits.

Major social change invariably impacts HR and HRO services, and the marriage law rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court will have wide-ranging implications for workplace benefit plans in at least 12 states.

The long-term implications may take many years to become clear, but leveraging in the short term has already begun. ADP was the first HRO vendor I saw tweet about the court’s ruling by announcing an upcoming webinar on the changes to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Mercer quickly followed with a ‘benefits administration alert’ letter.

Technology Inflection Points Impact HRO

As a disruptive technology, SaaS has started a global “cloud war” that is only just beginning. HR and HRO are just a small piece of the IT landscape and we will see skirmishes as new entrants and long-term leaders battle for market share, industry leadership and shareholder value as they transform not only technology offerings, but revenue streams and business models.

Oracle’s Larry Ellison has been in the news for the last two weeks reporting on earnings that were already impacted by SaaS and the cloud war. Here was one of the industry’s titans comparing Oracle’s SaaS revenues (annualized at ~$1bn) to comparable revenues posted by perennial competitor SAP and upstart Workday!

Upgrade or rip-and-replace decisions are becoming imminent for HR clients and HRO services providers. Many vendors, including Ceridian, Mercer and Talent2, are already developing integrated service platforms and more cloud offerings for organizations of all sizes.

Client Inflection Points Impact HRO

To identify current trends in HRO customer requirements I reviewed current (2013) sources, including NelsonHall’s Targeting Payroll BPO market analysis and HR Outsourcing Confidence Index, and also HRO vendor discussions. Further, I reviewed a research survey by Mandy Sim, a University Teaching Fellow with the Business School at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, entitled the HRO Adoption Survey Report 2012, which identified key Asia-Pacific HRO practices based on a survey conducted on delegates who attended the HRO Today Forum APAC 2012.

Following are my findings on what today’s HRO clients, across service lines and geographies, are wanting from prospective vendors:

• Value for price, balancing cost with improved outcomes and business impact
• Standardization of processes and technologies
• Advanced subject-matter expertise and best practices
• Scalability across services and geographies
• Access to new tools, technologies and services.

Ready or not, change is coming to HRO. Are you ready for how will it impact you and your organization?

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Trending Now in Payroll Outsourcing

Yesterday, NelsonHall published its “Targeting Payroll Outsourcing” report for our clients, so I thought it would be appropriate to briefly touch on some of the findings.  The global payroll outsourcing market was estimated to be $12bn in 2010.  Currently, the mid-market (50%) combined with the national segment makes up ~90%, while large multi-nationals make up the remainder. 

While the mid-market segment is quite large, majority of growth is expected from the large multi-national market because of the increase in demand for multi-country payroll across all regions.  In fact, the desire for multi-country standardization has been reflected in NelsonHall’s HR Outsourcing Confidence Index (HROCI) for some time now.  We are seeing a shift from multi-country standardization on a global level to more of a regional level. 

The drivers for payroll outsourcing have remained the same overall, but the rankings have changed.  The number one reason for outsourcing payroll continues to be cost reduction with ~85% of all buyers citing this objective.  Moving up one notch is the desire to have a multi-country platform managed by a single vendor to obtain global visibility of cost and aggregated reporting of data.  Finally, the third most important driver cited for outsourcing payroll is to ensure compliance and manage risk due to continual changes in tax laws including Sarbanes-Oxley in the U.S., and labor contracts.   

Another interesting change worth noting is the shift that has occurred with who is leading the discussion to outsource payroll.  In 2009, HR spent the largest proportion of time discussing the decision at 83%, with the CFO / finance department allocating ~70% to it.  This year, the CFO / finance department is spending the biggest proportion of time on discussions at 86%, while HR is spending ~80%.  Two main reasons explain why the CFO is spending the most time leading discussions.  First, payroll often falls under finance departments in Europe, and second, the CFO is involved when cost is the primary driver. 

One final thing I’d like to point out now is the 3% global increase since 2009 in self-service and electronic statements that are resulting in less time, money, and paper consumed, along with the increasing popularity of paycards as an alternative to paper payroll checks.  Paycards save employers >50% of the cost of issuing a check.  An estimated 2.5% of employees in the U.S. are paid via paycards with HRO providers such as ADP and Ceridian offering paycards on a standalone basis.

The payroll report goes into greater depth on these topics and others including market size and growth estimates, technology platforms utilized, and estimated vendor revenues and market shares to name a few. 

Amy L. Gurchensky, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

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RPO Continues Its Stride in Q2 2011

If you didn’t pay attention to the news and only looked at the recent financial results reported by staffing and RPO providers, you’d think that everything is fine with the global economy.  Let’s take a look at a few of the highlights including year-over-year revenue growth in Q2 2011 compared to Q2 2010 and some numbers of contracts awarded:

• Talent2 (fiscal year 2011 for period ending June 30) +26%, RPO +57%
• Kelly Services +16%, KellyOCG + 22.5%, and RPO ~+50%
• Kenexa +59%, RPO + 45%
• Manpower + 24%, ManpowerGroup Solutions +21% with 37 RPO deals closed in Q1 and 31 new RPO contracts awarded in Q2
• Pinstripe won or extended 15 RPO contracts in H1 (revenue not reported)
• SeatonCorp +20%, PeopleScout +95% with 9 new RPO contracts signed.

Why was growth and the number of contracts awarded so high when the sad reality of the news headlines is that there are debt problems, slowdown in GDP growth, and a continually high unemployment rate?   Well, that is precisely why!  There are several reasons including:

• Organizations who have had to downsize are turning to RPO because they don’t want to invest in hiring recruiters and associated staff only to potentially downsize again (i.e., it’s better to outsource recruitment to a vendor that can provide variable pricing and who can scale up or down quicker than the client)
• Obtaining  better quality of candidates and quality of hire from an outsourcing specialist
• Allowing HR to work as a strategic partner and in-conjunction with the RPO vendor to engage employees and retain talent (instead of focusing on hiring)
• Wanting to get out of the technology management business, which isn’t usually a client’s core competency
• Reducing time to hire, improving hiring manager satisfaction, etc.

In addition to revenue growth from new contracts and renewals, growth comes from existing clients that have increased their hiring volumes. Other sources of growth are from contracts won in prior quarters that take several months before fully ramping up.

RPO does not look like it is going to slow down anytime soon.  In NelsonHall’s HR Outsourcing Confidence Index, published in June, pipeline growth reported in the prior quarter was higher for RPO than all of the other HRO services.

At NelsonHall, we’ve seen an increase from buyers wanting to know who we see as the leading RPO providers by country and region. Buyers, are you evaluating outsourcing recruitment, if you haven’t done so already?

Gary Bragar,  HR Outsourcing Research Director, NelsonHall

Don’t Rain on My HRO Parade

The HRO community deserves a break, and the latest NelsonHall HR Outsourcing Confidence Index is here to deliver with lots of good news. Strike up the band and let’s have a virtual HRO parade!

To gauge HRO confidence, we use a scale in which 100 equals no change and 200 means all participants are highly confident. Compared to the dearth of optimism at 115 in Q2 2009, the 3Q 2010 HRO Confidence Index is at a high of 168. HRO vendors stating they are much more confident in their HR outsourcing business increased from a dismal 10 percent to a buoyant 41 percent.

We have been reporting for some time that pipelines are filling and looking better, and that continues. And yet, providers’ financial results have not yet shown a logjam break in frozen decision-making and willingness to commit in many HRO service lines.

On the other hand, this quarter we finally see an upswing in contract value growth. In fact, we have a triple play of good news underway! HRO service providers are reporting increases in:

1. New contract activity
2. Scope expansion with existing clients
3. Volume in existing contracts

New contract activity is now outpacing increasing scope with existing clients. New deals signed, given the lag time before revenues flow, will take a while to show up in results. Volumes beginning to pick-up with existing clients will show up sooner in results, especially if vendors can gear up to increasing activity levels quickly and efficiently.

RPO and payroll continue to lead the parade to revenue growth recovery, with multi-process HRO also improving. While learning has been slow, its current 3.5 ranking in NelsonHall’s 3Q 2010 HRO Confidence Index indicates a much brighter outlook as compared to its score of 2.8 in Q4 2009.(Note that we use a scale of 1 – 5, with 5 being a strong increase.) 

Benefits administration outsourcing revenue growth expectations have been stable for several quarters around 3.5, but the outlook for pipeline growth is lower for benefits administration outsourcing than other HRO areas. Expected increases in health and welfare consulting should lead longer term to opportunities, but vendors are not seeing it yet. There may be short term distraction caused by the spate of mergers and alliances this year. ADP recently reported the successful acquisition of Workscape, now an ADP company, and Aon announced the leadership slate for the soon to be Aon Hewitt team.

Global delivery remains a factor in HRO growth in two ways. First, multi-country contracts, at 34 percent of deals, continue as organizations seek to standardize payroll and other HR processes. Also, acceptance of multi-shoring HRO continues. Onshore HRO delivery is still in the lead at 71 percent, but nearshore and offshore delivery are now 29 percent of HRO contract values.

People have parades for many reasons including celebration, commemoration and optimism. Our virtual parade is for optimism with a tad of celebration thrown in. Let’s save the full celebration parade for when the earnings results match the current high level of optimism.  Hmm, when and where do you think we should have a real HRO community parade?

Linda Merritt, Research Director, HRO, NelsonHall