Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/136276
Upside NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF WORK Gaining Confidence The most recent NelsonHall HR Outsourcing Confidence Index (HROCI) shows a vendor confidence level of 157 for Q1 2013 (100 represents unchanged confidence) and higher scores indicate increased confidence. That is in line with the 156 from Q4 2012 and a bit up from the 153 one year ago. Confidence dipped mid-2012 with Q2 at 138 and Q3 at 140, which was not too surprising given the political and economic uncertainty we saw last year. While the overall confidence score at 157 remains stable, those suppliers reporting slightly more or much more confidence increased 13 per cent quarter over quarter. Increased confidence is reflective of solid pipelines of potential new sales and expectations for growth. However, HR business process outsourcing service lines do not grow at the same rate. Some services like RPO and payroll remain steady performers, followed closely by benefits administration. The pipeline for benefits administration is looking especially strong. Expectations for multi-process HRO and learning remain about the same, which indicates continued slow growth. Location matters in HRO and the patterns of growth also vary by region. The economic recovery is uneven in pace, readiness for HRO is uneven, and multi-country deals are a smaller part of the mix than in the recent past. Overall, vendor confidence by geography has weakened with many regions showing some decline in confidence. North America, Asia Pacific, and Latin America show the strongest numbers, but there can be significant variation country by country. As we have seen for some time, growth expectations for Europe and the Middle East remain dampened. —Linda Merritt, HRO research analyst, NelsonHall CRM Apps Explosion Significant shifts will occur in the growing customer relationship management (CRM) market in the next two years. Gartner, Inc. predicts mobile CRM apps available for download at app stores will grow to more than 1,200 by 2014 from more than 200 in 2012. More than 50 per cent of total CRM software revenue for certain types of applications will be delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS) during 2016, and Gartner predicts salesforce.com will remain the largest CRM vendor by revenue in 2013. From a vendor perspective, salesforce.com surpassed SAP to become the number one CRM vendor by revenue in 2012. Salesforce.com reached $2.5 billion CRM revenue in 2012, a 26 per cent increase from 2011, while SAP grew 0.1 per cent year-on-year and totaled $2.3 billion in CRM revenue. [6] HRO TODAY GLOBAL | SPRING 2013 Gartner predicts that by 2014 the number of mobile CRM apps available for download from app stores will have grown by 500 per cent. CRM application vendors will be forced to decide which types of mobile CRM to support, as well as assessing their functionality as suitable to be broken up into bite-size chunks and adopted as apps. The shift to apps will create a competitive advantage for some CRM vendors, but, they will need to decide whether to provide apps free of charge, in paid versions or both. F&A Up Spending on finance and accounting business process outsourcing (F&A BPO) services will surpass $25 billion globally in 2013, and will rise at an annual compound growth rate of 8 per cent through 2017, according to new research from U.S. audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG LLP and HfS Research, a leading analyst authority on global business operations strategies. More than 100 enterprise-level F&A BPO engagements are expected to be signed this year alone, according to the research, which covers 399 major global enterprises and analysed 745 current enterprise F&A engagements. The research also profiled 17 leading suppliers of F&A BPO services. The report, Finance and Accounting BPO Market Landscape, 2013: Market Evaluation, Forecast and Competitive Analysis, found that key market dynamics fueling global growth include: • Proven performance. Ninety per cent of F&A BPO engagements have been consistently meeting their cost-reduction targets and initial delivery performance, making it difficult for finance leaders to avoid evaluating its potential. • Desire to reduce costs and standardise processes. Enterprises overwhelmingly want to look at new ways to take advantage of lower-cost operations and standardised financial processes, where there is little competitive differentiation to be achieved by operating in house. • The lethargy of the recession has slowly lifted. More enterprise leaders are now looking at more radical strategies to increase productivity and global business effectiveness. Recent activity shows an increasing number of enterprises getting more aggressive with globalising their finance operating models to include outsourcing services.