Industry news

Anchor has chosen Coldharbour Time and Attendance software from Civica, a market leader in business-critical software applications, digital solutions and outsourcing, to provide a workforce management solution for its 120 care homes. The new solution offers touch screen capabilities using fingerprint recognition, to enable verification of staff attendance, ensuring absence, sickness and holiday rules concerning pay are correctly applied, to increase cost efficiencies. Click here to learn more.

HfS Chief Analyst and CEO, Phil Fersht, has been writing about how the Indian IT industry must adapt to save themselves from President Trump. With so many challenges being raised by the new President’s opinions on the outsourcing industry, this piece really puts in perspective the opportunities for change, we need to be looking forward, not backwards. Sourcingfocus recently mentioned an article in the Economist about IT in India, it is certainly a hot topic in the industry. Click here to learn more.

To read more on India's IT industry, click here.

The Government Digital Service (GDS) helped to save £339m through its spend controls and approval processes for Whitehall IT projects during 2015/16, according to the Cabinet Office. The figures are part of a total of £3.3bn of operational savings made through a number of internal measures to improve government procurement, to reduce the Whitehall property estate and by tackling fraud and error. Click here to read more.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said that 25 suppliers are interested in working to deliver its managed print services as part of efforts to replace long-term IBM and Capgemini contracts. The IBM and Capgemini contracts, which end in 2018, will be replaced by a larger number of smaller, more flexible contracts as the department works with more suppliers across its ICT services. Click here to read more.

Three Senate democrats, Joe Donnelly along with Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, on January 30, 2017, introduced the “End Outsourcing Act” in the view of supporting American workers by ending outsourcing. The legislation plans to take the following steps:

• Federal contracts, funded by taxpayers, should go to companies that employ American workers.

• Federal policies to encourage businesses to invest in American communities.

• Incentives to be cut back and prohibit companies from receiving tax deductions in case they are outsourcing.

• Companies shipping jobs to foreign countries will be required to forfeit tax breaks and incentives.

• Tax incentives will be awarded to companies that relocate foreign jobs to rural and impoverished communities in United States.

You can read more here.

Customer services dominated the UK outsourcing market in 2016 while the sector remained stable in the face of high economic and political volatility, according to the Arvato UK Outsourcing Index. The research, compiled by business process outsourcing (BPO) provider Arvato and industry analyst NelsonHall, revealed customer services contracts accounted for 17 per cent of UK outsourcing spend over the year, with a total value of £1.04 billion (2015: £449m), up from seven per cent in 2015.

Arvato-UKOutsourcing-Infographic-Design-Fullyear-2016_V3.pdf

Five discretionary fund managers (DFM’s) have launched an alliance to educate advisers about risks and realities of outsourcing. The alliance said both the regulator and the industry knew the time was right to improve knowledge of DFMs. ‘What we are trying to do with the DFM Alliance is make our industry more accessible to the advice community' said a spokesman. To read more, click here.

Apple is to start making iPhones in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, the state's government has said. Ministers said Apple would start an initial manufacturing operation in the state, whose capital is the tech hub Bangalore, in April. Apple has yet to officially confirm the plan, saying only that it is keen to "invest significantly" in India. Click here to read more.

A North Somerset Council service which supports some of the district’s most vulnerable families is set to be outsourced. The council says the service’s projected overspend during the next financial year is likely to be about £76,000 – meaning outsourcing is ‘necessary’ to reduce this amount. The new outsourced contract is likely to be worth £300,000 for three years if it goes ahead, and interested organisations are now being asked to submit their bids directly to the council. Click here to read more.

New Zealand’s lenders say they will have to fork out as much as $870 million to meet the Reserve Bank’s new plans for what services can be outsourced. The new rules for outsourcing are integral to the RBNZ’s open bank resolution policy, designed to ensure an orderly management when a lender collapses because third-party arrangements could undermine the efficacy of the regime. The loss of third party services in certain areas of the financial industry will massively damage profitability and restrict the lending industry, not strengthen it. You can read more here.