Industry news

Decoupling the production of print and press advertising away from advertising agencies and into specialist production companies is nothing new. However, through the unquestioned value that the decoupling process brings to brand owners, it is likely to be of increasing interest over the coming 12 months given the austere times we are all experiencing.

Brand owners who decoupled/outsourced press and print advertising production as the point of least resistance from their advertising agencies are now looking to decouple with other media channels in order to replicate the same benefits, such as TV advertising and digital adapts from master. In addition brand owners are also looking at Point Of Sale and Direct Marketing as areas to centralise production, not just for cost saving but also for the efficiencies of process that production companies have grown up with, saving clients time and improving brand consistency. In the coming months the outsourcing of digital production activity in particular is likely to be an area of key consideration for advertisers. Also, as production agencies work across many channels they are able to provide additional value through pushing the marketing assets to social media sites, providing a feed to social media sites who are ever-hungry for content.

Global brands who have decoupled in the UK or Europe are now looking for a global production partner who can not only integrate other channels into the process but who can deliver a centralised global solution. Ideally, these partners should have the footprint and capability that comes from also working locally in regions where the brand message needs to be deployed so that local cultural differences and nuances can be applied to gain maximum traction in the market.

Advertising agencies should also be mindful that through the success of decoupling, production agencies now have grown their own, direct relationships with brand owners; they have achieved trusted partner status and they are being asked to move into the low touch creative space that the advertising agencies have occupied until now to produce the master for the client.

The challenge for the production agency to maintain its margins in 2012 is a tough one with production viewed as a commodity; simple back end production continues to be offshored to low cost production centres in developing countries. However I believe success for the production agency is to further develop their services upstream of production where projects can be taken on at design stage and delivered in a seamless process, providing the client with creative, project management and best in class deployment.

The Cabinet Office has unveiled a second consultation into the use of open standards in government.

The consultation, entitled Open standards: open opportunities flexibility and efficiency in government IT, will run for 12 weeks and is hosted on the Cabinet Office's website.

The consultation, announced by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, is aimed at informing the definition of open standards in the context of government IT. It will also focus on the meaning of mandation and the effects compulsory standards may have on government departments, delivery partners and supply chains, as well as international alignment and cross-border interoperability.

Cognizant, a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, has announced that it has entered into a five-year, multimillion dollar engagement with Future Group, India's largest multi-format retail group, to provide end-to-end IT infrastructure services for all Future Group companies.

Besides providing service desk support, data center management, and network services support, Cognizant will also deliver the IT infrastructure services support to Future Group's ever growing network of stores, warehouses, offices, and data centers.

To help Future Group proactively monitor, manage, and report business service performance, Cognizant will implement an Enterprise Management Platform to improve operational agility and drive business transformation. Along with Future Group, Cognizant will set up a Point-of-Sale lab to develop and deploy next-generation IT solutions to provide best-in-class consumer experience in stores, and also to co-innovate around the future of the store, leveraging mobile and kiosk technologies.

"We chose Cognizant as our strategic partner after a comprehensive selection process," said Rakesh Biyani, Chief Executive Officer of Retail Business and an Executive Board Member at Future Group. "We were impressed with Cognizant's strong consulting-led approach, process and technology maturity, innovation focus, and most importantly, a sound understanding of our business vision. Our relationship with Cognizant will allow Future Group to harness Cognizant's broad range of business transformation capabilities in our mission to become a premier catalyst in India's consumption-led growth story."

River Island has said that rising labour costs in China were making production in Britain more viable. It has increased the number of items produced at home by 50 per cent in the past 12 months and says that the changes have paid off.

Ben Lewis, the chief executive, said: “It has allowed us to get new fashion to our customers much quicker than we were able to, and as a result some of those products have become absolute bestsellers. We can get more of them and work closely with the factories.” Mr Lewis, a member of the Lewis family which controls a fortune estimated at £1.15 billion, added: “With clever design you can hold the price to something affordable.”

The Rural Payments Agency has said that cleansing its data is the most important part of its new five-year strategy and will help to improve the performance of its troubled IT systems.

In its plan for 2012-2017, the executive agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says that the poor quality of data it holds has been one of the main causes of errors and backlogs in its much criticised £350m single payments scheme, which pays subsidies to landowners.

The FundsNetwork Navigator service uses internally developed risk profiling techniques to gauge clients’ tolerance for risk. The system then recommends one of the three Multi Asset Allocator funds of funds that Fidelity launched in October 2011 for Trevor Greetham, which are called Defensive, Balanced and Growth.

This is the first time the FundsNetwork platform has offered advisers a proprietary ‘end-to-end’ way for them to outsource investment management.

The launch puts the group up against similar offerings from Skandia, which offers the Spectrum fund suite and risk-profiling tools, and Standard Life, which offers MyFolio.

Striking public sector staff picketed council offices in protest against plans to outsource services to the private sector.

Public sector union, Unison, say Barnet Council's One Barnet project could see 70 per cent of council workers become private sector employees in under a year, with many being forced to work outside of the borough.

But staff from various council departments, including trading standards, planning, highways, and parking services, say they want to remain council employees. They claim that services and therefore taxpayers will suffer under the new plans.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) has announced three new police hubs to tackle web crime are set to launch.

The hubs in Yorkshire and the Humber, the north-west and east Midlands, will go live "imminently", with some officers undergoing training immeadiately.

The hubs, announced in November, will focus on online crime, with the exception of online child abuse which is already covered by units that specialise in the area. The units will be funded from a budget of £30m over four years, granted by the government to improve national capability to investigate and combat web crime.

Oracle Corp. made its second acquisition in three months, agreeing to buy human-resources software company Taleo Corp. (TLEO) for about $1.9 billion to expand in cloud computing and respond to a December deal by SAP AG. (SAP)

Holders of Taleo will get $46 a share, Redwood City, California-based Oracle, the second-largest software company, said today in a statement. That’s 18 percent higher than Taleo’s closing share price yesterday. Taleo gives Oracle tools that help companies manage human resources, recruit employees and set compensation

Barclays has reported a 3% fall in profits to £5.9bn for last year, hit by a slowdown at its investment bank arm.

The bank also said the bonus pool at the investment banking division was down 32% to £1.5bn in 2011.

There was no immediate news on the bonus for its chief executive Bob Diamond, reportedly in line for a payout worth several million pounds.