KKR backed Webhelp announces the acquisition of OEE Consulting and its merger with gobeyond to create an industry leading customer experience (CX) transformation services business with global reach.
The coming together of the two businesses will create a market leader and takes place as rapid advances in new technologies combined with fast moving trends in consumer behaviours, are challenging brands to rethink how they connect, serve and transact with customers.
Webhelp invested in the set-up of gobeyond in 2017 as a specialist digital and customer experience (CX) transformation services business to provide clients with end-to-end customer journey management as part of its diversification strategy. Whilst the gobeyond business is backed by investment from the Webhelp Group, it operates entirely independently in order to provide objective advice to clients. The combined business will continue to do the same.
Rapid first-year growth of gobeyond underscored the scale of the opportunity in the advisory services market. Today’s investment will further accelerate its ambition for gobeyond and OEE Consulting to compete as a specialist alternative to the global consulting firms. OEE Consulting is headquartered in Oxford, with a consulting, training and coaching team of 150 working nationally and internationally for clients including Lloyds Banking Group, Citibank, P&O Ferries, and Action for Children.
Increasingly clients are seeking both advisory and delivery services when it comes to engineering economic value from new advances in customer experience.
The enhanced portfolio of services provided by the combined business will include:
• strategic advice and support; target operating model design;
• customer and user journey design; model office for test and learn;
• data science and customer analytics;
• omni-channel evolution through contact centre technologies; messaging, chat-bot and automation
The combined business will have the capability to operate at a global scale. With over 300 people across UK locations including Oxford, Sheffield and Liverpool, and complemented by a strong network of international multi-lingual specialists, the business will be extremely well placed to take on large scale, multi-market assignments.
Mark Palmer, Managing Director of OEE Consulting, said “This exciting new partnership creates a disruptive organisation of a scale and capability that positions us as a leading customer experience transformation firm both in the UK and internationally. gobeyond’s managed services and technology offerings are highly complementary, and we’re confident that this provides a platform for accelerated growth.”
gobeyond Managing Partner Dave Rumble, said “OEE Consulting’s expertise in customer journey design and operations transformation will help us grow our service offering, increase our advisory capabilities, and ultimately drive our growth. The strength and the portfolio of services from the combined business is much greater than the sum of its parts, and we’re excited to continue on our upward path.”
Webhelp UK CEO David Turner, said “Today we are delighted to support the team at gobeyond in the knowledge that our investment is creating an industry leading customer experience transformation business with a greater global reach.
Together the combined OEE and gobeyond business will possess the advanced capabilities to grow internationally at a faster rate than they would apart. We believe that the rapid growth in end-to-end CX services will be complimented by our investment in gobeyond giving the Webhelp Group access to a broader portfolio of CX services and enhanced client opportunities.”
About gobeyond
gobeyond is a Solutions Service Provider business formed in the UK in 2017 with a growing international presence in Europe. A Webhelp company, gobeyond operates entirely independently of Webhelp, providing objective and impartial advice and Customer Experience Advisory services to a broad range of clients.
gobeyond’s Advisory, Managed Services and Technology teams diagnose, design and deliver customer management solutions and channel optimisation programmes to unlock significant business value – often as part of long term, annuity based value creation. With a distinctive and disruptive commercial proposition; gobeyond tests and refines services improvements in its innovative “Model Office” environment. https://gobeyond.uk.com/
About OEE Consulting
OEE Consulting is an award-winning consulting firm. We design organisations that customers really want to do business with.
By working in partnership with client leadership teams we understand their true challenges, before developing bespoke solutions that leverage our business design skills, operations heritage, digital capability and cultural-change expertise. We embed sustainable change through our renowned implementation ability and market-leading learning and development function.
During our twenty-year journey we’ve supported organisations across many sectors with complex challenges. We’ve helped a leading bank revolutionise the experience of buying a home, supported a global insurance broker in dramatically reducing costs without impacting client service, and worked with a private hospital group to launch a ground-breaking self-pay proposition to patients. Headquartered in Oxford and working globally, our 150 consultants, coaches and trainers design and implement programmes that bridge countries, cultures and languages.
Our approach to delivering client service and value has been recognised with a Consulting Excellence award from the Management Consultancies Association, whilst our high levels of employee engagement have led to us becoming one of the Sunday Times top 100 small companies to work for.
https://www.oeeconsulting.com/
About Webhelp
Webhelp is a global business process outsourcer (BPO), specialising in customer experience and payment management in addition to sales and marketing services across voice, social and digital channels.
From more than 140 sites in 35 countries with an approximately 50,000-strong team, our focus is on engineering performance improvements and delivering a real and lasting transformation in our clients’ operating models to generate financial advantage. We partner with some of the world’s most progressive brands including Sky, Shop Direct, Bouygues, Direct Energie, KPN, Vodafone, La Redoute, Michael Kors and Valentino.
Headquartered in Paris, France, the company has grown its revenues by more than 250% in the last 4 years by investing in its people, the environment they work in and developing its analytical and operating capability to deliver a transformational outsourcing proposition that addresses the challenges of an omni-channel world.
Webhelp is owned by its management and KKR, a leading global investment firm, as of March 2016.
For more information visit https://www.webhelp.com