Industry news

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman has announced that HP intends cut a further 25,000-30,000 jobs in the near future, as part of HP’s restructuring into two separate companies and in reaction to rapid changes in the technology market.

“As new technologies come in, we’ve got to restructure [our] labour force to low-cost locations, to much more automation than we have today,” she commented in an interview with CNBC.

HP expects to ultimately save roughly $2.7 billion a year as a result of the planned changes. The company also expects its share of workers employed outside of the United States to grow from 42 per cent today to 60 per cent by 2018.

The news comes at a time when robotics in particular is in the limelight, with both Sky and the BBC producing special reports on how robotic automation is like to impact on the workplace over the coming decade.

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Groupe Acticall has announced that it has completed its acquisition of Sitel Worldwide Corporation.

The deal, which was originally announced mid-July, will see Sitel continue to operate as an independent brand owned by Acticall.

Over the past two years, Sitel’s top line growth has been poor when compared to its global competitors – analysts have speculated that Groupe Acticall’s strong CRM experience should have a positive impact on Sitel’s revenue performance.

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Related: Serco sells Indian BPO unit to Blackstone with £100 million loss

The Ministry of Justice’s attempt to replace G4S and Serco as the service providers responsible for the electronic tagging of criminals has failed, the Financial Times has reported.

After the two suppliers were found to be overcharging the government for the offender-tagging service, the contract was handed over to Capita, valued at £400 million over the course of six years. However, the FT claims that this contract has not yet been successfully delivered, meaning G4S and Serco are still providing, and being paid for, tagging services.

G4S has been paid a total of £8.7 million for electronic tagging since March 2014, with Serco making £4.5 million off the service over the same period of time.

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Related: G4S awarded new security contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq

A committee comprised of members of West Sussex County Council has met to discuss how the council might improve interactions with its customers, including how to deliver a more consistent service, improve online capabilities and reduce the number of phone calls received by the authority.

Unsurprisingly outsourcing may be central to these plans, which has caused concerns among representatives from public service union Unison. The council currently outsources its contact centre services to Capita, and new plans to improve customer service may affect up to 470 staff, who may be offered the chance to move to part time contracts or take up full time employment with Capita.

Dan Sartin, Unison branch secretary, claimed he was worried that giving any further work to Capita would make the contract “too big to fail”; he also asked “why are we not looking harder at how we can do these things in-house?” but reportedly did not offer further suggestions for how this might be done.

Many councils across the UK are finding outsourcing to be the preferable solution for both meeting austerity measures and improving services; it is often easier to improve customer experience with the assistance of a company that specialises in providing customer support across a wide variety of sectors.

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Related: CGI paid £186 million to transform IT services for Edinburgh Council

In a bid to increase focus on work related to the public sector, Serco has finally managed to offload its Indian BPO unit to private equity firm Blackstone for £250 million.

Serco originally bought the unit - known as Intelenet - from Blackstone in 2011 for £350 million, making the sale price £100 million less than that of the original purchase. However, the successful deal has caused Serco shares to rise by 4.4 per cent, increasing the service provider’s chance of stabilising after a rocky 2014.

The sale of Serco’s Indian BPO unit was expected to be concluded back in June – the fact that Serco failed to meet this target had led to speculation that the group might search for alternative ways to derive value from the business. It was thought that the original failure to sell was due to the asking price being too high, causing Blackstone to briefly drop out of the race to buy back Intelenet.

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Related: Serco secures £85 million Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital extension

Vodafone India is in talks with IBM over the renewal of a $1 billion contract due to expire in June 2016, Economic Times India has reported.

However, Vodafone is also on the verge of issuing a request for proposals from other vendors, with Wipro, TCS, Infosys and Tech Mahindra all thought to be in the running to replace IBM as the sole service provider for the contract.

Sources close to Vodafone India have suggested that the company is not interested in potentially dividing the contract between a number of suppliers, as some of its competitors have done.

The contract involves the provision of Vodafone India’s application development and its IT network. While also trying to hang onto the contract, a source told Economic Times India that IBM is also trying to sell Vodafone its data analytics solution as an addition to the current package.

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Related: BT seeks High Court injunction to prevent Cornwall Council contract termination

In an interview with The Register, newly-instated Head of the Police ICT Company Martin Wyke has indicated how the UK’s police might go about reducing its hefty £1 billion-a-year IT bill.

The Police ICT Company was established in June 2015 after a four-year gestation period; Wyke has previously worked as CIO for the likes of TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Debenhams, and is expected to apply his expertise first and foremost to saving money for police departments across Great Britain.

The organisation’s official aim is to cut at least £150 million a year from the police’s spending on IT-related services, with Wyke claiming that he can reduce IT spend by 10 per cent by 2020, shaving £100 million of the police’s current IT expenses.

He expects to do this primarily by transforming procurement procedures, consolidating licensing contracts and cutting down on the number of data centres currently used. However, the most substantial savings are likely to come from people: Wyke believes that there are a high number of role duplications across the UK’s 43 police forces, which will also be consolidated over the next five years.

On the subject of outsourcing, Wyke stated that it would certainly have “a role to play” in the future of police IT, but refrained from elaborating: “There are certain functions that I would be happy to see outsourced, and others that would be better to keep in-house," he said.

Wyke also declined to comment on the Met’s recent decision to outsource a variety of back office services to Shared Services Collected Limited, in a contract valued at £216 million.

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Related: Government Department for BIS ends contract with SSCL, the Met’s new outsourcing partner

G4S has been awarded a £100 million security contract to protect diplomats at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Afghanistan, along with a two-year extension with Basrah Gas Company in Iraq.

In Iraq, the global service provider will provide Basrah Gas Company with 500 staff and 220 armoured vehicles in order to protect two gas plants, a liquefied natural gas storage facility, shipping terminal and pipelines.

G4S is the world’s largest security company and “high risk” accounts, such as the above, account for approximately three per cent of its operations. However, this has risen by 50 per cent over the past year, as the firm has increased its marketing as a supplier of security for corporates in war-torn areas.

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Related: Goldman Sachs advises investors to sell G4S shares

In a documentary broadcast last night on BBC Panorama, reporter Rohan Silva investigated the robotic and automation revolution, and its impact on the UK.

The 30 minute programme, available on BBC iPlayer (click here), included interviews with a range of industry experts, all of whom agreed artificial intelligence (AI) was changing the world and the workplace as we know them. The speed of technological change is rapid and, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), artificial intelligence is about to advance faster than anyone previously thought possible. To illustrate this exponential growth, one analyst featured on Panorama said that today a child’s PlayStation is more powerful than a military super computer from 15 years ago.

The programme picked up on Deloitte research, quoting that over 800,000 jobs have been lost to automation in the UK over the past 15 years, but that that there is “equally strong evidence to suggest that it has helped to create nearly 3.5 million new, higher-skilled ones in their place”.

Angus Knowles-Cutler, Senior Partner at Deloitte, was interviewed on the programme and stated that 1/3 of today’s jobs in the UK are at risk of bring automated over the next 10-20 years (a total of roughly 10 million jobs). He went on to say that, since the year 2000, over half of the secretarial, travel agent and librarians jobs have disappeared in the UK.

Statistics featured on the documentary from Deloitte and Oxford Economics suggested that telesales agents, typists and bank clerks have the highest probability of being replaced next. In addition to this, jobs that pay £30k or less at the moment are five times more likely to be replaced by technology than jobs that pay £100k or more.

Virgin Trains was also featured on the programme, due to its use of AI in conjunction with its customer service. Christian Clarke, Customer Service Manager at Virgin Trains, said the aim was not to reduce headcount but to dedicate more time on the customer, as opposed to time-consuming administrative tasks.

Although Deloitte claimed jobs lost to automation were being redeployed, Rohan Silva argued that those losing their lower level, paid jobs to automation were not the same people benefiting from the more highly skilled work becoming available. He also highlighted the importance of future-proofing children and educating them on the change of skills required in the workplace – focusing on the jobs computers can’t do - but equally he argued that adults should also be supported. Baroness Morgan said there hasn’t been enough time, money or investment into the availability of training following formal education.

Rohan Silva finished by suggesting that we should look at the positives technology can bring, but they will only be possible if training and skills advancement are universally available.

Read the full Deloitte report.

Do you want to learn more about how robotics will shape the future of outsourcing?

The EOA Leadership Summit on 8th October in Lisbon features an open workshop on integrating automation in your organisation and driving customer-centricity. Book your place today!

Reigning Premier League champions Chelsea FC have chosen Wipro as their official digital IT partner, to transform the club’s digital journey, fan engagement and spectator experience.

Chelsea have been cited as one of football’s earliest adopters of digital technology in order to differentiate themselves from other teams. Wipro will help to progress Chelsea’s digital journey with projects intended to enhance the experience of millions of fans, both at Stamford Bridge and in their homes worldwide.

Christian Purslow, managing director of Chelsea FC, said: “Wipro is a leading global company delivering world-class services that put their customers at the heart of everything they do – we plan on using this partnership to truly enhance the fan experience for millions of Chelsea supporters worldwide. Wipro’s expertise in building winning propositions that sit at the intersection of strategy, design and technology will help sustain our position as the digital leader in global sport.

“It is also exciting for Chelsea FC to enter into a global partnership with Wipro given their significant presence and brand coverage in India - a market where we have over 50 million passionate supporters and where there is great potential to further build our fan base.”

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