Industry news

Accenture has beaten BT and been awarded a £60 million contract by the Department of Health (DH) to deliver the new NHSmail service.

The original NHSmail service has run since 2004 and allows secure electronic mail and sensitive patient information to be shared among public healthcare bodies. The new NHSmail2 contract will run until at least 2020.

The news comes after Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme downplayed the importance of Accenture’s outsourcing activities, instead tipping digitalisation as the key profit driver for the future of his organisation.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Accenture Wins £350m NHSmail Contract

The Indian outsourcing provider Tech Mahindra has issued a profit warning, blaming a “seasonally weak” mobility business for its drop in revenue in Q1 and 7 per cent fall in share prices.

Tech Mahindra bought rival outsourcing company Satyam in 2012, after the firm was involved in one of India’s biggest ever corporate fraud cases.

It’s been suggested that this profit warning could spell trouble for Tech Mahindra in the future, especially when the significant growth rate of other prominent Indian outsourcing firms is taken into account.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Tech Mahindra Signs £50 Million Technology Outsourcing Deal with Circle Health

Gary Porter, Conservative MP and imminent new head of the Local Government Association, has called on the Prime Minister to stop increasing NHS budgets at the expense of unprotected areas of spending, claiming some Councils were likely to fail under new cuts.

According to the FT, Mr Porter said “no one thought the NHS was providing value for money.” This is confirmed by a Government commissioned report, led by Lord Carter of Coles, which revealed in June 2015 that the NHS could save up to £5bn a year by 2019/20 if there is political and managerial commitment to change the way it works.

The report highlighted that £2 billion could come from better management of the workforce, annual leave and sickness absence in particular, and an additional £3 billion could be saved through improvements to purchasing supplies and use of medicines.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: HP re-energises NHS Trust with complete IT systems overhaul

Manchester Airports Group (MAG) has chosen Capgemini to provide an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform as part of a one-year contract.

MAG is the country’s largest UK-owned airport operator, controlling four airports – Stansted, Bournemouth, East Midlands and Manchester – and serving roughly 48 million passengers every year. Capgemini will be upgrading MAG’s IT capability so that the group can continue to efficiently serve its growing customer base.

The deal is part of a larger transformation for MAG, which includes the use of a geographical information system (GIS) provided by Esri.

Garry Dowdle, CIO at MAG, commented: "The ERP transformation programme is at the core of MAG's IT strategy and will provide finance, human resources, and procurement with the right processes, data and technology for the job, delivering a step change in the user experience, and helping to make MAG a great place to work.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Capgemini Plans $564 Million Capital Boost for IGATE Acquisition

Computing has reported that the ITO partnership between Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) and HP has been a resounding success, acknowledged by both sides of the outsourcing relationship.

HP has digitalised CUH’s services in a way that allows frontline staff to quickly and securely access data and patient records.

“All of our IT is now managed by HP – and the system is already delivering real benefits,” commented Dr Afzal Chaudhry, CUH’s chief medical information officer.

However, some of the NHS workers have struggled with the transition, particularly those that are less “tech-savvy” than their younger colleagues. Chaudhry continued: "If you take some of the senior consultants who'd never left notepad and books.

“They'd trained as a student, used them as junior doctors all the way through and some of these people, they'd been there for years. Then overnight we took everything that they knew, then threw it away.”

Nevertheless, the majority of staff have transitioned well and are working more efficiently as a result of HP’s input.

The new platform installed by HP is being widely adopted and utilised, with 3,200 people using the system onsite, and further staff using it offsite, on a daily basis. Even during its quietest periods in the early hours of the morning, CUH tends to find 300-400 individuals logged in at any given time.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: NHS Awards Capita with £400 Million Contract for Administrative Support Services

According to a poll conducted by CIPS, 45 per cent of buyers have no plan B that “stretches down the tiers of their supply chain” if plan A fails, Supply Management has reported.

Meanwhile less than a third of buyers had a back-up strategy in place, while a fifth of those surveyed had no idea whether they had a plan B or not.

CIPS’s group CEO David Noble said buyers “cannot outsource accountability and responsibility for the conditions in which these goods are produced and where raw materials are sourced.

“Best practice requires a thorough understanding by companies of who their suppliers are. Many procurement professionals will be confident they have this understanding, but this knowledge is incomplete.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Report Reveals Evolution of Procurement Industry

Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme has emphasised the importance of his company’s digital pursuits, as Accenture reported a 30 per cent increase in digitally-derived revenues in its most recent quarter.

He pointed out that digital work now accounts for 20 per cent of his organisation’s total $7.8 billion in revenues, a percentage that is likely to grow over the coming years.

“We’re not using any more, or much more, the terminology of consulting and outsourcing,” he’s stated.

Accenture are currently undertaking a number of exciting digital projects across a wide range of industries, for clients such as Pizza Hut, Rio Tinto, healthcare businesses and a leading global shipbuilding company.

Having said that, consulting and outsourcing are still key to Nanterme’s future vision: “When we created Accenture Operations, we created a very unique capability in the marketplace. I don’t believe that anyone else has been building a similar capability with two major capabilities in it, one, which is around infrastructure services, where you will find as much consulting and outsourcing in it.

So it’s a combination of services from cloud-related services leveraging the Accenture Cloud platform from high value services in security and from indeed infrastructure outsourcing.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Technology and Talent are Key Differentiators for Maximizing Business Value of BPO Engagements

Tech Mahindra has been selected by Circle Health to play the role of technology partner, as part of £50 million contract that is expected to last 10 years.

The Indian digital transformation specialist will be introducing and developing new technologies to improve patient care, operational delivery and reduce the cost of operations. Circle has granted Tech Mahindra access to its hospitals, clinicians and wealth of healthcare management experience.

Steve Melton, Chief Executive of Circle, said: “This deal is a sign of the times. Healthcare has yet to see the tech-led disruption that we’ve seen in other sectors, but we think that is about to change. At the same time, there is a big push in UK government policy for transparency and better patient access to data – while the need for healthcare operators to be efficient has never been higher.”

He added, “Tech Mahindra are a hugely respected firm with a track record of innovation. Its technology has made organizations across a vast range of sectors more connected, agile and efficient. We’re absolutely delighted our partnership with Tech Mahindra will support us to grow our business and improve our competitiveness through the adoption of new technologies.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Tech Mahindra Continues Philippines Investment

Computer Weekly has reported that the UK government is seeking advice on proposals to reduce the number of individuals working in the UK from outside of Europe.

Overseas service providers can currently transfer staff to the UK to work on contracts with UK-based companies, provided the workers specialise in areas where the country has a skills shortage and the wages paid meet the government’s minimum salary threshold.

The UK government is now looking to reduce the number of these workers by increasing the pay threshold, reforming the skills shortage list and introducing an additional charge for the visas involved – that money will go towards developing homegrown skills which the UK is currently lacking.

Kerry Hallard, CEO of the National Outsourcing Association, warned that these proposals could prove costly: "The government wants to invest in developing home-grown skills here in the UK and that's admirable, but progress will take years.

“In the meantime, the UK shouldn't simply shut out talent that's available around the rest of the world. To do so would damage our economy which British workers are reliant on, harming the very people these proposed changes are meant to help.”

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Disney Cancels Outsourcing Plans as US Government Investigates Indian ITOs

UK apprenticeship provider QA Apprenticeships has committed to getting 10,000 of the country’s young people into professional technology positions through a year-long campaign.

Seeing as 75 per cent of 16-24 year olds now believe they could not live without the internet, QA Apprenticeships say they see this as “harnessing what is already second nature to the youth population.”

This drive for digital apprenticeships comes at an appropriate time. Over the past few years, industry experts, outsourcing buyers and SMEs in particular have commented on the high demand for tech and IT skills in the UK, and the lack of native talent in those areas. With the government considering cracking down on intra-company transfers, a digitally-skilled younger generation could be more vital than ever.

QA Apprenticeships has already achieved 5,000 apprenticeships in the space of five years and is confident in its ability to reach 10,000 within the next year.

For weekly news updates, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Related: Frustrated SMEs Outsource IT Due to Skills Shortage