Industry news

Reports from KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) show that the IT job market continues to outperform against the overall jobs market.

The demand for staff in IT services has continued to rise in comparison to the difficulties facing the rest of the market.

Chief executive of REC, Kevin Green, commented that; “niche areas that are seeing much stronger growth than the national average. In every month this year the engineering and IT and computing sectors have seen solid increases in the number of workers.”

The new ICT curriculum due to begin in September 2014 will be innovative and flexible while being much shorter in order to focus core skills.

The new ICT curriculum will replace the defunct ICT programme which is to be discontinued from this September.

Dr Vanessa Pittard at the Department for Education said: “There will be a programme of study from September 2014. It will be much shorter to allow for innovation.”

Global outsourcing firm Wipro plans to extend infrastructure as a service (IaaS) capabilities as the firm looks to meet the specific requirements of enterprise-class clients.

The new global utility computing platform called Wipro iStructure will use the existing global Wipro data center and will offer infrastructure and application services.

Michael Wilczak, senior vice president of datacentre services, Wipro, commented: “Last year we began offering multi-tenant, virtual server hosting to our existing clients as part of large, integrated infrastructure management engagements. Clients have quickly adopted the service.”

The National Business Awards have given an extension to its deadline on application entries to Wednesday 27th June.

The Awards, partnered with Orange, are designed with showcasing the best in innovation, ethics and excellence within UK businesses both within the public and private sector.

Organisations from all regions across the UK, from SMEs to FTSE 100s, are invited to register for award categories ranging from the Orange Innovation Award, to the Sustainability Award, through to Entrepreneur of the Year and Online Business of the Year.

Viglen an ICT company which Alan Sugar holds majority shares in, have secured a contract with the Thetford Academy worth £1.6 million. The contract will see Viglen provide ICT equipment and services over the next 5 years.

The contract is designed to cover the Thetford Academy’s plan to embed ICT resources within teaching rather than the traditional model of dedicated ICT facilities.

Thetford Academy principal, Cathy Spillane, says, “We are delighted to have entered into this partnership with Viglen who have an excellent track record in delivery of ICT to the education sector.

.

Can you define your business and your specialties?

everis is a multi-national consulting company offering business development and strategy, technological applications maintenance and outsourcing solutions. Our consulting firm works in the financial, energy and utilities, industrial, insurance, media, public administration, healthcare and telecommunications sectors. Currently, everis has operations in several European and Latin American countries, and the United States and a professional staff of more than 10,000 consultants.

everis began operations in Madrid in 1996, a handful of consultants with a single project. Over sixteen years, everis has seen continuous and tremendous growth, topping double digit CAGR every year over the last ten but one. In 2011, everis invoiced 565 M€, representing 12% growth over the previous year.

Founded with the values of entrepreneurship, commitment and a positive attitude, everis remains convinced that these values have been central to its success. For this reason, everis continues to invest in talent, innovation and excellence.

everis delivers complex, business critical, end to end projects, from business strategy through to operations. We offer a full-range of flexible and proactive services organized around business and process consulting and service delivery. Our Outsourcing services are organized end to end to offer capabilities across the entire sourcing lifecycle.

How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?

everis differentiates itself in three key areas: global integrated sourcing, a significant market position in Latin America, and our unique corporate model.

everis takes a globally integrated view of services. On-site, near-shore, off-shore, the everis approach is to understand the benefits, and risks, of each and to integrate the three into one seamless model that maximizes the benefits and, crucially, minimizes the risks for our clients. We can do this because our consultancy offices and delivery centers worldwide all share the same corporate culture, and deploy the same methodologies and tools.

everis has been established in Latin America since 1998. We currently have more than 3500 professionals located in the region. Our business relationships there offer unparalleled access for prospective clients in North America and Europe. Our local centers offer significant delivery power within the region, directed at clients locally within Latin America and directed outward to businesses in both the USA and Western Europe.

Since its inception, everis has consciously focused on maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit under which it was founded. Its flat organization which empowers leaders closest to its clients, and its recognized focus on acquiring and developing talent enables everis to deliver excellence and flexibility to its clients.

In your opinion, what are the top three outsourcing hot topics / trends at this moment?

Sourcing models and strategies will continue to diversify, providing organizations with a continuum of options. Sourcing strategies will vary from internally shared to fully outsourced services, using either single or multiple vendor approaches. Sourcing models will also diversify as businesses adopt off-shore, near-shore, or on-shore strategies, and often all three at once, depending on business needs and objectives.

Closely related to this tendency, organizations will seek providers that can help them to manage this complexity. Integrated, disciplined service management will be a key to strategically aligning all pieces of a complex sourcing model and driving true business benefits across the enterprise. As businesses adopt the cloud, the need for strategic oversight of a firm’s IT sourcing and solutions will grow.

Finally, whether investment in IT increases or remains static at current levels, businesses will look to significantly cut their spending in system maintenance. In many industries, technology portfolios are overly complex, a symptom of age and years of deferred investment decisions. This complexity drives the high maintenance costs that tax already strained IT budgets. Portfolio rationalization and tool based optimization initiatives will drive the significant cost savings in maintenance that usually can not be delivered by traditional productivity efforts.

Can you give some examples of best practice at everis?

In outsourcing, everis understands the importance of a well-run service transition. It has adopted a methodology to ensure the quality of transitions, and to anticipate and prevent problems in the delivery of service. The certification of a transition is based on a readiness assessment of architecture, software, documentation, hardware and a backlog analysis. Particular focus is given to a well prepared handover of delivery responsibility; it is at this point that continuous service improvement must begin so everis uses its certification process to ensure that its service teams are ready.

everis has experienced remarkable growth throughout its seventeen year history, even in years when the market has recessed. This is, in part, due to our best practice focus on client relationships. In recent years, everis has performed better than the overall European Outsourcing Market in client satisfaction surveys, especially in the areas of strategic and operational relationships and in flexibility.

In addition, everis has shown an elevated client retention index. everis attributes this success to its organization; we believe that an outsourcing organizational model that focuses on developing talent, facilitating collaboration and rewarding flexibility should be considered a best practice within relationship management.

What does the future hold for everis?

everis pursues a growth strategy built upon three pillars:

New Geographies: The USA and the UK represent the first and third largest IT Services markets in the world. Within those markets, Finance and Telecommunications, both sectors of strength for everis, are ranked first and second in terms of sector CAGR. everis is using its globally integrated sourcing value proposition to develop business within these markets.

New Initiatives: At everis, we pay close attention to market trends in which to invest and launch new businesses that expand the everis brand. We are taking to market new service products in traditional sectors such as healthcare and tourism, and in emerging sectors such as environmental solutions. In addition, we are packaging rational strategies in cloud and mobile technologies for mid-market clients.

Global focus and leadership in our current markets: In addition to the new markets, everis is also raising the bar on its own performance within its current markets. Exceptional growth rate and high client retention speak to the best practices that we currently deliver. Nonetheless, everis wants to achieve ‘top of mind’ recognition for innovation, quality, productivity, and talent. To do this, everis has launched initiatives to strengthen process, measure and better integrate our services.

As a software analysis company, the Dutch Software Improvement Group (SIG) specialises in assessing the quality of software. But whilst its software analysis technology can offer up a detailed quality assessment of a program’s source code, the effectiveness of the teams that produce such code is not so easily measurable.

And when work is outsourced, the picture is even more complex. In search of answers, SIG recently held an intriguing round-table in London to discuss the question, “What makes a successful software development team?”

The session featured SIG’s own Head of Research, Joost Visser and Business Development Manager Michiel Cuijpers alongside Kevan Hall, CEO of training consultancy Global Integration (experts in team work) and Andrew de la Haye of RIPE NCC, the European, Regional Internet Registry whose software has earned a five star quality classification.

Commitment

Whilst the table found a degree of common ground on issues such as team-size, the value of tight teamwork, short development iterations and employee empowerment, one issue seemed particularly contentious: whether outsourcing has a place in a successful software development team.

Andrew de la Haye was sceptical. “I used to sell a lot outsourcing, but I haven’t seen it really working (teamwise).”

Earlier in the discussion, he had noted how employees are periodically given two weeks out of their projects, to learn about anything that interests them, and to later report back their findings to the team. “Hopefully it’s innovative and hopefully people learn from it” said Mr de la Haye. For him, the primary benefit is increased employee happiness and thus, commitment.

Concerns about commitment are a common issue for businesses looking into outsourcing. However, software development at RIPE NCC and other organizations often follow a programme of Agile software development, wherein teams have to be highly adaptive and willing to reiterate recently completed work. Coupled with an intensive approach to employee loyalty, Mr de la Haye is especially wary of introducing outside help into his development process: “You hope that they are committed to the organisation they’re working for, but they’re certainly not committed to you.”

Management

Kevan Hall was keen to defend outsourced work, however. “Remote teams can work well. Working at distance isn’t really the problem: it’s bad management that’s at fault.” He elaborated on this by noting problems in “the balance of trust and control.” In his eyes, the lack of trust that some managers have for outsource teams makes them quick to impose needlessly restrictive controls.

“And so we go out to India and we have these incredibly heavy processes which we [...] make sure they follow without any sense of initiative or change, and then we start complaining that the Indians don’t have any initiative and don’t innovate”.

One of Global Integration’s specialist areas is Cross Cultural Training . They’re acutely aware of the issues that do exist when working across time-zones, distance and less tangible boundaries. According to Mr Hall, one of the simplest oversights on outsourced projects is the lack of a travel budget. He observed that it’s unsurprising that developers fail to establish a working relationship with their outsource teams when they “don’t even go and meet the people who are doing a service for them”.

Conclusion

Perhaps there’s no arguing with results: RIPE NCC’s 5-star software speaks for the value of bringing development into tight-knit, single building teams. However, Global Integration’s experiences with managing outsourcing teams seem to suggest that outsourcing can certainly have a role to play in software development. The conclusion is quite simply that there is more than one way to build a successful development team, but that the difference between these structures is quite significant.

Perhaps this is best illustrated by Mr Hall’s opinion on teamwork: “It may be shocking, but I actually spend quite a bit of my time trying to discourage teamwork”. He continues; “If we have the mentality that everything we do is as a team, then we can’t make a decision until the next meeting”. And whilst there are undoubtedly legitimate worries about the outsourcing, it could actually be argued that a finer balance of trust and control could lead to more innovative products in those companies that use it.

The limitations of outsourcing only hardware and software become even more apparent when compared to a fully managed service approach, where the whole process is contracted out to a third party rather than just the transmission of messages. Fully managed EDI can save organisations both time and money and provides a whole range of additional benefits, including business intelligence and improved visibility and accuracy, which can be harnessed to boost performance across the supply chain.

Fully managed EDI also removes the onus on suppliers to comply with a broad range of customer mandated industry standards and message formats. Choosing a provider that is fully compliant with all standards and formats ensures that a business can accommodate new EDI directives and on-board new customers without a large additional financial outlay. This is now achieved through a single connection to the fully managed EDI provider that carries out these tasks on the client’s behalf.

With the connection and service being paid for through a fixed annual fee, the fully managed approach also allows businesses to keep EDI costs under control and forecasted more effectively. The high capital expenditure required for an on-premise solution is no longer needed to kick-start the process, replaced by annual fees that can be managed within operational budgets. With the majority of large customers now expecting EDI to be in place, the fully managed route also permits even the smallest of suppliers to comply while still concentrating on their core business.

Managed service providers work behind the scenes to ensure all customers get optimum EDI performance. For example, individual real-time message management removes human error and ensures that messages reach the required target, while invalid documents are flagged and amended before being sent. Changes can also be made across the board, so if a particular buyer or supplier alters an invoice or purchase order, the new format is available for all organisations using the system.

Supply chain performance is also enhanced through the increased business intelligence provided by managed EDI. Partners are able to share and access information in real time, integrating it into existing ERP systems. This allows for more accurate forecasting, as point of sale information can be distributed back through the supply chain allowing organisations to get a far more accurate picture of future demand.

Disputes between buyers and suppliers can also be kept to a minimum as supply chain information is freely available to all parties. Order acknowledgements and Advanced Shipping Notices (ASNs) can be checked to make sure that deliveries have arrived on time and match what was originally promised. If complications do arise the intelligence is available to allow organisations to work together to solve the problem.

Outsourced EDI is a growing trend as organisations seek to remove the burden of in-house solutions, look to create real time visibility and efficiency or face growing trading complexities. However, if the decision has been made to outsource the EDI process careful consideration of the choices available and their cost benefits is a vital step. A fully managed approach offers many benefits. Not only does it free up time and resource by removing the problems that come with on-premise or simple outsourced approaches, it also turns EDI into so much more than just a secure message transfer system, enabling organisations to have far greater control of their supply chains and of their business too.

Businesses that engage directly with consumers must have a way of dealing with customer feedback. Reacting to customer views, whether good or bad, is integral to improving service performance. Contact centres are therefore key to customer relationship management.

Contact centres are the first port of call for issue resolution and the core arena for customer engagement. In some cases, the first time a consumer directly interacts with a company will be through a contact-centre, so it’s critical that centres function well and reflect positively on the business. In the past, contact centres could more accurately be described as call centres, with most interaction happening via telephony technologies. However, the advent of the internet and email has expanded their remit, and most contact centres are now expected to deal with several channels of communication.

Recently, a further channel has been added, due to the explosion of social media. Customers can now give their views on a company through an array of applications, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. These peer to peer conversations happen at a rapid pace, and turning a blind eye can not only result in missed opportunities, but also reputation damage. It’s up to businesses to make the most of this new communication stream and use it to their advantage.

But how can a company monitor this constant deluge of information, and more importantly, respond to it?

Social media communities require a different set of monitoring and engagement processes to telephony and email. Therefore, many organisations choose to outsource operations to independent social media consultants. Social media experts will of course be adept at handling and responding to customer feedback through social networking sites. However, moving this process outside the business core can be expensive, and may result in a fractured and fragmented contact centre. The ideal scenario is if a contact centre can handle all the traditional elements, but also integrate social media engagement. This adds value and diversity to the business, while also increasing staff skill.

It is possible for contact centres to converge their communication channels and handle all customer interaction, including social media, through a single platform. Communication convergence technologies can put social networks on the same level as telephony and email. Monitoring and responding to social media mentions then becomes equivalent to answering a telephone call, or replying to an email. Agents can use their existing desktop infrastructure to react to all manner of social media feedback.

This single platform software works best when backed by high-powered analysis tools, which can analyse all mentions of a company on social networks, and then route these incidents to the most suitable agent.

Social media has grown exponentially in recent times. For contact centres, it’s beneficial to keep operations in-house, and interact and respond to social media in the same way a business would to a traditional telephone enquiry.

Whenever teams of people from different nations need to work together, cultural aspects come into play. This is because our heritage and culture are instilled into us from many years of shared history, perspectives and beliefs.

For many, the ‘nuts and bolts’ of cultural differences are most marked between some of the Western cultures and those of the Middle East and Asia for example. Different religious beliefs, dress codes and working days are quickly apparent as are alternative degrees of emphasis placed on relationships, trust, courtesy, hospitality and respect, compared with the Western priorities of tasks, rules and deadlines.

You may believe that if you are working with a culture that is similar to your own, there is a good cultural ‘fit’. In many ways there will be. Shared aspects of personal values and beliefs and of course language can help, yet, even when communicating between ‘similar cultures’ differences soon become apparent. Verbal and nonverbal communication involves much more than transmitting a particular message. It also reflects each participant's self-image, group identification and values. Interaction between individuals and groups is shaped by cultural norms and expectations. This is because, over the years, our history, politics, geography and economics as well as our upbringing are unique to us and influence how we behave. However, these values can be so deeply ingrained they are often invisible to us! The only time they become visible is when we crash and clash with another culture.

Therefore, despite the clear distinction between obviously different cultures, perhaps some of the most surprising disparity can still be observed between the more apparently ‘similar’ cultures: America and Britain would be a good illustration of this. Perhaps this is because the differences are often unexpected and can therefore, be much more subtle.

For example: sometimes words will not have the same precise meaning. If someone says that something is ‘interesting’: an American would naturally expand on that topic. In the UK, however, ‘interesting’ may mean ‘I appreciate your lateral thinking but let’s discuss something more relevant.”

When working with people from cultures that are obviously different, each nationality needs to be more prepared for these kinds of potential mis-understandings and ready to be more understanding, flexible and accommodating. In this way, people from very different cultures perhaps have the greatest potential to work together better, as they will come to the workplace with an existing degree of cultural curiosity and a considerate attitude that anticipates challenges will occur and therefore, be pre-programmed to look for ways to overcome the inevitable issues that arise.

Perhaps then, rather than always searching for an obvious good ‘cultural fit’ across teams, we should take a little time in advance to understand the new culture we will be working with and in-fact, look for cultural ‘mis-fits’ for more successful international outsourcing?

Farnham Castle is an International Briefing and Conference Centre, specialising in cross cultural management development programmes and Global Mobility Programmes for every country in the world in addition to those coming to live and work in Britain.