Offshore business process services (BPS) pure play Genpact is expanding in Europe with the acquisition of Netherlands-based BPS provider Accounting Plaza, which has c600 employees working out of centres in the Netherlands, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Financial details weren't disclosed.
Accounting Plaza was set up in 2000 as the finance and accounting (F&A) and human resources (HR) services arm of Dutch retailer Ahold, before being spun out of the company in 2002. Even so it claims to continue providing F&A, HR and Oracle PeopleSoft ERP services to Ahold, as well as other clients in the retail, wholesale, banking and healthcare industries. Its relationship with Ahold has clearly become less entrenched however, since last August, Logica won what was then its largest ever BPO contract with Ahold, worth over $70m, covering HR services for Ahold’s 90,000 employees out of the Netherlands, Czech Republic and the Philippines. We suspect that as part of that arrangement Accounting Plaza retained Ahold’s F&A services - meaning that Ahold's HR and F&A activities are now handled in a typical multi-sourced arrangement.
For Genpact, this deal clearly signals an ...