Industry news

Accenture and Enbridge Gas Distribution Inc., an affiliate of Enbridge Inc. have signed a new business process outsourcing (BPO) services agreement that extends their existing customer services contract for an additional five years, to 2017. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Under the extended agreement, originally signed in 2007, Accenture will continue to provide outsourcing services related to billing, payment processing, back office, call centre and collections functions. These services will be provided through Accenture’s Global Delivery Network.

The Press Association and Express KCS have formed a partnership to offer outsourced print and digital advertising production to newspaper publishers.

It means that PA, which already provides ready-made editorial pages to newspapers, will be able to include high-quality ads in its packages as well.

Standard Life has announced it will cut a further 69 jobs in IT, facilities and telephony in an effort to meet its promised £100 million cost savings pledge by the year’s end.

The latest cuts come after the firm announced it would axe 95 jobs in its customer services departments in Edinburgh and Glasgow earlier this month.

Overall 179 jobs in Edinburgh are affected by yesterday’s announcement, although the change will see 37 jobs created, which are expected to be filled internally. A further 17 jobs in the company’s network and telephony division are being transferred to BT

In his autumn statement, Chancellor George Osborne announced £5bn of spending on infrastructure projects such as roads, railways and broadband networks.

£100m of that is set to boost broadband coverage across 10 cities including London, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Six other cities will be announced later.

"For the first time we are identifying over 500 infrastructure projects we want to see built over the next decade and beyond. Roads, railways, airport capacity, power stations, waste facilities, broadband networks," the chancellor told the House of Commons.

Private equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are preparing a bid for all of Yahoo with Asian partners in a deal that could value the web portal at about $25bn (£16bn).

The plan follows smaller bids made by consortia including Microsoft tabled earlier this week which valued the web portal at just $20bn. The Microsoft bid was the lower of two.

New Yahoo bid ups price to $25bnPrivate equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital reported to be working with Alibaba to make full bid for web portal that would value above earlier bids by Microsoft and others

The EU Commission is proposing €80 billion in funding for research and innovation over seven years. The programme – to be known as “Horizon 2020” will make it easier to seek funding, easier to bring good ideas to market, and easier for Europe to invest in innovation for the future.

Neelie Kroes, EC vice president for the Digital Agenda, outlined details of the £63bn project, entitled ‘Horizon 2020', in a blog.

Neelie said: "Improving Europe’s investment in R&D – through better funding, and better coordination – is right at the heart of the Digital Agenda for Europe. The ICT sector, just under 5% of GDP, contributes an amazing 25% of business research and development spending. So it’s no wonder that ICT is the most important thematic area of funding of the Horizon 2020 proposal, as it is in the current FP7 programme.

"There’s funding for ICT-specific developments like e-infrastructures for science, and key enabling technologies (KETs) such as micro-/nanoelectronics and photonics in order to build on Europe’s strengths and fight for future industrial leadership. And support for a new instrument first put forward in the ICT area: Flagship projects in Future and Emerging Technologies (FET): long-term support for large-scale transformative projects (up to 1bn over 10 years per flagship)."

Accenture and BNP Paribas Cardif have signed an eight-year business process outsourcing (BPO) agreement under which Accenture will manage an important portfolio of BNP Paribas Cardif's group life insurance policies business in France, including the administrative management of the insurer's call centers and ancillary accounting operations.

The agreement is designed to enhance the quality and efficiency of services BNP Paribas Cardif is providing to its clients, leveraging an information technology (IT) platform that benefits from Accenture's expertise and competencies. The platform is designed to become an industry standard and to support BNP Paribas Cardif's growth agenda and reinforce its market position in the group life insurance business.

"In today's economy, leading insurers are increasingly looking to streamline their operations to create new business opportunities," said Didier Descombes, an executive director in Accenture's Financial Services group. "Our objective is to provide high-quality and cost-competitive services, and support insurers in their business strategy in France and globally."

This year is proving to be a year to remember for many companies, and for their suppliers and customers. News has rocked the world as macro-economic events coupled with natural disasters like the earthquake in Japan, Thailand’s floods and hurricanes in North America have left some supply chains in pieces. With 2011 coming to end, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the major themes that have dominated supply chain integration this year, and how businesses have been responding to these trends.

This blog is the first of two that I am writing on this topic, so watch for part two shortly.

If we start in Europe, the Eurozone crisis has left some suppliers struggling with the uncertainties. Fluctuating exchange rates coupled with credit being difficult to obtain has led to some companies cancelling contracts with suppliers, whilst some suppliers are forced to turn down new contract opportunities as workforce cuts begin to take effect. In response to this uncertainty some customers are restructuring their supplier base in an attempt to avoid disruption – in some instances this has led to re-allocating existing contracts to suppliers in more stable economic regions, whilst in others it has meant localising supplier activity in order to increase control.

Localisation of supply chain networks has also been a by-product of recent natural disasters. For example, this year’s earthquake in Japan caused major disruption to supplier networks which led to significant revenue losses around the world. With over $109 billion in economic damage as a result of natural disasters in 2010 according to the UN (based on a report by the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), this year’s events have led to some businesses becoming increasingly wary of dealing with suppliers that may be far away and unreachable in extreme conditions.

For example, some of our UK customers are moving manufacturing operations closer to home and likewise some customers in Japan are looking to work with Japanese suppliers that are local to their central operations, rather than placing key contracts with suppliers around the world.

Whilst reallocating supplier contracts to another territory may not seem that difficult, finding quality suppliers in unfamiliar regions can prove to be difficult. Once they are sourced, this is just the beginning of the process. Large companies need their suppliers to interact with them electronically. When a supplier changes a price for a particular product the buyer’s procurement system needs to be updated automatically. When a buyer changes their sales or manufacturing forecast the supplier’s demand planning system needs to be synchronised electronically. When a supplier ships an order the buyer needs to have visibility to the location of the inventory while in transit. Routine transactions are the most critical for automation. Purchase orders and invoices should be exchanged via EDI or XML technologies rather than over the phone or e-mail. The latter are not only time consuming and expensive, but error prone as well.

Unfortunately, establishing electronic communications between business partners is a complicated and time consuming process. There are many different variants of EDI and XML standards. The largest companies each implement these “standards” differently. Small suppliers typically lack the budget, resource or expertise to exchange data electronically. Specialised B2B e-commerce vendors have tools, experience and best practices that can help reduce the challenges associated with on-boarding. By managing enterprise communities this way, GXS has been able to reduce the time taken to onboard suppliers by about 60% when compared with traditional models and this is something that seems to be really appealing to companies this year as the hunt for new suppliers in different regions has really taken hold.

2011 has been a taxing year for supply chains across the world, and with both foreseen and unforeseen opportunities and challenges arising all of the time, the marketplace will continue to change. The ability to respond to these changes with agility and ease is critical to success from both a reputation and competitive perspective – regardless of which vertical industry a business falls into – and automation of B2B e-commerce will continue to be a key enabler of flexibility and scalability for businesses globally.

With budget cuts looming and spending reduction programmes biting hard into the public sector, it’s easy to see why IT managers are seeking alternative approaches to traditional procurement programmes. These measurers, whilst undoubtedly challenging, do provide a new opportunity for department heads to consider fresh avenues and solutions for technology procurement, in an effort to deliver more with less for the hard-pressed taxpayer.

It is encouraging to see that the Government is open to new ideas around technology innovation; an example of this can be seen in the launch of the open source toolkit, which helps decision-makers evaluate the effectiveness of adopting open source projects. This landmark launch dispels the unfounded myths around open source projects being unsafe, firmly cementing its reputation as a reliable and more importantly cost effective alternative to proprietary software.

The launch of the toolkit should inspire IT leaders to work with the open source community to provide innovative new solutions to cut costs and improve citizen services online. Part of this process will be utilising the newly created Open Solutions online forum, a model allowing the discussion and evaluation of adopting open source software for a project.

In many ways, the UK is still playing catch up with the US in terms of open source adoption. Across the other side of the pond, open source communities such as Drupal power a large amount of Government sites, safely and securely as the approved and standardised platform. This isn’t simply a case of value for money, the extensive community constantly deliver the latest updates and patches, meaning the sites remain optimised with the latest innovations on an on-going basis.

But the slow start in UK open source adoption does not only rest with the Government’s procurement teams, a responsibility lies with open source communities and vendors to make their case against traditional proprietary vendors to win the contract bid. All too often open source projects are overlooked because they lack the necessary sales, marketing and consultancy ecosystems that traditional enterprise software companies have as standard. In this context, it is critical that open source offerings are packaged up with the necessary expertise to ensure the technology is viewed as a viable and credible alternative. I’m a firm believer that open source projects should win on merit, and the new toolkit allows a level playing field for providers to put their offering forward.

With the Government’s overarching big society agenda promoting a collaborative approach to problem solving, there has never been a better time for open source communities to make their case. These developer communities strive for excellence through collaborative thinking and partnerships. What’s more, open source offerings provide a licence-free opportunity for unprecedented cost savings to the bottom line.

The UK public sector is clearly willing to look closer at open source, but it’s also crucial that providers match these expectations with a solid, effective ecosystem to increase confidence in their offerings. With a newly created level playing field, and a unique and innovative offering, there has never been a better time for open source communities and vendors to take up the public sector challenge.

CSC has announced that it has signed a contract with Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust for a new program of work to outsource the trust’s technology services.

The 7-year agreement, with the option to extend to 10 years, means that CSC has day-to-day responsibility for hosting, developing and managing much of the trust’s IT and back-office processes. CSC will provide IT help desk, networking, infrastructure, desktop engineering, application development and support. It will also provide advice and support for a clinically driven health informatics function.

The program has a two-stage approach. It started with a transition and stabilization phase to move the service to CSC, which was completed earlier this summer and involved all of the trust’s IT services staff transferring to CSC. This has been followed by a coordinated transformation program, which will enhance and modernize the trust’s IT capabilities and support its scheduled move to a new electronic patient record system.

Sheri Thureen, president of U.K. Healthcare, CSC, sees this as a key milestone in the evolution of CSC’s healthcare business. “This contract with Royal Berkshire plays to CSC’s core strengths as a world-class provider of outsourced IT services and as a major provider of IT services to the NHS in England,” she said.