Peterborough Cathedral
Perceptions of the HR space and the making of an HR outsourcing powerhouse
Northgate Arinso is well-known in England and Europe. My knowledge of the company goes back to the days when they operated one of the largest and oldest payroll service providers in England: Peterborough. The company’s presence in North America has been more limited, that is, until its recent acquisition of the HR BPO practice of Convergys.
That acquisition may make Northgate Arinso one of the largest, if not the largest, North American HR business process outsourcing providers. This deal makes Northgate Arinso a major human resource outsourcing player in the UK, Europe and North America.
A few months ago I ran into them again at Bill Kutik’s HR Technology show in Chicago. At that event, my colleague, Katherine Jones, and I got an in-depth briefing on one of the coolest things Northgate Arinso had done to date: they made a multi-tenant SaaS version of SAP’s R/3 HR software.
I spoke with Mike Ettling recently. Mike is the CEO of Northgate Arinso. I asked him a few questions related to this deal and the HR space in general.
I asked him how does the Convergys outsourcing solution fit in with your existing SAP HR offering? Mike indicated that many of the Convergys deals were SAP and PeopleSoft application outsourcing deals that varied from customer to customer. Northgate Arinso brings a platform that permits its Eureka or Eureka on-premise solution to sit on top of on-premise SAP software in their data centers. Likewise, they possess Eureka Hybrid. Mike also reminded me that they are doing PeopleSoft outsourcing for select large clients, too.
I asked if we’ll see more mergers/acquisitions/divestitures in HR BPO or for Northgate Arinso? Mike said that this (i.e., HR BPO) is a market that will continue to consolidate. He also believes that the HR SaaS market will consolidate as well.
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