Industry news

Logica, a leading business and technology service company, has announced that Taylor Wimpey, one of the largest homebuilders in the UK, has renewed its IT outsourcing contract with Logica for another five years, in a deal worth £15.2 million. Taylor Wimpey has been a Logica customer for nine years and this new deal will see the relationship extend to 2016.

Logica will provide outsourcing of IT infrastructure management, technical applications support, managed testing and project delivery services for the UK house building business, with work taking place from Logica locations in the UK, India, and the Philippines.

Andy Feldon, CIO for Taylor Wimpey said, “We chose to renew our contract for another 5 years following a thorough external benchmarking process, which not only confirmed value-for-money, but also positioned Logica as the right technical partner to work with Taylor Wimpey on its extensive programme of change.”

QlikView and Rosslyn Analytics Join Forces to Help Businesses Accelerate Performance and Profitability with Contextual Enterprise Intelligence

New York and London – January 19, 2012 – Rosslyn Analytics, the global leader in cloud-based business intelligence-as-a-service (BIAS), has announced that it has joined QlikTech’s Qonnect Partner Program for Technology Partners.

This expanded partnership with QlikTech, a leader in Business Discovery – user-driven Business Intelligence (BI), enables QlikView customers to leverage Rosslyn Analytics’ award-winning cloud-based enterprise data services and analytics platform, RA.Pid, to make better and faster decisions by obtaining a contextual view of enterprise data in seconds.

The RA.Pid platform is a revolutionary step forward in enterprise information management. For the first time, individual decision-makers not only have direct access to consumer-like end-user friendly tools to extract and transform unstructured enterprise data into information in real-time but entire networks of business users have instant access to any information, at any time, from a single analytics platform featuring QlikView.

Cognizant , a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, has announced the availability of an Automated Coupon Redemption (ACR) solution, part of its IntelliStoreSM “intelligent store of the future” platform. Cognizant IntelliStoreSM ACR is designed to help retailers and manufacturers drive sales, reduce costs, improve customer loyalty, and enhance the shopper experience by integrating online, mobile, and in-store shopping.

Cognizant IntelliStore ACR is a cloud-based service offering that offers a way to embrace paperless digital coupons. Purchased as a service with minimal upfront cost and no in-store hardware, Cognizant IntelliStore ACR was created with Intelligent Clearing Network (ICN), an innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that electronically delivers and clears both digital and paper coupons through a single connection at the point of sale (POS). Manufacturers, media companies, and retailers receive real-time redemption information for digital and paper coupons the moment the incentive clears the POS system in grocery, drug, and mass-merchant retailers.

The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in Northern Ireland (DHSP) has awarded Axon Solutions a £20m contract to create efficiencies and streamline processes in its human resource and finance functions through the introduction of a shared services system.

DHSP is currently made up of ten separate organisations, which employ approximately 70,000 staff, where each has its own disparate organisational structures.

Genpact Limited, a global leader in business process and technology management, has announced it has been awarded a three-year contract extension by global consumer product goods (CPG) leader Kimberly-Clark for comprehensive finance and accounting (F&A) services and high-end analytics.

Under this new agreement, which extends the five-year contract that expired in December 2011, Genpact will continue to help Kimberly-Clark increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its F&A operations as well as its key business capabilities such as trade promotion management and predictive analytics.

“Genpact’s solid F&A services, domain expertise in the CPG market, and high-end analytics have provided unique insight that has helped us drive efficiencies and increase operational effectiveness across multiple processes,” said Mark Buthman, senior vice president and chief financial officer, Kimberly-Clark. “We have a terrific relationship with Genpact and we look forward to extending our partnership and leveraging the increased bottom-line value it will bring to our business and our customers.”

In an online broadcast yesterday from Microsoft Corp. headquarters, Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft Server and Tools Business, laid out how Microsoft’s private cloud solution will help businesses move faster, save money and better compete in 2012. He highlighted how companies, such as webcast participants Lufthansa Systems, T. Rowe Price and Unilever, can use Microsoft System Center 2012 to build and operate private clouds for the delivery of business applications across both private and public cloud platforms. System Center 2012 is available today in a Release Candidate as a single, integrated private cloud management solution for the first time.

“IT leaders tell me that private cloud computing promises to help them focus on innovation over maintenance, to streamline costs and to respond to the need for IT speed,” Nadella said. “We are delivering on that promise today. With System Center 2012, customers can move beyond the industry hype and speculation, and progress into the here and now of private cloud.”

Collaborative working has gained a lot of corporate interest in recent years. The drivers are compelling: improved business communications and workforce productivity.

However, this adoption is not limited to the multi-nationals. We have seen an increasing interest from small to medium sized companies in collaboration tools that not only give them integrated communications services but also capabilities to connect with partners and customers externally.

For example, Microsoft SharePoint has made it onto the radar of many SMEs with its ability to manage work flows and create web sites / portals that link to the rest of the supply chain. With Microsoft Lync available on mobile (and desktop) devices, instant communications are sleeker and easier than ever.

What cloud does here is that it accelerates the adoption of these great technologies even faster! Imagine how much time and resources it takes to roll out these applications to thousands of users across a number of different locations? With cloud, the shift to more collaborative working can be rapid.

Is there any caveat? Of course! While these technologies offer attractive functionalities and serve the purpose of workforce collaboration, there is always question around how they are integrated with the rest of the applications. Employees nowadays are also looking for more integrated experiences from their IT versus having to switch between different applications, for instance email, for something that serve the same purpose

G4S Cash Solutions, the largest provider of cash solutions in the UK, has been awarded a multi-million pound contract with leading independent European ATM provider, YourCash Ltd.

The contract, which will commence in January 2012 and run for a five year period, will see G4S provide ATM replenishments and engineering services to 300 ATMs across the UK, 250 of which are located within the country wide network of one of the market leading petrol forecourt providers.

The partnership with G4S will give YourCash Ltd a single solution to managing its cash processes, allowing for a more efficient and effective cash management mechanism.

Steve Pearson, Account Manager, G4S Cash Solutions (UK), said, “We are looking forward to working with the team at YourCash, adding value and support to their growth strategy in the coming years. As industry leaders in cash management solutions G4S is uniquely positioned to identify and introduce process efficiencies such as those designed for YourCash, whilst continuing to provide the highest possible levels of service. ”

Premier Foods to shed about 600 staff to cut costs Premier Foods has struggled despite owning major brands including Mr Kipling.

Premier Foods has announced plans to sell off non-core businesses and cut about 600 staff in an attempt to double cost savings to £40m a year.

The firm behind brands including Paxo and Mr Kipling is to make about 5% of its 12,000 workforce redundant.

Its current cost-saving target of £20m is to be doubled by 2013, as it expects 2011's results to be at the "lower end" of market expectations

The Environment Agency is setting up a framework contract to provide a multimedia contact centre for its Floodline flood reporting and information service.

Other government departments will be able to use the framework for incident management and advice services, giving it an estimated value of between £1m and £25m.

According to the Official Journal of the European Union, the four-year fully outsourced arrangement will provide a contact centre services including a live agent call centre.