Does HRO Help or Hurt in Achieving Human Capital Leadership?

Can employers be recognized as leadership development advocates and a great place to work and still take advantage of HRO services? Yes—and recent “best companies” announcements provide plenty of examples.

Fortune’s annual 100 Best Companies to Work For list includes a number of companies known to use HRO services. RPO examples include: American Express (Hays RPO), Edward Jones and Intuit (Manpower Group), Microsoft and Novartis (Alexander Mann Solutions), and SAS and Telefonica (Ochre House). Accenture, which provides HRO services, is on the list as an employer.

HRO clients are also among the recognized companies in the 2011 Top Companies for Leaders, another recent Fortune study in association with Aon Hewitt. PepsiCo (Aon Hewitt) and Unilever (Accenture, IBM) are among the multinationals taking the lead in developing leaders. Again we see RPO as a common talent management service selection; Eli Lily and Novartis AG (The Right Thing, An ADP Company), GE and Siemens AG (KellyOCG), and Whirlpool (Kenexa). IBM, another major HRO player, is recognized, as is Wipro. Accenture is noted on the U.S. list and Infosys is on the Asia Pacific list. ADP is included in the 2012 list of 10 Best  Companies for Leaders rankings by the Chief Executive.

Business Today has just released its 11th annual “Best Companies to Work for” in India and top companies include HRO providers such as Accenture, IBM, Infosys, Wipro, and TCS. Honeywell International (SourceRight Solutions) also made the list and is on the U.S. list for Leaders as well.

The lists go on and on and you will find companies that use HRO as well as HRO providers among the best of the best. You can be a pioneer in leadership development and use HRO in critical talent management areas. You can achieve greatness in any region of the world. You can even look to some of the HRO providers to share their own expertise as a “best company” in the human capital leadership arena.

Will HRO automatically make you the best company? No. However, HRO will not slow you down and may even provide a committed partner in accelerating your success.

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

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Success Factors for the Market Segments of MPHRO

Last week, I discussed the four market segments of multi-process HR outsourcing (MPHRO) as defined in my 2011 NelsonHall MPHRO report: multi-country standardization, client-specific shared service transformation, core business focus, and technology-led HR service enhancement.  This week, I’ll examine success factors for service providers within each segment.

In the “multi-country standardization segment,” which is the segment with the highest growth rate for the next five years, it is critical for vendors to be able to support a client’s operations across a wide range of countries including emerging markets. Providers must also be able to rollout standardized HR administration and payroll to create a global system of record. Examples of service providers operating in this segment include ADP, HP, and NorthgateArinso.

To be successful in the “client-specific shared service transformation segment,” the largest of the four, vendors must provide HRO support directly or through a partner for all HR service lines (i.e., payroll, benefits, learning, RPO, and workforce development services) and have a high degree of multi-shore delivery capabilities to support clients in various locations.  Equally important is a service provider’s ability to be able to work with the client’s existing HR technology.  One of the biggest challenges faced by vendors in this group is getting clients to transition more than just back-office functions to its offshore service centers to reduce operating costs.  Service providers operating in this segment include those that have been long-term players in the MPHRO market such as Accenture; IBM; Aon Hewitt; ACS, a Xerox Company; and U.K.-based Capita.

Within the “core business focus” market segment, success is contingent on a provider’s ability to quickly deploy HR services and be accessible when expertise is required.  In terms of HRO offerings, standardized HR administration and payroll are a must and providing support for talent management services is very appealing.  The biggest challenge for vendors operating here is all the competition that exists from some of the following vendors: Genpact, TCS, Talent2, Infosys, HCL, Wipro, and Caliber Point.

Success in the final segment, “technology-led HR service enhancement,” requires vendors to provide their own standard technology for HR administration and payroll that includes talent management functions.  Also, it’s important that this technology be rolled-out relatively quickly.  Providers that fall within this segment mirror the multi-country standardization segment, but also include vendors such as Ceridian.

There’s lots of room in the MPHRO market for all types of buyers, so it’s critical for service providers to decide which segments are of strategic value and to define their sweet spots in their MPHRO portfolios and fill in capability gaps where contracts can be lost to competitors.

Amy Gurchensky, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

Going Mobile

In early November, my colleague Linda Merritt wrote a blog titled “Mobile Apps Are Ringing Up HRO.” It recognized ADP as one of the early entrants with its payroll app “RUN Powered by ADP” for small business owners, which was launched in October 2010 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with plans to release Android and RIM-compatible versions this year.  Well, it’s hard to believe it has been this long for those of us considered middle-aged, but 40 years ago, Pete Townshend of the rock band The Who wrote “Going Mobile.” The song was about taking a vacation by riding around in a car with no particular destination, something Pete liked to do.  I don’t think Pete was thinking about processing payroll while riding around in his car, but this week ADP issued a press release with some very impressive statistics noting that there are already 100,000 users for its RUN payroll app.

A comment by one user, Scott McKain, stated “with just a few clicks, we process payroll conveniently and securely… and since transitioning to the RUN Powered by ADP mobile platform, we can now process payroll securely over a mobile device, no matter where our busy schedules take us.” Hopefully, Scott is not processing payroll while driving around in his car on vacation.

The article also references a 2010 nationwide survey conducted by ADP Research Institute that found that small businesses are leading the trend toward increased mobility, with 90% of small business executives out of the office an average of 23% of the time per 40-hour work week.

Since ADP released its app, other providers have announced mobile offerings for HR services as well, which include:

• Raet’s iPhone and iPad app for gross and net payment calculations and accessing jobs and news from Raet (March 2011)
• Manpower’s mobile recruitment app for candidates and recruiters (February 2011)
• Wipro and McGraw-Hill’s partnership to develop “mConnect,” an open-standard mobile learning (m-learning) platform targeted at low-income, rural, and otherwise underserved students and workers in emerging markets (January 2011)
• Buck Consultants’ (subsidiary of ACS, a Xerox Company) two iPhone apps for health and insurance information: Benefits Genie Lite and Benefits Genie, which give individuals the ability to set future appointment reminders and track health and insurance information (November 2010).

Other providers to launch mobile apps include SourceRight Solutions, Kenexa, and The RightThing.

Out of the necessity to provide payroll services, I think we will continue to see increased mobile payroll for processing payslips, viewing payslips, and performing other associated functions such as direct deposit.  In general, mobile offerings for other HR service lines including benefits, recruitment, and learning will be more gradual to take off because they are not as time-sensitive as payroll.  I believe that mobile recruitment will take off but initially more so for hiring managers to approve job requisitions when out of the office and candidates to check on status of jobs they are submitting for.  M-learning will initially be for more self-paced learning to access content and as I stated last fall in my blog I do believe benefits mobile apps will be important for accessing benefits information, including doctors and other medical care providers for such instances when you are on vaction and an emergency arises or as Pete Townshend would say for when you are Going Mobile.

Gary Bragar, Lead HRO Analyst, NelsonHall

HRO Can Help Stem Absence Management Cost Hits – But There’s More

A recent CyberShift survey found that one third of the 1,088 respondents cited absence management as a continuing top priority. Yet 53 percent of the survey participants stated they did not have an automated system in place for absence, leave, vacation and FMLA tracking. This is a pretty scary statistic, especially when, per CyberShift, unscheduled absenteeism can cost businesses more than $760,000 per year in direct payroll costs alone.

At the same time, forward-thinking buy-side companies over the past couple of years have awarded absence management contracts to HRO providers, and the vendors are beefing up their absence management offerings. Let’s take a look.

Absence Management Contracts

• MidlandHR was awarded 10 contracts in the last two years for its iTrent HR and payroll software, including its absence management modules, by the University of Exeter, Capel Manor College, Oxford City Council, NetworkersMSB, Pentagon Investments, Preston College, Which? (yes, this is an actual company name), Manchester Fire and Rescue, Kent County Council and Farnborough College
• Wipro implemented Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise HCM 9.0 for Jammu & Kashmir Bank in India. Modules implemented include absence management and approval workflow
• NorthgateArinso won a five-year contract with Hastings College for its ResourceLink HR platform, which supports absence management
• Convergys entered into a five-year contract renewal for multi-process HRO services with a leading business services company; components of the contract include absence management and leave administration
• Hewitt was awarded several unnamed contracts that include absence management
• Raet won a 10-year contract with OSG for its online HR portal, which includes absence management

Providers’ Enhanced Absence Management Offerings

Just a couple of weeks ago, Capita acquired FirstAssist Services Holdings Ltd. to strengthen its capabilities in health and workforce management, including absence management. In January, Hewitt added participant advocacy services to its absence management offering. In August, Ceridian added Presagia’s employee leave management software to support its leave management services. And Xchanging announced an alliance with absence management specialist FirstCare through which the two parties will jointly go to market with FirstCare’s absence management and occupational health pre-employment screening services and Xchanging’s portfolio of HRO services.  

Here’s my take. Leveraging software and services for absence management tracking is a great step in the right direction when it comes to stemming costs. But equally, if not more, important is drilling down into the why’s of non-authorized and non-sick absences. This maps to blogs I’ve written over the past year that focus on rampant employee dissatisfaction. Unhappy employees are more inclined to call in sick simply because they don’t want to go to their jobs. Get to the heart of employee dissatisfaction, fix what is truly broken across the enterprise, and absenteeism will decrease. Strong leadership and performance management training is invaluable in helping determine the root of employee discontent. Corporations lacking internal training programs of this type can leverage offerings from both full-scope and pure-play learning services HRO providers.

Gary Bragar, Lead HRO Analyst, NelsonHall

The Next Shore for HRO – Finding Cultural Compatibility

HRO clients have become more open to multishoring to gain cost, scalability and flexibility advantages. And as the major HRO vendors have globalized their service delivery capabilities, some portion of the work is increasingly likely to be done offshore in order for their clients to benefit from optimized services. 

Voice services have been the most challenging area to find culturally compatible locations with a scalable English speaking talent base. According to the new NelsonHall market research report, “BPO Delivery from the Philippines,” the Philippines is a growing location for both voice-based and back-office BPO services, with more than 386,000 personnel across a growing number of service providers. The largest segment by far is customer management services for the U.S., with F&A, especially order to cash outsourcing, as the next largest.  Major BPO vendors, including Convergys, IBM, Infosys, Logica, NorthgateArinso and Wipro, are already there.

HRO services are there as well. HRO is a small, but growing, portion of the service base in the Philippines. The top HRO services supported are employee care and payroll.  With HRO service providers using sophisticated workflow technology and processes, portions of service lines can be handled from just about any location. In the Philippines, initial screenings for RPO, and enrollment and inquiries for learning BPO are supported, as are employee data management, benefits administration and mobility services.

Right now services from the Philippines are highly centered on the U.S., followed by Canada and the U.K. Future growth is expected from English-speaking Asia Pacific countries like Australia and New Zealand. In addition to organic growth for the services already located there, healthcare from both the payer and provider sides is seen as a good opportunity for expanded services.

Latin America is also growing as a BPO region. I recently spoke with country representatives from Chile and Jamaica, and both countries would like to add HRO to the other BPO service lines already migrating to Latin America as it grows as a near shore region and as its own market.

The HRO community can look forward to a wide range of shoring options and cost points. The HRO back-office location will increasingly be by vendor choice, and less and less visible to clients. HRO voice services will remain a client decision to balance cultural compatibility, scalability, flexibility and cost.

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

HRO Providers’ Quality Programs – Where’s the Beef?

Just last week a NelsonHall client asked me about HRO service providers’ quality programs. A bit surprisingly, my mini-research found a scattershot representation of available information. While I know more complete details would have been available had I done a full research analysis, and that vendors can present their capabilities for RFP responses, I was little taken aback at the limited data available on the providers’ web sites and in many marketing and briefing packages.

There was quite a bit of information on certifications such as SAS70, CMMI levels and various ISO certifications. Some providers, including ACS, Ceridian, IBM, Logica and Wipro, specifically mentioned use of Six Sigma and Lean programs. One vendor listed the vague, “other quality assurance programs and tools.” Yes, technical certifications are valuable, and use of named quality programs like Six Sigma is good, but these may or may not indicate that quality is integrated across the business and reaches well beyond the IT and data centers.

Earlier in my career I was in Quality for many years, doing everything from facilitating quality teams to developing and delivering training and helping design and implement quality programs. I had big fun during the early days of the U.S. Baldrige Awards system for business, becoming an internal examiner for my company’s (AT&T) internal awards program, as well for preparation before official Baldrige Award examiner visits. So I know what an integrated quality system can do for customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and the bottom line business results that please shareholders.

The days of high promoting of quality programs has passed, and while information on quality does not need to lead in marketing materials, it should be available and easy to find. Clients and prospective buyers want to know the provider has a current record of meeting its SLA obligations and cares about customer satisfaction. Since HRO vendor decisions tend to be longer term commitments with substantial barriers to changing, buyers also want assurance the vendor will be able to deliver in the future.

Clients do not pay for vendor quality programs, even when certified and award-winning. Clients pay for business performance achieved through quality programs. Excellence in quality is an indicator that a service provider can reliably deliver on service, operational and compliance promises.

A comprehensive quality program has competitive advantages for both clients and the service provider – ensuring performance for clients and achieving performance objectives for the business – and should be driven by the service provider’s strategy and business objectives.

Today, major HRO providers have distributed service delivery networks, many global and often including a complex array of suppliers. The more the services and workflow is segmented, the more important quality becomes. Quality should have an equal focus on the internal business efficiency needed to achieve profitability and the ability to fuel future growth.

HRO vendors, let’s see more complete, easy to find quality program information. And please support the information with more than a list of programs and certifications; “beef” it up with  at least some lean protein tidbits which provide evidence that your programs are widespread and effective. Even more importantly, make sure your quality system is robust and is serving both your clients and your business as the fight continues to maintain and increase your margins to sustainable levels while retaining and adding satisfied clients.

Linda Merritt, Research Director, HRO, NelsonHall

Will Multi-Process HRO Survive, or Will the Baby Be Thrown Out With the Bath Water?

The large multi-process HRO (MPHRO) deals born in the last 10 years or so brought HRO to a new level of awareness and created something of a cottage industry to support it before anyone in the equation really knew what it was and what it could really do. The first few service providers and buyers begat advisors to guide buyers, lawyers to write deals, analysts to research and comment on the emerging market, and HR-specific and more mainstream media to cover the phenomenon. Dedicated magazines and professional associations like HRO Today, HRO Europe and the HR Outsourcing Association quickly formed, and conference promoters and general HR consultancies swarmed.

It all looked so much like fun at first. One-stop HR shopping with almost every HR services you could name from one end-to-end provider, wow! (One hand to shake, or one throat to choke, take your pick. And yes, newbies, that language was actually used.) Anchor client HR operations lifted and shifted with rebadged employees, and systems and processes moved to the new providers with plans to become the foundation for multi-client services. Marketing promos promising 20, 30 and even 40 percent or more in savings were pitched by sales teams to HR and C-suite executives. HR RFPs were big and vendor responses were bold. Vendor and buyer due diligence assessments? Not so much. Either parties tests for customer readiness? Non-existent. 

What Went Wrong – The Short Story

Then we all found out it was much harder than it looked. Take just two elements out of a very complex market dynamic. Transitions were longer, more complex and costly than embedded in the deal structures – something that would come back and haunt both service providers and buyers in the coming years. Transforming anchor clients or pre-existing technology platforms and processes into global multi-client capabilities with room for buyer discounts and customer satisfaction, while still leaving a reasonable profit margin, also turned out to be more problematic than anticipated.

In the meantime, the single process HRO field did not intend to be displaced or subsumed behind MPHRO vendors. Some joined the fray as new MPHRO vendors. Others dug in to defend, expand and promote their HR specialty point solution services in areas including benefits, payroll and learning. Today there are more standalone HRO options than ever. The struggles in MPHRO with some high-value, but complex, services even likely fueled the growth and expansion of services like RPO.

Will Multi-Process HRO Survive?

Yes, MPHRO is changing, but it is not about to go away any time soon. Granted a few deals did not survive, and some others have been less than 100 percent successful for either buyers or providers. Still, this a multi-billion dollar market segment with millions of employees served worldwide. MPHRO works for most buyers across many service lines, and many major contracts have already been updated, extended or renewed, although with little of the early fanfare.

Shakeouts are to be expected in any new market, perhaps even more so in a down economy.  Some are playing in the field of mergers and acquisitions, like ExcellerateHRO going to HP. Others, such as Hewitt and Fidelity, are choosing to refocus on core services. However, most of the major HRO providers like Accenture, Convergys and IBM are staying the course, and there are even still new entrants, including offshore providers such as Infosys and Wipro, ensuring the MPHRO marketplace will exist, continue to evolve and provide buyers with a wide range of competitive options.

A topical article in the June 2009 of HRO Today entitled, “In today’s changing market, who has the advantage: End-to end or point solution? Industry experts weigh in,” also sees room for both MPHRO and point solution options.

But exactly how is MPHRO changing and adapting today, and how does it plan to compete tomorrow? It is time to find out. My first major NelsonHall Market Analysis study, planned to be published in October, will be on MPHRO. The results will be very telling!

Linda Merritt, Research Director, HRO, NelsonHall

Infosys, Wipro, TCS and other Offshore Providers: How Strong an HRO Play Can They Make?

Against the backdrop of Infosys’ most recent quarter-end financials announcement – of which 6.1 percent of revenue was attributed to BPO, and five to 10 percent of that BPO revenue is estimated to have come from HRO – how viable can it and its Indian brethren be in the HRO space? Despite inherent challenges and both real and perceived buyer concerns about offshoring HR processes, offshore providers are making strong investments in and “upping the ante” of their HRO capabilities.

For example, Infosys within the last several months launched a new SaaS plus BPO platform offering which supports HR processes. And other Indian providers such as Wipro, Caliber Point, Secova, Modis and TCS are partnering, primarily with Oracle and SAP, for a technological BPO backbone which supports HRO processes, and then building more standardized BPO services around that technology.

Further, to address language and cultural barrier concerns of many buyers, India-based offshore providers are understandably touting their centers in locations such as Romania and Poland as HRO delivery sites.

Finally, price points are clearly lower in India and other low-cost locations such as the Philippines in which offshore providers have centers. In today’s economy, given that providers such as Hewitt and Convergys have been challenged to meet the cost-cutting requirements of their existing clients without themselves utilizing offshore resources, there are clearly some natural opportunities for offshore providers.

But the operative word above is “some” natural opportunities. Remember, there are many concrete and ostensible inhibitors to offshore HRO. So where are offshore providers making, and can they make, their play?

At least for the relative near-term, it’s in the low-cost transactional services and low- and mid-level analytics processes. For example:

•  In recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), CV/resume screening and, in some cases, candidate short-listing. But beyond these initial activities, most will require onshore hand-off

•  In learning business process outsourcing (LBPO), managing course scheduling and learner assistance around which courses are suitable, etc. But with language, cultural and proximity issues, the possibility of venue management, course development and learning delivery is null to void

•  In back-office processes, those which are non-voice-related, such as payroll reconciliations, accounting within pensions arrangements, fulfillment, etc., in benefits administration

•  In HRO analytics, low-end processes such as monthly and quarterly reporting on employees per business unit, geography or employee population diversity; cost per hire; hiring manager satisfaction; learner satisfaction and utilization rates for decision support tools. Mid-level analytics provided by offshore providers could include loyalty and attrition modeling

•  And of course the IT support around all of these HR processes

The bottom line is that offshore providers are viable contenders in the HRO space, but we believe buyers are still cautious about fully embracing offshore outsourcing, so are likely to engage only in the non-high-touch areas. If a buyer is seeking lower cost, transactional services, offshore HRO is certainly worth examining.

Helen Neale, Research Director, Human Resources Outsourcing, NelsonHall