The Hindu Business Line : Mercer HR plans $50-m investment over 3 years

Mercer HR Services, a HR outsourcing business of Mercer Human Resource Consulting, today announced it would spend $50 million over the next three years, for setting up global operations centre in India.

In the first phase, the company has entered into a partnership with Patni Computer Systems Ltd, under which the latter would build and operate a centre located in Noida (near New Delhi) to service Mercer HR's global back-end, non-client facing engagements. At a later stage, the centre may be transferred to Mercer.

"We are in outsourcing business where we have to be efficient and offer services at a reasonable price. We have to optimise the way we deliver our services and we will leverage the quality and efficiency present in India. The centre we are forming with Patni will undertake work from across the globe," Mr Jeffrey M. Miller, President, Mercer HR Services said, adding that the company's presence in nine countries would now be client facing while operations and processing would be centralised in India.

Under the contract with Patni, the operations would start with 50 Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) in the global operations centre in Noida, growing to 200 professionals this year, and to 1200-1500 in three years.

While some of the 200 professionals dedicated to Mercer engagements would be existing employees of Patni, the company would also go for fresh hiring, Mr Mrinal Sattawala, Executive Vice-President of Patni Computer Systems, said.

"Mercer would bring HR outsourcing contracts in the benefits outsourcing space including pension, administration amongst other function," Mr Miller said, adding that a lot of the work would pertain to transaction processing and reconciliation.

With the back-end processes moving to India, Mercer HR Services hopes to re-train and re-deploy its existing

staff in other global locations. "We plan to spend $50 million in three years as total investment. Some of it will go to Patni as a partner. After a few years we will review the position and may transfer these employees to Mercer," he said.

Mercer currently delivers complete outsourcing solutions for retirement plan administration, health and benefit administration, absence management and business processing outsourcing for HR services to corporation in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific.

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