Industry news

DDC Outsourcing Solutions, specialists in a range of BPO and KPO services has announced the appointment of Ray Cooper as Client Relationship Director. Ray has experience within Client Relationship Management and has held senior positions within the EDM Group, Iron Mountain and Elision. He will manage the current CRM team and ensure they have the required support and sense of direction needed to maintain the standard of customer care.

Related: Charities say service providers must “breath the brand”

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The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) has fallen even more than predicted following the referendum results. The 4.2 drop in just over a month (from 52.4 in June to 48.2 in July) is the sharpest fall in the current economy since October 2012. A rating below 50 indicates an economic contraction with a large reflection on job losses.

On the other hand, export rose for the second consecutive month and new contracts from overseas have been agreed due to the pound being weaker.

Related: Outsourcing and bots post-Brexit

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The North Yorkshire City Council is aiming to increase to 96% its superfast broadband coverage and, in order to achieve that, it is looking for a partner for the £20.5m programme. According to Public Technology, the first two phases are expected to see 91% of homes in the county get access to broadband speeds of 25Mbps by June 2017, at a cost of £34.5m. The third phase will use a mix of a council, government and EU funding to increase coverage to harder-to-reach properties.

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According to the BBC, the US research agency Darpa (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) has brought software engineers together to tackle what it considers to be “grand challenges”. One of them is a new automated programme (or robot hacker) which would be able to find and seal vulnerabilities before malicious hackers find them out; a huge step from what is currently being done.

Related: Managing the Outsourcing Security Risks

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Everest predicts even more steep growth in the RPA technology market, post-Brexit, forming a new generation of bots, that Everest has called Brex-bots. It believes this will also lead to growth in advisory, consultancy, professional services and new outsourcing contracts for support and management of Brex-bots.

Learn more about Brex-bots and what Brexit might mean for the outsourcing industry, by attending a dedicated NOA Brexit event.

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Related news: Outsourcing after Brexit – a Central / Eastern European view

Firstsource Solutions has been appointed by BBC Worldwide to provide bespoke ‘digital customer support’ for its newly-launched BBC Store ‘buy-to-keep’ programming service, which will allow viewers to buy content online.

The BBC aims to keep improving the service in line with customer feedback.

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Related news:Firstsource named Outsourcing Contact Centre of the Year for the second year running

According to a Sopra Steria new report, 83% of enterprises are pleased with the pace at which their Digital Transformation projects have been delivered, bucking the decades-long complaint from businesses that IT projects always run behind schedule.

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Related news: Sopra Steria chosen by North Ayrshire Council to support digital transformation

The deal between Accenture and HMRC has been extended until 2020 and will be responsible for developing, implementing and keeping a secure cloud-hosted tax system for the National Insurance and PAYE Service.

The value of the contract has not been agreed yet as it will depend on “task orders and work draw-downs by the client over the coming years”, according to an Accenture statement given to Public Technology.

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Related news: Scottish Police abandons systems project with Accenture

According to Computing, despite recent news of Lloyds Banking Group cutting thousands of jobs, those are going to affect mainly front-line and facilities staff. Tech jobs are likely to increase, balancing the overall headcount.

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Related news: Trade unions fear IT outsourcing expansion at British Airways

It’s no longer a secret that large companies have discovered and embraced outsourcing to make their processes better, more efficient and cut costs. Now outsourcing is becoming more accessible to small companies, especially in the business support areas like, HR, accounting and IT, according to this Startups article.