Monthly Archive:: March 2014

HCL Catches Lightning in a Bottle

Double the fun! HCL’s stock valuation doubled in a just a little over 12 months. They’ve been on a tear, improving every month, with revenue per employee skyrocketing and the corresponding profitability rising. Sure, HCL has shifted some positions in its leadership team. But what really caused the investing community to value HCL at

Are We About to See a New Wave of Shared Services Activity?

We were recently a sponsor at the 18th annual Shared Services & Outsourcing Week conference in Orlando (part of SSON, the leading event for shared services). The significant portion of attendees that are just embarking on shared services for the first time and opening up new shared services capabilities was striking to us. It

Is Xerox Changing Direction or Is It More of the Same?

I’m watching with great interest the current change in leadership at Xerox. They just announced that Lynn Blodgett will retire at the end of 2014 and Robert Zapfel will join the firm on April 1 as president of Xerox Services and EVP of the corporation, reporting to the chairman and CEO. Bob has had

Pondering TCS’s Modest Morsel

TCS posted industry-leading financial results in its FQ4 2013 report. But what caught my attention was its quarterly guidance to investors where management stated they believe TCS can add “a few billion dollars” from digital as a growth driver. Really? Just a few billion? We believe TCS is substantially underplaying its digital hand. Management

CSS Corp Cloud Services Making an Impact

For several years we’ve predicted that the cloud would disrupt data centers. But it’s not as simple as lift and shift; it requires an understanding of how to deploy in the cloud and also requires some reengineering. Now some innovators are succeeding in deployment solutions and achieving momentum. One that caught our eye: the

Are We Hearing the Swan Song for RIM Services?

Remote infrastructure management (RIM) services were the disrupter for asset-heavy infrastructure services over the past several years and, in all likelihood, will continue to be for the next few years. However, as we look down the road it appears that RIM will hit the speed bump of automation and cloud, which will impact RIM

Avoiding a Big “Gotcha” in the RFP Process

Here’s a blatant truth: Any company looking to procure outsourced services can get into a similar situation as the government faced with its healthcare.gov website before it switched the work to Accenture to fix the debacle. That’s because the RFP process is a breeding ground for “gotchas” that eventually can evaporate a deal’s ROI or,

Genpact’s Q4 Performance: A Cautionary Tale for All Service Providers

The past year was not kind to Genpact. Q4 results show it underperformed the S&P by 25 percent over the last six months and by 7 percent year to date. This is surprising given that Genpact is a great organization with a record of superb delivery and a history of great performance. Unfortunately Genpact

Cognizant Shows New Signs of a Market Maturing

In its latest quarterly earnings report, Cognizant recently guided to slower growth than they achieved last year. Although it is usual for Cognizant to be conservative in its guidance, it is still notable that it is sanguine about repeating last year’s strong performance in what most regard as an improving economy. Cognizant has been

IBM Prepares to Deliver Consumption Based, As-a-Service Offerings

IBM in late February launched BlueMix, a billion-dollar investment in a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud based on its recent empire-building acquisition of SoftLayer. A TBR analyst says IBM’s as-a-service moves are changing the company’s DNA. My opinion? It’s a lot more significant than that! If Big Blue can integrate all its services in a true