Industry news

The public sector will seek to use more private services according to the chief executive of Capita over the next two years.

Departments that are likely to make the move towards private services over the next two years are likely to include the ministries of defence, justice along with local authorities according to Paul Pindar, the CEO of Capita.

Pindar, said: “One of the clear themes that came through [from a meeting with the Cabinet Office] was that we're now in the second half of the football match and the activity needs to kick off again.”

The outsourcing giant expects growth of 3 percent during 2012 with increasing growth generated by public sector business despite negative headlines surrounding projects run by G4S and CSC.

Britvic and AG Barr, owners of such brands including Robinsons and Irn-Bru, are set to merge in a deal worth £1.4 billion.

The merger would create a dominant drinks company within the European market, with ownership split between Britvic with 63 percent and AG Barr owning the remaining 37 percent.

The merger between the two companies would see reductions in the combined work force of between 8 and 12 percent.

Accenture has announced it is expanding its global network of Innovation Centres for SAP® solutions with the opening of a new centre in Centurion, South Africa. Focused on accelerating the development, delivery and commercialisation of business solutions based on SAP technologies, the centre will help clients increase speed to market, enhance flexibility, and improve business performance.

The Accenture Innovation Centres for SAP solutions bring together Accenture's functional and industry expertise with the latest SAP technologies, including the SAP HANA® platform and mobility and cloud solutions. Supported by teams of professionals from Accenture and SAP, the centres provide clients with process-specific business solutions, thought leadership around existing and emerging SAP solution-based technology, and the industrialisation of the resulting solution, content and delivery methods.

In particular, the Accenture Innovation Centre for SAP solutions in Centurion is focused on innovating new solutions for growth industries, such as telecommunications, utilities, mining, banking, public sector, automotive, consumer goods and retail.

"The new Accenture Innovation Centre for SAP solutions will help our clients in South Africa and the Sub-Saharan Africa region derive even greater value from their investments in SAP solutions and accelerate business results in the highly competitive market environment," said Willie Schoeman, managing director of Technology, Accenture Southern Africa.

Executives from some of the world's most-recognised firms have been grilled by MPs on the issue of tax avoidance.

The head of Google UK and top managers from Starbucks and Amazon appeared before the Public Accounts Committee.

Starbucks admitted the Dutch government had granted a special tax deal on its European headquarters, which receives royalty payments from its UK business.

Amazon and Google also confirmed they used favourable European tax jurisdictions for their UK businesses.

Amazon's sales are handled out of Luxembourg, while Google's advertising space is sold by a team in the Republic of Ireland, the executives confirmed.

Genpact Limited, a global leader in business process management and technology services, is recognized as a “Leader” in the Global Banking Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Market Report published annually by the global consulting and research firm Everest Group.

Everest Group conducts an annual study across global banking BPO service providers to analyze the changing dynamics of the BPO landscape and assess service providers across several key dimensions. As part of Everest Group’s 2011 Global Banking Research, 12 banking BPO service providers globally were assessed on the firm’s Performance, Experience, Ability, Knowledge (PEAK) Matrix, a proprietary framework that provides an objective, data-driven, and comparative assessment of providers based on their absolute market success and delivery capability. Everest Group identified Genpact as one of the “Banking BPO Leaders” for 2012 based on its market success and delivery capability.

“Genpact’s global banking BPO business has emerged as a ‘Leader’ in our research due to its ability to deliver a broad set of capabilities and capitalize on market opportunities,” said Rajesh Ranjan, vice president, Everest Group. “Genpact’s focus on process excellence, strategic use of technology, balanced shoring approach and investment in domain capabilities should help Genpact maintain its success in the industry.”

Cloud, connectivity and hosting provider, Pulsant, is supporting Pelamis Wave Power by helping to manage, back-up and store data vital to the development of its world-leading wave energy technology.

With operations in Edinburgh and Orkney supporting two Pelamis wave machines being demonstrated at the European Marine Energy Centre off the coast of Orkney, Pelamis Wave Power uses a remote control and monitoring system in order to assess live machine performance and adapt control algorithms to maximise electricity generation.

Protecting this critical information presents numerous challenges, including connecting and moving high volumes of data from isolated locations with restricted infrastructure and bandwidth.

To overcome this, Pulsant has provided a managed off-site back-up solution that addresses the different needs and constraints for the protection of critical data at each of the Pelamis offices. This hybrid solution includes daily backup of servers, cloud based data processing and live mirroring - backup of proprietary business systems. Pulsant provided the necessary expertise and support at each stage to deliver the project from design to rollout.

Outsourcer's bid pipeline stands at 4 bln stg

Capita PLC said it is on track to achieve 3 percent organic growth for the year as demand for its outsourcing services remained buoyant in Britain.

The FTSE-100 group, which runs contracts from civil service training schemes to highway maintenance, said in a trading statement on Tuesday it anticipates further strong progress into 2013.

Despite recent high-profile setbacks to the industry, including the G4S London Olympics debacle and a government U-turn on prison outsourcing earlier in November, Capita says that it was continuing to secure public sector contracts, with significant activity in particular from the justice and defence ministries.

BT has announced that its wi-fi hotspot numbers have passed over 7.5 million across the world, as it launches a new BT Wi-fi access app making it easy to find a wi-fi hotspot in the UK and to login from a Windows Mobile device.

The new app, which will be available on the Windows Phone Store is the fourth BT Wi-fi app to launch. It follows the success of iOS, Android and Blackberry apps, which have now passed over two million downloads by BT Broadband customers.

BT Broadband customers have free and unlimited access to the largest wi-fi network in the world. The numbers include more than 65,000 in Birmingham and Leeds, around 72,000 in Manchester, Edinburgh and Sheffield, and more than 59,000 in Liverpool, Brighton, Bristol and Cardiff.

In a release today half-year operating profits for Royal Mail reached a total of £144 million, the report also confirmed the companies move towards privatisation, saying: “Obtaining external capital is a key part of the transformation process as we become a more parcels-focused business and make the investment in technology to do so."

Reports released over the weekend had raised expectations that the release of half-year results would stimulate the public services’ move towards privatisation if clear profits were displayed.

In the release today, parcel revenue, which represents almost half of the total group’s mail, had increased by 13 percent, while a range of stringent cost cutting measures have helped to improve overall profits. Royal Mail has also moved to compete in online shopping delivery, signing Amazon as a customer and partnering with Chinese based ZJS with an eye on expanding into overseas markets.

The turnaround within Royal Mail has been sizeable given that the group had posted a loss of £41 million in the half year to last September. The postal service has also seen sustained years of poor results and negative headlines relating to poor service.

The delivery of increased profits by the Royal Mail had been a key condition of the go-ahead of the company’s planned floatation next year. The publication of strong profits is expected to further boost investor interest surrounding the Royal Mail.

While the group has been boosted in recent years, the road towards profitability has seen job cuts, sorting centre closures and opposition towards the move towards privatisation from postal unions.

In reaction to the publication of the report, Dave Ward, the deputy general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, said that a move towards privatisation would damage the service through competition, adding: “We don’t want competition at any cost. Closures, bullying, cost cutting and privatisation will destroy the industry. We’ll stand up to protect it.”

The current success of Royal Mail in transforming its services, taking on large clients and competing with rivals after a sustained slump has seen government support placed behind the companies bid for floatation.

Michael Fallon Minister for Business said: "These results from Royal Mail are encouraging, showing how Royal Mail staff and management together with the Government's reforms have put the company on the road to sustainable health and long-term viability. Parliament decided, via the Postal Services Act 2011, to inject private capital into the company in order to secure the future of the universal postal service. The structure and timing remain open, but Government is committed to doing that to ensure the ongoing viability of the company."

The Royal Mail included a statement underlining the need for Whitehall to sign off on the privatisation however the government is already believed to be planning to promote the group to potential buyers during 2013.

Logica now part of CGI Group Inc along with McKesson UK has been shortlisted by the NHS as preferred suppliers to provide managed payroll services.

CGI will provide full back office end-to-end payroll services over the seven year contract. CGI was selected through the Government Procurement Services network (GPS) and now provides payroll services to more than 90 GPS clients.

Paula Sussex, Vice-President Public Sector of CGI UK said: “The GPS framework is an extremely effective way for the public sector to both make cost savings but also to ensure a consistently high level of service across organisations.”