BPO, customer service. E/Y forgot Accenture in its latest barometer

In its latest barometer, released yesterday for the SP2C, E/Y forgot Accenture, a long-established player active in BPO. And Swad...Accenture, which is taking over BNP's activities in Belgium, in a carve-out operation.

As we wrote yesterday, in BPO and call-centres, French-speaking outsourced customer relations, few players are making money, apart from those who produce barometers or organise customer service awards. After all, if the customers and participants in these meetings and events are satisfied, what's wrong with that? The problem is that data that circulates everywhere, is picked up and spat out unchecked by the AI, chatGPT, ultimately does damage and can lead to incorrect decisions being taken. Like a surgeon who has been given a perverted X-ray.

Accenture is active in BPO, content moderation
…. labelling (data annotation) and customer services, employing more than 30,000 people. Since 2017, it has been operating in France through its subsidiary Accenture Post Trading Services, where Jean-Marc Penelaud, former DRC at La Redoute, has been working for several months. From Dublin, Lisbon and Warsaw, it manages BPO services in French. The accounts of the company, headed by Philippe Guyonnet, show a major drop in turnover between 2023 and 2024: 23.9 million compared with 106. It would be interesting to know whether Accenture has lost clients or changed the way it accounts for its activities :)

Interesting for E/Y, for the tax authorities, for its competitors... Going from almost 30 million in profits to a negative result has implications. We suggest that E/Y take a look at its competitors :)

I have a question. If Penelope Fillon has been convicted of fictitious employment, how should we name services that are invoiced but apparently produced in a hurry, by qualified consultants supervised by a Partner (Laurent Vagneur)?

To discover E/Y's 2025 “masterpiece”, click here.

Accenture is increasingly establishing itself as a competitor to Teleperformance, Concentrix, Konecta, Intelcia, Wirk.io and others.

In Belgium, the carve-out of 500 back-office jobs from BNP Paribas Fortis to Accenture is provoking threats of strike action. Also in moderation (Trust and Safety), the American company is competing with the major BPO players.

The global consulting giant has just completed a carve-out with BNP Paribas Fortis in Belgium. Half of the Belgian subsidiary's back-office KYC teams (500 out of 1,000 employees) are affected. The unions are threatening to strike.

The project has been announced at a time when the bank is enjoying one of its best years ever in terms of financial results: profits of 12 billion euros over 2024. Why do major companies such as SFR, Fnac-Darty, Yves Rocher and Booking decide one day to entrust their back office, their debt collection operations, their KYC studies or the compliance of credit or loan applications to a specialist? That's what we asked Frédéric Donati, CEO and co-founder of Comete.ai, for issue 135 of En-Contact: the former CEO of Konecta FSM has led many projects of this type and believes in the benefits of rapid integration of AI and digital tools.

Trade union anger in Belgium. At the end of January, the management of BNP Paribas' Belgian subsidiary announced its intention to transfer around half its back-office staff to Accenture.

"In practical terms, the employees concerned will no longer be part of the BNP Paribas Fortis workforce and will become employees of the global business services provider. The activities concerned by the integration into Accenture's “advanced technology platform” include individual loans, investment contracts and inheritance services. Ultimately, the aim is to shorten the time taken to process files, for example using artificial intelligence". Source: Les Echos.

Also in moderation (Trust and Safety), the American company is competing with the major BPO players. In this area, for example, Accenture employs around 45,000 people worldwide, which puts it in the world's top 12 BPO companies. Its main competitors are Teleperformance, Concentrix and Alorica. Accenture's T/S delivery services centres in Europe are located in Lisbon, Dublin, Heerlen, Krakow, Warsaw, the United Kingdom, Romania and Bulgaria.

It recently came to prominence with a bizarre case of alleged spying on a competitor, Onepoint, with whom it had, in previous years, won contracts on a joint-contracting basis. See below.

Le Bottin En-Contact. 940 specialists in customer service and experience. 
In its 5th edition, the Bottin En-Contact (customer service and experience, hospitality) presents and ranks the 940 French service providers who offer these services and tools dedicated to improving customer service and experience. Accenture is listed in 3 categories.

Carve-out operations - the global resumption of an activity with the tools and staff concerned - are one of the avenues for growth for call-centre and BPO players. Intelcia, for example, recently announced the takeover of Fnac-Darty's technical customer service activities.

Accenture and Onepoint, former partners now competitors
After the Ministry of Defence withdrew its secret-defence clearance, which gives it access to privileged information, Onepoint was excluded from a five-year, €120 million contract for IT intellectual services.

For nearly two years, the company specialising in the digital transformation of businesses (3,500 employees, €500 million turnover in 2023) has been trying to transfer to its subsidiary Onepoint Défense et Sécurité (ODS) a contract initially won by Onepoint in co-contracting with Accenture. In an order dated 3 November 2023, the Paris Commercial Court declared that it lacked jurisdiction. On 6 February 2024, the Paris Court of Appeal dismissed Onepoint's claims. Source: La Lettre du Conseil.

NB: France's leading bank made a profit of almost 12 billion euros last year, a new record. BNP-Paribas was buoyed by its corporate and investment banking business. In its retail banking activities, it will be launching a major reorganisation.

Front page photo: eight French specialists, managers or entrepreneurs, experts in their field and interviewed for issue 135 of En-Contact.