1. G00273191
Cool Vendors in Business Process Services,
2015
Published: 13 April 2015
Analyst(s): TJ Singh, Cathy Tornbohm
The BPO market is open to innovation and Gartner sees Genfour and
Symphony Ventures leading robotic process automation, while Liberty
Source, noHold and ISON are innovative emerging players for customer
management BPO. These providers can decrease overall costs for voice
and data business processes.
Key Findings
Genfour and Symphony Ventures offer custom-made automation services as a managed service
using the latest combinations of specialist business services, consultancy and subscription access
to (and phantom robotic process automation tools that can be trained to process organizations'
voice and data information and activities, improving accuracy and efficiency).
noHold solutions and services enable the delivery of automated voice or multichannel services,
such as interactive, natural-language virtual assistants, to improve process efficiency and customer
experience.
ISON provides multilingual marketing, sales, customer service, collections, data management and
analytics services in underdeveloped emerging markets. ISON has invested in and developed
solutions such as mVentus, a prominent company providing its Self Care platform to mobile service
providers.
Liberty Source has built its service value proposition of delivering finance and accounting, HR and
customer service BPO onshore in the U.S. via employing mostly U.S. military spouses and veterans
as a public benefit corporation.
Recommendations
Directors of BPO or shared-service centers should consider Genfour or Symphony if they want to
improve custom-made automation for data manipulation-intensive processes or to reduce their
workforce. Consider Liberty Source for U.S. onshore BPO activities; the company has a strong
corporate social responsibility and community focus onshore.

2. Sales, marketing and customer service executives looking to further automate their customer
management business process, or use CM BPO services, should consider the use of noHold and
ISON for voice or multichannel services.
Analysis
This document was revised on 30 April 2015. The document you are viewing is the corrected
version. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.
This research does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but
rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services.
Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any
warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
What You Need to Know
Business process services are rapidly evolving with increasing deployment and development of
technologies, such as automation and advanced analytics, enabling providers to offer new ways of
delivering business process services to clients. Reducing delivery costs, improving the accuracy of
first-time processing and mitigating increasing labor costs in locations such as India are drivers that
have spurred these business process service providers to create new products.
In this Cool Vendors report, Gartner highlights five innovative examples framing the future landscape
of business process services: Genfour, Symphony, noHold, ISON BPO and Liberty Source. These
providers exemplify a variety of trends impacting the current and future posture of established
business process service providers.
Genfour
London, U.K. (www.genfour.net)
Analysis by Cathy Tornbohm
Why Cool: Genfour is one of the first consulting and managed services companies dedicated to
offering managed services for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and phantom robotic
process automation (PRPA) (see "When and How to Use Phantom Robotic Process Automation").
Genfour has clients from banking to gaming where it is automating multiple manual processes that
have not been automated by traditional software approaches and is offering these as a subscription
model. Genfour is cool because it has already delivered multiple PRPA and, at this point in time, one
AI deployment. It has combined tools to offer a subscription-based, fully managed service that
mitigates some of the challenges organizations have found from deploying smart and PRPA to date.
Genfour's offerings in some cases are fully automated business process outsourcing (BPO) for most
processes in any organization — typically at the start of the development of BPO service into a
highly automated service; i.e., with fewer or no people to run tasks.
Page 2 of 10 Gartner, Inc. | G00273191

3. Challenges: Much of Genfour's success has been in the U.K. and its knowledge of deploying PRPA
tools is ahead of most, so its challenge is to hire suitable recruits to scale operations geographically.
Genfour's key challenge is to cope with its growth, and once the first initial growth spurt of PRPA
and AI is over in 2016, it is to continue to raise its profile in a new, fast-growing area. These services
are having a significant impact, changing the way that processes can be executed either without
people or augmenting people's capabilities; i.e., automating certain functions or transactions.
Prospects for these services, therefore, need awareness of what the real capabilities of the
technologies that can facilitate significant business process re-engineering with very little IT
involvement. Genfour needs to ensure its capabilities are well-known and to manage its growth
carefully.
Competitors, mostly BPO organizations, are also investing heavily in AI while consultants are
advising clients, typically captive operations, to embrace automation, especially AI services, which
could hinder Genfour's future prospects.
Genfour must invest in marketing and messaging to increase and shape brand awareness to attract
not only the right clients but also the right talent for client relationship management.
Who Should Care: Business leaders at client organizations responsible for increased profitability,
efficiency and governance should review Genfour. CEOs, COOs and CFOs could benefit from this
service, as it targets key cost-saving areas, and it can help implement programs to realize savings
for increased profit and great compliance to processes.
ISON BPO
Kenya (www.isonbpo.com)
Analysis by TJ Singh
Why Cool: A relatively young customer management (CM) IT and BPO company that is rapidly
growing in emerging markets — Africa (25 countries) and the Middle East and Southeast Asia
regions, with more than 6,400 employees — ISON BPO has helped clients in gaining significant
business value through marketing, sales, customer service, collections, data management and
analytics services. The company continues to invest in customer experience management, digital
services and advanced analytics, and is focused on delivering cost-optimization projects for
telecommunications; media; banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI); government; retail;
and travel and transportation (aviation) clients.
ISON has also invested in and developed mVentus, a sizable enterprise mobility solution provider
focused on its Self Care platform for enterprises; Safe++, which provides security solutions in
Africa; and Athenta, an innovative integrated infrastructure management solutions company. The
company is also establishing multilingual hubs across key locations in Africa, the Middle East and
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regions. In addition, the ISON Group has
recently launched a new initiative — ISON Innovation and Investments (i3) — to help drive greater
adoption of BPO services in the consumer Internet business in Africa.
Gartner, Inc. | G00273191 Page 3 of 10

4. Challenges: Key challenges for ISON, as is the case for any smaller, niche or regional CM contact
center BPO service provider, include:
Continued development and acquisition of technology and investments in marketing and brand
awareness; with limited resources, the company has to prioritize its investments.
Building faith in outsourcing as a "concept" within the African corporate world; ISON is not tapping
into the existing market, it is creating a market. More than 98% of ISON's resources are local
Africans.
Multicultural challenges for the multilingual continent (more than 1,000 languages are spoken in
Africa) and related process implications.
Strong unionized environment in several countries.
Dynamic and strong interconnect and/overlap within various organizations, including relationships
between multinational organizations such as Africa Union, Southern African Development
Community (SADC), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Central African
Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), East African Community (EAC), Economic
Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa
(COMESA).
Improving client concentration — ISON has high levels of client concentration, with the top three
clients making up close to 50% of its total revenue.
The U.S. and Europe are both key CM BPO markets, but both of these economies continue to
experience low levels of economic growth, which translate into relatively lower growth opportunities
in the near future. But, it is important for the company to grow in these more matured markets that
typically have higher price points when compared with emerging markets. ISON will also face
increasing competition in the multichannel and social media-based CM services from larger
multinational and regional CM BPO service providers.
Who Should Care: Sales, marketing and customer services executives of small, medium and large
organizations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, ASEAN, North America and India that plan to
outsource their customer experience management, enterprise mobility solutions, cloud services, call
center and process outsourcing services through enhanced security and analytics, and are
considering an onshore service delivery option, should explore ISON service offerings, especially if
they are new to outsourcing these functions. In addition, technology/product vendors planning to
foray into Africa can derive value from ISON, which can enable such vendors in generating business
value within the region.
From the investor community, African funds focused to support businesses in Africa that are
sustainable regarding both social impact and financial performance should consider ISON as a
high-potential investment in the IT/BPO services sector.
Liberty Source
Fort Monroe, Virginia, U.S. (www.liberty-source.com)
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5. Analysis by Cathy Tornbohm
Why Cool: Liberty Source is a new company, established in 2014 as a flexible onshore BPO model
that employs members of the U.S. military community, particularly spouses, to deliver BPO services.
Possibly the first viable fully onshore U.S. BPO alternative, Liberty Source is structured as a public
benefit corporation (PBC), a for-profit company that is required to deliver social impact. The
company's approach to service delivery, coupled with not-for-profit shareholding, was designed to
compete commercially while at the same time allowing clients to meet corporate social
responsibility goals with their own sourcing spend.
Liberty Source's first deal is a three-year contract with AOL to deliver finance and accounting (F&A)
BPO processes out of its headquarters at decommissioned Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, the
oldest U.S. Army fort in continuous use. Today, it employs 100 people, a number that will grow as it
adds clients. The company was founded by Deborah Kops, a 20-year leader in the BPO industry,
and is owned by Digital Divide Data, one of the first social impact outsourcing companies.
Employing these spouses, who have substantial education and skills but limited career
opportunities, the company is set up to deliver any rule-based business process, such as finance
and accounting, HR, administration and industry-specific services. It has the flexibility to tailor
solutions to meet the needs of its clients — either delivering processes through a traditional BPO
contract with responsibility for specified outcomes, or as an onshore "virtual captive," delivering as
part of a shared services structure where the client can take a certain degree of ownership. The
organization can also go to market as part of a larger BPO provider's delivery team, working under
its direction.
To compete effectively with the economics of offshore delivery, the company is aggressively
embracing new delivery and governance technology. It is developing what it calls an "autoshift"
process — automating processes through smart machine services and phantom robotics first, then
designing and implementing the right organizational construct. This approach has the ability to
create efficiencies, lower labor costs, and eliminate lengthy transformation and transition phases.
Challenges: Key challenges for Liberty Source, which are the same for any small, niche or regional
BPO service provider, include:
Generating awareness of the organization coupled with explaining the benefits of onshore service
and custom-made automation.
Continued development and acquisition of technology. With limited resources, the company has to
prioritize its investments.
Competing on cost with offshore providers.
Improving client concentration. Liberty Source currently has high levels of client concentration, with
one key client making up all of its total revenue.
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6. The U.S. is a key BPO market, but as an economy it continues to show relatively lower economic
growth in the near future. Liberty Source currently faces competition in the form of larger
multinational and regional BPO service providers.
Who Should Care: Liberty Source will appeal to a number of different organizations seeking an
alternative to the traditional BPO offering:
Broadly, it will appeal to finance and accounting (F&A), sales and marketing executives of small,
midsize and large organizations globally who plan to outsource their finance/accounting, HR and
digital processes, and are considering an onshore service delivery option.
More specifically, Liberty Source will appeal to clients seeking a flexible, intimate partnership with a
service provider that is onshore and therefore has a better contextual understanding of the business
and its objectives (creating efficiencies by eliminating many of the challenges inherent in offshore
outsourcing).
Finally, Liberty Source's social mission not only makes it a good choice for companies to whom
corporate social responsibility is a goal, but by virtue of the military spouses that Liberty Source
employs, clients will benefit from a labor pool with an unparalleled work ethic, and a "do-whatever-
it-takes" approach.
noHold
Milpitas, California, U.S. (www.nohold.com)
Analysis by TJ Singh
Why Cool: noHold offers automated virtual assistant (VA) and self-service capabilities that use a
natural language processor to CM BPO companies. The platform also has diagnostic, inference,
rule-based engine and crowdsourcing capabilities. The platform can also be used in a contact
center environment with live agents. The company provides solutions and services to help enable
digital marketing, sales and customer service via technologies such as an interactive virtual
assistant, a knowledge management platform, an automated dialogue agent, and multilingual tools
and technology at reasonable costs, making it attractive even for SME buyers.
noHold offers virtual assistant automated interaction to bring a degree of personality to emotionless
interactions between customers and their service providers — both BPOs and captive centers.
Recent engagements have enabled high-quality service deployments to integrate with existing
contact center processes and back-office systems (such as CRM to render a personalized
experience, in which terminals respond to natural-language queries from end users). These services
have helped improve customer service efficiency, cut unnecessary costs and reduce customer
effort scores (for example, in the processing of resident mobile application [RMA]) for both service
providers and users, and increased revenue for companies by increasing conversion while
answering presales questions automatically.
It has a strong focus and offerings around webchat that is designed to integrate with other channels
to connect with the end user. The knowledge management platform and the self-service component
support multilingual customer management BPO services. These offerings are delivered via a virtual
Page 6 of 10 Gartner, Inc. | G00273191

7. assistant that is mobile friendly to create a highly automated approach to delivering marketing, sales
and customer care services.
Unique capabilities of the platform include:
noHold Connect (NHC) — The ability to connect multiple virtual assistants together so that a client
can leverage content provided by other partner companies.
Single Point of Search — Agents are very busy on the phone and need the ability to search in one
place and still find solutions that may reside in multiple systems (such as communities, CRM and
knowledge management [KM]).
Procedure Guidance — Not only agents have to diagnose the symptom facing customers on the
phone, but they also have to guide them through specific steps to a resolution. Procedure Guidance
uses the noHold Natural Language Processor and Inference Engine to drive the end user through
the most complicated processes without the creation of scripts.
Device Connect — noHold virtual assistants have the ability to connect to physical devices to either
retrieve information or execute tasks on that device. An example would be customer premises
equipment (CPE), such as a router, for a telecom company.
Challenges: The company has focused its investment in developing technology solutions and
services, leaving fewer resources for the development of an integrated solution, as well as less
spending on marketing and sales. Therefore, noHold suffers from a relatively lower-brand visibility
compared with rival innovators in this technology and service area.
A key challenge for the company, as is the case with any niche customer management solution or
service provider, includes finding the continuous investment required for the development and
acquisition of technology, as well as for growth in new nontraditional markets, such as North
America and Asia/Pacific.
The core team of decision makers are engineers by training, so the limited sales and marketing
experience presents a challenge for growth. However, the company executives realize and accept
the challenges, and are taking steps to address it through new hires and an adopted partnership
model.
Who Should Care: Sales, marketing and customer services executives of small, midsize and large
organizations looking to improve consistency, multichannel adoption and customer experience
should consider the benefits of natural language-based automated voice and multichannel services
in their internal and external customer management processes and functions. These processes and
functions are typically aligned to marketing, sales and customer care.
Business process service executives and service delivery leaders who are looking to acquire
solutions and service capabilities to help enhance their existing service offerings should consider
partnering with noHold for either part of or the entire comprehensive suite of solutions or services.
Gartner, Inc. | G00273191 Page 7 of 10

8. Symphony Ventures
London, U.K. (www.symphonyhq.com/)
Analysis by Cathy Tornbohm
Why Cool: Started in 2014, Symphony Ventures is offering organizations access to the latest
automation technologies from the smart machine spectrum, both as a managed service and a
consulting offering. The smart machine technologies enhance organizations wishing to increase
efficiency and capabilities through machine learning, AI tools and PRPA. Symphony has developed
its own proprietary methodologies offering facilitation to automation via smart and not-so-smart
machines. It is deploying these tools as part of a managed BPO service offering.
These managed services allow organizations to take advantage of flexible automation with minimal
input from IT and can reduce errors, improve turnaround time, decrease the need for labor and
improve the ability of people to make decisions based on data by presenting it more easily.
Symphony Ventures is a new privately held company, launched in late 2014, created by a team of
executives with decades of experience in the BPO industry, located in the U.S. and the U.K.
Symphony Ventures is also building a market-leading team of automation developers based in
Poland.
Initially, Symphony has targeted the healthcare and financial services markets due to the high level
of repeatable transactions within these markets and the plethora of complex IT systems across the
landscape. Its first two client wins in the healthcare space are seeing ROIs for automation upward of
600%.
Challenges: Symphony's key challenge is to raise its profile further in a new, fast-growing area of
smart machines and not-so-smart PRPA. These services are "game changing" for the way that
processes can be executed either without people or augmenting people's capabilities. Prospects
for these services, therefore, need awareness of both the real capabilities of the technologies that
can facilitate significant business process re-engineering with very little IT involvement. The
provision of highly automated services for business processes will be a key thrust of management
focus for 2015 onward, so Symphony needs to ensure its capabilities are well-known and manage
its growth carefully.
Competitors, mostly BPO organizations and consultancies, are also investing heavily in AI services,
which could hinder Symphony's future prospects.
Symphony Ventures must invest in marketing and messaging to increase and shape brand
awareness to attract not only the right clients but also the right talent for client relationship
management.
Who Should Care: Business leaders at client organizations responsible for increased profitability,
efficiency and governance should review Symphony. CEOs, COOs and CFOs could benefit from this
service, as it targets key cost-saving areas, and it can help implement programs to realize savings
for increased profit and great compliance to processes.
Page 8 of 10 Gartner, Inc. | G00273191

9. Gartner Recommended Reading
Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
"When and How to Use Phantom Robotic Process Automation"
"Emerging Technology Analysis: To Win and Retain Clients, Add Phantom Robotic Process
Automation to Business Process Outsourcing Capabilities"
"Achieving Excellent Business Outcomes via Business Process Outsourcing and Captive Shared-
Service Centers"
"Sourcing Smart-Machine-Enabled Services Drives Competitive Advantage and Future Patent
Revenue"
"Mandate Investigation of Smart-Machine-Enabled Services to Accelerate Business Outcomes"
"Competitive Landscape: Customer Management BPO, 2014 — Making a Difference With Size and
Scale in Multichannel, Analytics and Automation"
"Tech Go-to-Market: Process Enhancement Technologies and Services Energize Customer
Management BPO Growth"
"Market Trends: Customer Management BPO Matures With BPaaS and Multichannel, Analytics,
Marketing and Mobility Services"
"Marketing Essentials: Strategic Options for MSP Growth in BPO and Application Services"
"Predicts 2014: Talent and Technology Will Drive Business Process Consulting and Outsourcing
Services"
Evidence
This analysis is based on Gartner's insights into the markets, published research, and regular
interactions with both buyers and suppliers.
This document is published in the following Market Insights:
Business Process Outsourcing Worldwide
Gartner, Inc. | G00273191 Page 9 of 10

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