Industry news

Mitie set to win a £170 million contract to provide services ranging from cooking school meals to maintaining buildings for the City of Edinburgh Council.

The outsourcing specialist beat off competition from other private sector players including Capita and Carillion to be appointed preferred bidder to deliver Integrated Facilities Management services for seven years.

In a report prepared for the council, its chief executive Sue Bruce said a "compelling business case" existed to adopt a partnership model with the preferred bidder.

The council expects the proposal developed by Mitie to generate £51.5m of savings over the term of the contract. It said this will provide an additional £13.5m of savings compared with those offered under a plan to improve the delivery of services while keeping them inhouse.

Telefónica Germany is set to use parts of Deutsche Telekom's network infrastructure in future. The two companies have signed a long-term deal which will see Telekom connect up to 2,000 of Telefónica's points of concentration via fibre optics in the next few years. This will allow the O2 mobile network to transmit data at even greater speeds and higher capacity.

Using leased lines from Telekom will enable Telefónica Germany to link up the first mobile phone masts to its core network via high-speed data channels as early as the second quarter of 2012. Telefónica Germany will also be able to increase its transmission rates at UMTS and LTE sites significantly in the coming years.

"The agreement with Telekom gives us the chance to operate cost-efficiently, quickly and flexibly in the rapidly growing market for mobile data", says Telefónica Germany CEO René Schuster. "So we can offer the best quality in one of the most high-tech mobile networks in Europe." Niek Jan van Damme, Telekom board member responsible for German business, points out: "To be able to exploit synergies in broadband expansion, network operators have to work together. And Telekom is willing to do that".

For every person eager to tell the story of their customer relationship management (CRM) success, there is another that will recount the horrors of a project that either went horribly wrong, or simply fizzled out over time. Today, most organisations understand the benefits of CRM and there are very few that do not stand to benefit from it in some way, shape, or form. However, all too often projects that have the best of intentions are doomed to failure before they have even begun. So, to make sure your project is on the right track from day one, there are three steps to CRM heaven.

Get company-wide buy in

Roll back five or so years and I was writing about the strategy and tactics needed to get CRM on the boardroom agenda. However, as the need for organisations have changed to cope with a more competitive market, where they need to fight hard to win and keep the business of more savvy customers, the virtues of the technology has today made CRM ubiquitous. In board-rooms throughout the UK it is now not uncommon for unilateral decisions to be made to invest in a CRM system without consultation, or buy-in from the rest of the business. This is often the first big mistake.

In my experience the very best CRM projects, (which have been well proven to deliver a clear return on investment) are those that were decided upon with the counsel and general consensus of the organisation as a whole. Furthermore, it is vitally important that those who do ultimately make the decision to invest in a CRM system remain engaged throughout the process. All too often they make a call and then move on to the next meeting item without seeing it through.

Encourage and support user adoption

Once the company as a whole has made the decision to implement the system and the right technology for the business has been specified, it is vitally important to remember that it isn’t purely about rolling out a technology, and there does need to be a degree of change management. After all, we are all creatures of habit, so for a CRM system to win over employees it must not only be easy-to-use, it needs to be introduced over time to nurture familiarity with new technology and processes.

Simply providing people with a memo, login details and an alien user interface on their desktop overnight – then asking them to start using it in the morning, with only basic training and it usually means that they just won’t do it.

Also, be prepared for a backlash. In a world of fast moving technologies it is easy to forget that not everyone is tech savvy and there will undoubtedly be members of the team that are not technical and are unwilling to admit they don’t get it! Worse still are the group who say ‘I don’t do technology’ when all they are really saying is ‘I cant be bothered to do that and let them show me otherwise’. Then of course there is the third group who think they are god’s gift to their particular role (often sales!) and consider themselves to be above getting instructions/guidance from anybody else in the business.

A healthy CRM system survives on up-to-date information and one of the biggest CRM killers is apathy. I have often heard ‘I’ll get the sales and somebody else can sort that out’. The trick is to make it simple. After all 40% of activities recorded in an easy-to-use system will be far better than nothing stored in a system that lays dormant.

Invest in training

Just as important as getting the buy-in from the company to use the new system is being clear on how the system should/needs to be used. Like anything else in life, if you can’t explain what you want you are unlikely to get it. For example, how many of us have received an invitation to an event with the dress code ‘ smart casual’ but what does it actually mean? To some it is a pair of jeans/shorts and to somebody else it’s an ironed shirt and chinos. My point is to be crystal clear in what you want if you really want your CRM project to thrive and take the time to train employees, in order to help them meet these expectations.

CRM is not a big tick in the box for the next board meeting, it is an investment and a strategy which needs to constantly evolve to support the needs of the business. Having the whole team buying in to the system and its benefits from the outset, involving them in the process of how best to roll out the technology and how it can be incorporated in to their day-to-day working lives and providing them with the right training, results in a smoother transition with faster uptake and approval rating.

Companies are still not fully aligning IT strategies with business objectives, despite recognising the critical role IT has to play, according to new research* from BT Engage IT, the IT services division of BT Business.

More than a third (35 per cent) of CIOs questioned by independent research agency Vanson Bourne believed that their board thought that IT was critical to the success of their businesses, but only three per cent said that their IT is fully aligned to their organisation’s business objectives. Surprisingly, seven per cent reported that IT and business objectives are completely separate.

Financial services companies topped the list, with more than half of CIOs (52 per cent) believing their IT strategies and business objectives are well or exactly aligned, with almost a third (32 per cent) seeing alignment on new implementations and projects. This correlates with how the CIOs believed their board feel about IT, with more than half (56 per cent) claiming it is viewed as critical to the success of the business.

Interestingly, four per cent of respondents from financial services companies didn’t know if their IT and business objectives were aligned or not.

President Barack Obama held up Ford Motor Co. as an example of companies contributing to the economy by bringing jobs back into the U.S. — and they should be rewarded for their efforts.

"You've heard of outsourcing. Well, these companies are insourcing," Obama said Wednesday in a speech, surrounded by business executives, state and local officials and union leaders.

Ford plans to invest $16 billion in the U.S. by 2015, he said. "And that includes bringing back about 2,000 jobs" into the country.

ISG offers clients single source research, consulting, managed services to achieve operational excellence.

Information Services Group, Inc., a leading technology insights, market intelligence and advisory services company, today announced the merging of its individual corporate brands into one globally integrated business under the ISG brand.

The three market leaders: TPI, the world’s leading sourcing data and advisory firm; Compass, a premier independent provider of business and IT benchmarking; and STA Consulting, a premier independent technology advisory serving the North America public sector, will join together under ISG. The merger is designed to offer clients one source to drive operational excellence in their organizations.

The newly merged company will enhance the support given to private and public sector organizations to transform and optimize their operational environments through research, benchmarking, consulting and managed services, with a focus on information technology, business process transformation, program management services and enterprise resource planning.

“We started our journey five years ago to create an industry-leading, high growth, information-based company and we have been solidly on that path since then.” said Michael P. Connors, Chairman and CEO of ISG. “Uniting our capabilities under the ISG brand is a natural evolution and will increase the value we bring to clients. We will be unrivaled in providing substantial, sustainable and quantifiable improvements in their business operations from an independent, objective and trusted adviser.”

Connors added: “We entered 2012 with momentum from 2011. We saw continued strong demand for our services and our success in keeping existing and attracting new clients. We believe this strategy will enable ISG to continue to grow our business, add new talent to our firm and significantly increase shareholder value.”

BT announced a four-year networked IT services contract with Staples, the world’s largest office products company serving businesses and consumers in 26 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The contract provides Staples with a cost-effective, highly resilient network connecting 325 offices and stores across seven European countries into a single, secure wide area network (WAN) environment.

Kevin Milliken, senior vice-president and head of Information Technology at Staples, Europe said: “We are working towards one single, European wide-area network connecting all our offices and stores across Europe. We chose BT as our primary European supplier because of their reliability, flexibility and ability to offer us a high-bandwidth, cost-effective wide area network – regardless of underlying technology or office location. Based on our track-record with BT, I am confident we have chosen the right network partner.”

Edwin Hageman, CEO BT Benelux: “I am pleased to announce this contract with Staples. The pan-European scope of the services once again confirms our strength in delivering international networked IT services, wherever our customers want us to go. It also underlines the continued investment we’re making in our network and services to offer our customers industry leading technology and support.”

Barclays Plc is to cut up to 422 staff in technology support. This is after thousands of redundancies were announced by rival Royal Bank of Scotland.

Barclays said the cuts are due to a restructuring of its technology and infrastructure division and most of the jobs affected are in Britain, with some overseas. It said it will attempt to redeploy staff and limit compulsory redundancies.

Unite union slammed the cuts and the bank's decision to move some of the roles to Lithuania.

The current information and communications technology (ICT) curriculum in England's schools is a "mess" and will be radically revamped, the education secretary has announced.

From September it will be replaced by a flexible curriculum in computer science and programming, designed with the help of universities and industry.

“Technology in schools no longer needs to be micro-managed. By withdrawing [ICT] we are now giving schools and teachers [the choice] of what and how to teach. It’s important to stress that the study of ICT will remain compulsory at all key stages. But no school will be forced to follow [the old ICT curriculum] anymore. Schools can use the amazing resources available on the web,” said Gove.

The Co-operative Bank has renewed an IT services contract with Steria, as it continues on a £700 million transformation programme.

The bank said the all-encompassing deal - for which a value has not been disclosed - will now run until 2014. The original agreement was signed in 1995, and is aimed at cutting costs and improving processes.

Jim Slack, IT operations and development head at Co-operative Banking Group, said the contract had so far delivered "many successful business-critical projects and services, including a number of highly strategic undertakings".