The other day I was trying to remember what happened to a company in the benefits administration space I used to deal with quite regularly.\u00a0 Of course, as been happening with increasing regularity, it had been acquired some years ago by another provider and has been all but lost except in the memories of those of us in the business who either worked with or for them.<\/p>\n
The list of these long gone companies is extensive and made me think for a moment about doing a \u201cwhere are they now\u201d series.\u00a0 After noodling on it for a while, I realized a more interesting tactic would be to take a look at today\u2019s companies and see how they got to where they are today.<\/p>\n
So as part of a recurring series, I bring you \u201cHow Did They Get Here,\u201d\u00a0 a look at the mergers and acquisitions that have formed the companies we see today.\u00a0 Along the way, you will hear names such as Kwasha-Lipton, Howard Johnson, Wellspring Resources<\/strong> and Williams Thatcher Rand<\/strong>.<\/p>\n By no means will I provide the definitive history of the organizations I will look at, but it might be kind of fun.\u00a0 There are enough of you out there who have a history with the companies that we will look at that I hope you will contribute to the conversation with recollections of the old companies\u2019 cultures and services or even add to the list companies that I may have missed.<\/p>\n For the first \u201cHow Did They Get Here\u201d company, I take a look at Hewitt Associates<\/strong>.\u00a0 I do this not because we have written a lot about them lately, but because as a company who grew mostly organically, I thought they would be the easiest for a first company.\u00a0 Many of the other current service providers will take a bit more time and research to write about.<\/p>\n For the longest time, Hewitt Associates was the company that kept their heads down and did nothing but grow organically.\u00a0 They made a reputation for themselves as being the best at what they do with no excuses.\u00a0 Growth came easy as they became the gold standard in benefits consulting and administration.<\/p>\n Hewitt was founded in 1940 as an actuarial and benefits consulting firm (ABC firm), and expanded from there into broader compensation and HR consulting and administration.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if it can still be looked at in this way (perhaps others have an opinion), but at one time Hewitt was part of what many termed the Big 4 ABC firms: Hewitt, Wyatt<\/strong>, Mercer<\/strong>, Towers Perrin<\/strong>.\u00a0 Is there still a \u201cBig 4,\u201d or has the move to broader HR services and the proliferation of administration-only firms rendered this an obsolete notion?<\/p>\n In any case, Hewitt was not known for making acquisitions, but rather steady organic growth and a strong non-diluted corporate culture.\u00a0 All this seemingly changed in June of 2002, when Hewitt became a publicly traded company.\u00a0 Before this, Hewitt\u2019s forays into new lines of business was through expansion of service, not acquisition.\u00a0 Remember Sageo<\/strong>? This was a separately run internet health and welfare services business created by Hewitt in 2000 to capitalize on the tech bubble.\u00a0 In September of 2001, it was wrapped back into Hewitt, its clients transitioned to the TBA platform, its employees redeployed or terminated.\u00a0 (Anyone reading this today who worked for Sageo?\u00a0 I\u2019d love to hear recollections.)<\/p>\n After going public in 2002, the acquisitions seemed to come as an annual event.\u00a0 In June, 2002, Hewitt acquired the UK Actuarial firm, Bacon and Woodrow<\/strong>.\u00a0 Also in 2002, Hewitt acquired National City\u2019s<\/strong> Retirement Plan Services recordkeeping staff, systems and clients.\u00a0 The client base was about 500 clients with 130,000 participants.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a major acquisition for Hewitt, but it was a portend of a much more significant acquisition one year later: Northern Trust Retirement Services<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Northern Trust was, by most accounts, a significant player in 401(k) recordkeeping and pension services.\u00a0 In fact, Northern was one of the first (if I recall, they used to market that they were THE first) to use voice response systems to collect 401(k) participant transactional requests.<\/p>\n Also in 2003, Hewitt began its foray into broader HR and payroll services through the acquisition of Cyborg<\/strong>.\u00a0 At the time, Hewitt\u2019s press release billed it this way:<\/p>\n \u201cHewitt becomes the only organization able to offer total HR outsourcing services – HR, benefits and payroll – with complete HR consulting expertise to large (more than 10,000 employees) companies.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Of course, we end this story of Hewitt acquisition with the most recent and in retrospect, most notorious of all: the Exult<\/strong> acquisition.\u00a0 Exult has been the most difficult of all to digest and with it, Hewitt has ceased the annual acquisition ritual it began in 2002.\u00a0<\/p>\n Only time will tell if Hewitt will renew is acquisitive path, or whether they in fact will become the acquired as has been speculated for many years. About the author<\/strong> \u2013 Donald Glade<\/a> is President and Founder of Sourcing Analytics, Inc.<\/a>, an independent consulting firm specializing in helping companies optimize their HR \/ benefits \/ payroll service partnerships through relationship management, financial analysis, and process improvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day I was trying to remember what happened to a company in the benefits administration space I used to deal with quite regularly.\u00a0 Of course, as been happening with increasing regularity, it had been acquired some years ago…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17,22,31,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hewitt","category-hro","category-industry-news","category-outsourcing","category-vendors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n