Industry news

Outsourcing giants CGI have signed a 10 year deal to deliver key banking services to Northern Saving Credit Union. The agreement also involve CGI acquiring Northern Savings subsidiary company Solutions Only Financial Technology Ltd which will add to CGI’s growing banking solutions portfolio. The partnership will support Northern Savings growth strategy as well as optimising operational processes and reduce risk.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Read this next: North Wales Police Sign 5 Year Contract with CGI

In a bid to expand the capabilities of Accenture Strategy when providing services for oil exploration and production companies, Accenture has acquired Schlumberger Business Consulting (SBC), a global leader in oilfield services.

SBC specialises in consulting firms working in the upstream oil and gas industry, but is also widely recognised as a leading player in the energy sector more generally. Mark Knickrehm, global CEO of Accenture Strategy, expressed his excitement at the competitive edge Accenture will gain when providing oil companies with key strategy insights.

The terms of the acquisition are yet to be disclosed and completion of the deal is still subject to regulatory approval.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Accenture harnesses cloud technology to assist with London’s “Super-Sewer” project

Genpact has completed its acquisition of the Citibank OpenWealth platform, with the intention of expanding the wealth management services it offers to those working in the UK financial sector.

The platform is already being successfully operated by Genpact in North America, after the company acquired Citibank’s US OpenWealth platform business earlier in 2015. Now the transition is fully complete, Genpact will be able to offer comparable services to British insurers, banks and brokers.

The market for wrap platforms like OpenWealth, which manage and trade investments on behalf of clients, has grown by over 20 per cent annually during the past 10 years, growth that is expected to continue at a faster rate well into the next decade.

“We are excited to fully integrate the respective strengths of Genpact and our wealth management services center in Glasgow to allow wealth managers and financial advisors in the UK to focus on their core competencies of enhancing customer service and raising assets,” said Boaz Lahovitsky, senior vice president, Wealth Management, Genpact.

“The combination of our next generation technology, unrivaled breadth of administration services and Genpact’s service excellence and backing truly differentiates us in a market that is eager for better service than what is available today from other providers.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Genpact and Syntel: An IT Outsourcing Match Made in Heaven?

Serco has been awarded one of three places on a new $199 million contract to support the American navy and Marine Corps with air traffic control engineering and technical support services.

Serco will now have the opportunity to bid on task orders to provide these services; they will deliver specialised technical and integration support, configuration data management and systems maintenance for an extremely broad range of complex systems, from reconnaissance to oceanography.

This contract award comes shortly after Serco reported a post-tax loss of £92 million for the first half of 2015. Despite this loss, the results suggest that Serco could be on the verge of stabilising after a tumultuous 2014, and the group’s latest win certainly offers further cause for optimism.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: UK service providers threaten to pull out of immigration detention centre contracts

Accenture has implemented its own cloud-based ERP software to assist with the building and maintenance of London’s “super-sewer”.

The project is one of London’s biggest in terms of infrastructure and is being overseen by Thames Tideway Tunnel, a standalone regulated company.

Accenture’s cloud software, designed with NetSuite and known as the NetSuite OneWorld solution, will be used to support core financial planning and procurement functions, including financial consolidation, multicurrency and tax compliance.

“An agile and intuitive back-office IT system is critical for effective management and delivery of large-scale infrastructure projects,” said Robin Johns, head of Information Systems at Thames Tideway Tunnel.

“We selected Accenture to help us with this implementation based on its extensive experience with NetSuite cloud ERP technology and complex system integrations. We also chose Accenture for its ability to offer practical solutions to deliver an IT platform that will help facilitate financing and construction of the super sewer, while keeping costs down for customers.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Tata Motors procures Accenture’s services to cut down on bureaucracy

Staff working in Allied Irish Bank’s IT division have voted to accept the bank’s outsourcing proposals, meaning that roughly 220 employees will be transferred to Infosys and Wipro, who will be providing technology support services.

The vote was put to the members of the Irish Bank Officials’ Association that are involved with AIB’s IT. The IBOA explained that the intention of the transfers is to enhance job security for workers and to protect their pension entitlements.

Early in June, AIB assured its employees that no redundancies would result from its plans to outsource numerous functions within its application development and maintenance division.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Infosys sets aside $10 million to invest in Irish startups after AIB contract win

MidlandHR has successfully completed a project for Newport City Council to ensure the council is fully prepared for expected changes to teachers’ pension scheme in England and Wales.

The two organisations have conducted a successful outsourcing partnership since 2005, hence why MidlandHR’s pensions team of was chosen to manage these legislative updates. The council currently uses the company’s iTrent software to managed payroll for its 6,500 employees, which includes 1,500 teachers.

"MidlandHR carried out an initial evaluation to understand how we were operating iTrent and how we were using the system to handle our current teachers’ pensions,” said Erica Gibson, HR integrity officer at Newport City Council. “This stage was key to the success of the project as MidlandHR’s experts really took the time to understand our requirements.

"Successfully delivered via remote services, the team began by analysing, cleansing and preparing the data in line with TPA legislation and teachers eligibility statuses… Working in partnership with MidlandHR on this project has been fundamental to its success and we haven’t had one issue arise since the transition. Their willingness to engage early, and take the time to understand our expectations and requirements was critical, and meant we have avoided what could have been a very challenging period for the council.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: arvato partners with NHS National Services Scotland on HR delivery contract

Computer Economics’ “IT Outsourcing Statistics” study for 2015-16 has found that disaster recovery is the most practical and cost-effective IT service for organisations to outsource, more so than desktop support, help desk functions or e-commerce applications.

This result came as something of a surprise, seeing as disaster recovery only ranked as the seventh-best IT function to outsource in 2014. However, this time 92 per cent of enterprises surveyed claimed that, having outsourced this function, the cost remained the same or dropped lower than when it was provided in-house.

“IT organizations outsource disaster recovery primarily to reduce risk rather than save money, and this is what the study has generally shown in the past,” said John Longwell, VP research for Computer Economics.

“We think one reason for the change is the maturation of disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Using on-demand cloud infrastructure for disaster recovery can be cost-effective if you don’t need to maintain the excess capacity.”

Read the full report here.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Research reveals what steps the UK must take to become a world-leader in outsourcing

Infosys has launched “Zero Bench”, a new internal app that will allow existing Infosys employees to apply for projects taking place within the company that suit their skillsets.

Zero Bench has been designed to ensure that all company resources are being utilised to the fullest extent possible and to prevent external recruitment taking place when it isn’t strictly necessary. The app was inspired by Uber, which is similarly designed to maximise convenience and cut down on unnecessary effort, famously disrupting the transport industry as a result.

"Zero Bench is a next-generation people initiative that aims to maximise the potential of our talent who are currently trained and in between projects or on bench,” commented Ravi Kumar S, global head of delivery at Infosys.

“This is a gamified platform for people to post modular work based on their project requirements. We have seen tremendous response since the launch, supplemented by continuous communication through our internal channels.”

Other outsourcing firms such as Capita have also recently found success bringing gamified systems into the workplace.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: 100,000 employees replaced by robotic automation at India’s top three service providers

Everest Group has release two reports identifying digital banking leaders in the UK and the US using its new Ability | Performance | Experience (APEX) Matrix.

When commenting on the report outcomes, Everest VP Sarah Burnett said that increased competition meant those in the retail banking sector were having to become more “agile and innovative” and that they will have to start “thinking and acting like startups” in order to appeal to digital natives.

The APEX Matrix compares digital functionality across mobility, social, online and branches/ATMs to the business impact of those investments, judged in terms of customer experience scores, brand perception and financial impact.

In the UK Barclays saw the highest score in terms of digital functionality while Lloyds Bank was rated highest for business impact, with HSBC and Santander also leading in those areas.

In the US Citibank lead the way for digital functionality while Capital One was an outright leader in terms of business impact, with Wells Fargo and Bank of America also scoring well for both criteria.

Access both full reports here.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Co-operative Bank and Capita agree on £325 million acquisition