Industry news

Oxfordshire County Council is looking to get another provider to run its £7.8m supported living and daytime support service, with 12.5 full-time equivalent posts lost in the process. The service employs 284 staff caring for 380 people, providing day centre care, transport, and help with tasks such as moving house.

The move is part of plans to slash £114m from the council’s budget over the next four years.

Last night, disabled rights champion Mark Smyth said: “We have been working with the council to manage the cuts, but when the council gives up its responsibilities in this area it can, in some instances, be frightening for people with learning disabilities."

HCL Technologies Ltd., a leading global IT services provider has announced its partnership with Trintech, a leading financial software provider. HCL will leverage Trintech’s Last Mile of Finance platform to deliver its customers with cost reduction and process improvement capabilities.

“HCL is glad to collaborate with Trintech which is a perfect fit to HCL’s strategy to offer wing-to-wing F&A services across O2C, P2P and R2R by adding ‘disruptive technology’ to F&A levers. We are confident that Trintech’s Last Mile of Finance platform will bring tangible improvements to our clients R2R processes, thereby enabling HCL to support clients in key operational and strategic areas of business,” said Randy Mueller, Vice President – F&A, Business Services, HCL Technologies Ltd.

Trintech offers a robust web-based platform on which HCL can transform its clients’ R2R processes. By leveraging Trintech’s Last Mile of Finance platform HCL will provide clients with complete, real-time visibility across multiple ERPs and disparate legacy systems; the Trintech platform enables HCL to automate clients’ reconciliations and streamline the entire financial close process to ensure compliance, improved cycle times, and reduced costs.

‘Trintech is pleased to include HCL in our partner portfolio. BPO services have matured and are not just about labor arbitrage any longer. Process standardization and operational excellence, enabled by technology such as Trintech’s ‘Last Mile of Finance’ platform, delivers year-on-year efficiency gains, providing standardisation, control and automation as well as visibility and transparency across the organization which is now key for CFOs particularly when looking to outsource to external providers,” said Paul Byrne, CEO Trintech.

A UNISON survey reveals that more than half of all councils have backtracked on outsourcing contracts by bringing services back inhouse, or are considering it, after failings by private companies.

The UK’s largest union’s evidence proves that privatisation is a risky experiment, as these councils revealed money was drained, standards were driven down and they had a lack of control over the services.

60% of council officers surveyed said the need to improve efficiency and reduce service costs had led them to consider bringing services back in-house. After cost, 44% of respondents said there was a need to improve service quality.

When the scale of savings was compared to the scale of the service back in-house, almost 13% of respondents said insourcing could lead to savings of up to £25,000 a year. A further 8% reported savings of up to £250,000, 6% said £500,000 and 5% said £1 million could be saved per year.

Other advantages of insourcing included flexibility (64%), greater local responsibility (52%), improved staff morale (33%) and better terms and conditions (25%).

Dave Prentis, UNISON’s General Secretary, said: “This survey exposes the real danger of outsourcing services to private companies. Councils currently seeking it out as an easy option must realise that it will cost them more in the long run.

“These private contractors have failed on their promises and the councils have been left with huge costs and lower standards of services. As well as the huge impact on the public, privatisation risks the jobs, pay, pension, terms and conditions of hardworking staff.

“The quality, efficiency, accountability, flexibility and economics of inhouse public services just cannot be matched. Councils under pressure to review their budgets must learn a harsh lesson from this research - keeping services inhouse is best for the community, workforce and the economy.”

This research commissioned for UNISON by APSE, gives evidence of major contracts being brought to an end and services coming back inhouse - benefiting workers and the public.

The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that it has entered into a radical new contract with BAE Systems Detica to provide security services through a managed service arrangement.

The contract will cover a full spectrum of information assurance and cyber security services. Detica will focus initially on support and advice around the Ministry's IT architecture, its security policy, governance and risk management and compliance with regulatory requirements. It will also advise on cyber security and protective measures.

Optional components include security testing, protective monitoring of both internal and external activity, and forensics.

This announcement follows a hard fought competition using the Office of Government Commerce Buying Solution framework.

The engagement offers a significant benefit from traditional security engagements in that it provides a very efficient way for the MoJ to secure a wide range of information assurance and cyber security services through one supplier, thus enabling a substantial cost saving.

Traditionally departments have augmented their security teams through the use of contractors, often in response to temporary requirements. These arrangements have led to an ad hoc mix of suppliers and teams which doesn't always deliver the desired result within budget.

Detica will provide an on-going service to the MoJ which should enable the MoJ to make substantial cost savings around its security requirements and transfers delivery risk from the MoJ to Detica by being outcome based. Performance metrics will be gathered to monitor efficiency and allow the service to improve over time.

Bob Nicholls, Head of Information Assurance (Information Communication Technology), Ministry of Justice comments: -This contract introduces a new way of working for my ICT IA team and we anticipate it will deliver real benefits to the Ministry of Justice, both in terms of security and cost efficiency. Protecting the Ministry's data and systems is vital to the smooth running of the Justice system and we look forward to working together closely with BAE Systems Detica to achieve this."

Datanomic brings its risk and compliance screening application to Oracle

Oracle has acquired Datanomic, a provider of enterprise customer data quality software and related applications for Watch List compliance screening, as part of its data integration and master data management (MDM) offering.

The combination of data quality products from Oracle and Datanomic is expected to provide data quality capabilities for any data domain, including purpose-built capabilities for customer and product data.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca agreed to sell its dental implants and medical devices unit Astra Tech to Dentsply International for $1.8 billion (1.1 billion pounds) in cash.

The U.S. dental company, which beat off bids from rival medical technology groups and private equity firms, said on Wednesday the acquisition would increase its revenue by around 25 percent and would be immediately accretive to earnings.

Astra Tech, which had revenue last year of $535 million, is the world's third-largest dental implants maker after Straumann and Nobel Biocare. It has a separate medical devices arm focussed principally on urology and surgery.

Schott Chooses HP for Technology Infrastructure Management Services to Support Manufacturer’s Global Growth

Hewlett-Packard Germany GmbH has announced that SCHOTT AG, a multinational company that develops and produces specialty glass and other materials, has renewed its outsourcing services agreement with HP for an additional five years.

With the new agreement, HP will continue delivering Utility Services to enable SCHOTT to maintain its global growth in a cost efficient way. HP has provided technology services for SCHOTT since 2004.

“To achieve our growth goals, it is critical to have processes and technology infrastructure in place to support our expansion into new countries and regions,” said Andreas Beeres, vice president corporate information technology for SCHOTT. “In addition to our long-standing relationship, HP’s global reach as well as the team’s deep technology and manufacturing industry understanding will help us create a ‘one-IT’ technology strategy within SCHOTT.”

HP will continue to manage and operate SCHOTT’s technology infrastructure in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and, with the new agreement, expand service delivery to support part of its worldwide operations.

Saab AB and Mahindra Satyam announce strategic agreement - to establish an India Technology Centre

Mahindra Satyam, a leading global consulting and IT services provider, has announced that Saab AB, further to its intent expressed at Aero India Feb 2011, has entered into an agreement to establish Saab India Technology Centre (SITC). This decision strengthens the already strategic relationship between Saab and the Mahindra Group.

The aim is to increase development in India in terms of identified concrete programs and technologies to SITC. The centre will provide a secure platform to facilitate development of Aerospace & Defence projects in India, supporting the establishment Saab is pursuing. India presents a huge opportunity for Saab across their business areas Aeronautics, Dynamics, Electronic Defense Systems and Security and Defence Solutions.

This 300-seater dedicated centre would be established at one of the Mahindra sites and will be an extended arm of Saab working on New Product Development and Product Sustenance Engineering. While supporting the internal operational excellence and optimization initiatives within Saab, this centre will also support offset obligations for all Saab products and services in India.

Engineering services is a one-of-the key focus and growth areas within Mahindra Satyam, which currently runs some of the largest dedicated R&D centres for global majors across industry segments including Aerospace. Mahindra Satyam has the right operational expertise and technical maturity to ensure this centre delivers the set organizational targets.

Saab’s experience and technological prowess providing services and solutions ranging from military defence to civil security combined with Mahindra Satyam’s proven Global Engineering practice would result in a highly efficient and technically mature development environment in India that can successfully address opportunities arising in these domains from emerging markets.

Saab serves the global market with world-leading products, services and solutions ranging from military defence to civil security. Saab has operations and employees on all continents and constantly develops, adopts and improves new technology to meet customers’ changing needs.

Winners of the 2011 European Outsourcing Association Awards Announced

The European Outsourcing Association Awards took place on Monday 20 June, in Madrid, Spain. In the historic Casino De Madrid, the preeminent European outsourcing projects, providers, innovations and locations were judged by a panel of experts and rewarded for best practice in pan-European outsourcing. Criteria for entries stipulated that projects must involve a minimum of two European countries.

Now in its second year, the award ceremony took place at the end of the first day of the European Outsourcing Association Summit, where key figures in the business outsourcing community gathered to debate the latest trends and learn from each other’s experiences.

The award categories cover a wide cross-section of outsourcing projects and winning is regarded as a huge accolade. For the 200+ guests, the awards presented a unique opportunity to gain insight into the working models of the most successful projects of 2010/11 thus spreading best practice throughout the European outsourcing community.

And the winners were…

BPO Contract of the Year

Centrica PLC

IT Outsourcing Project of the Year

Ferrovial S.A.

Outsourcing Service Provider/Advisory of the Year

Luxoft

Offshoring Destination Of The Year

Ukraine

Outsourcing End-User of the Year

Telefonica Germany

Award for Innovation In Outsourcing

Business Integration Partners- Prisa

Award For Corporate Social Responsibility

CSC – Orange (France Telecom)

Indra

Special Award in Memory of Jaime Casado (€5000 to support a new start-up)

Aptent

Speaking at the awards, Andy Rogers, EOA board representative for corporate users, commented: “The submissions this year were of an exceptionally high standard, and the record submissions – more than double that of last year – shows that the EOA Awards are becoming the de facto standard of quality for the European outsourcing community. Innovation is key to outsourcing contracts and relationships, so to see that recognised and rewarded is particularly satisfying.”

Advanced 365 highlights key issues for businesses looking to minimise the risk of moving to a cloud computing model

Cloud computing is accelerating into mainstream business life. According to a recent report released by market research firm Forrester Research, the global cloud computing market is expected to grow from $40.7 billion to $240 billion by 2020.

Despite this anticipated surge in interest many organisations remain cautious about moving their IT services to the Cloud. Recent high profile server problems that led to partial server downtime of Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) service have once again raised the topic of cloud computing security. A survey conducted by network services provider Colt has revealed a surprising distrust of the Cloud. 45 per cent of the 500 senior IT executives surveyed stated that they saw security concerns as the biggest risk associated with moving to Cloud computing, while 42 per cent said they were concerned about damaging the reputation of their brands as a result of performance or security-related issues.

Neil Cross, managing director of leading managed services and cloud computing provider, Advanced 365, highlights five key points for consideration by organisations moving to Cloud computing.

Choose a reputable provider

Cloud computing is not necessarily a bigger risk than in-house IT, just a different risk. Previously, the responsibility of maintaining a secure and smooth running in-house IT infrastructure sat exclusively within your organisation. By moving into the Cloud you are now sharing this burden of control with another provider and whilst the safety of your data is of paramount importance to you, it is also vital to your Cloud provider’s business reputation too. Choosing a reputable Cloud provider who is willing to provide you with details of its uptime and performance records to alleviate any fears you have concerning their reliability is critical to the success of the project.

The devil is in the detail

Before you commence any IT outsourcing project it is vital that you agree tight service level agreements (SLAs) with your service provider in writing. Agreeing strict contractual terms will rubberstamp expectations around availability, downtime and maintenance as well as the penalties that would apply if these levels are not met.

It’s important to remember that SLAs do not have to be ‘one-size-fits-all’ agreements. Complex organisations typically have multiple SLAs to cover separate parts of the business at various times throughout the day. Ensure that your SLAs are tailored to your organisation’s needs so that your key systems are always available during business hours.

You can never plan too much

Just because the Cloud is quick and easy to deploy doesn’t mean you should make a hurried decision which could severely impact the day-to-day running of your business. Like any other major IT project, it is essential that you plan thoroughly before moving to the Cloud.

In particular, you should think carefully about who is going to manage the project, consider the potential risks of migration, how to maintain business continuity and ensure that testing is scheduled outside of business hours to minimise any disruption resulting from downtime. It’s also essential for you to make sure that you can quickly switch back to your previous systems if things aren’t working. A measured approach to the Cloud in the short-term will reap long-term dividends.

Talk to a services partner to determine which option is right for you

From public to private and from applications to infrastructure, there are a bewildering number of Cloud computing options. Take the time to fully understand the differences between the offerings of the major providers such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft or talk to a trusted services partner who clearly understands the Cloud and has relationships with all major IT Cloud suppliers. Your partner should be able to clearly demonstrate the costs of entering and withdrawing from the Cloud and advise which on-demand applications are best suited to your business.

Know where your data is going to be stored

Variation in data protection regulations mean that different territories have different data protection regimes so make sure you know where your data is going to be physically stored. During the initial negotiations with your cloud provider it’s essential to clarify if there is a regulatory requirement for your data to be held within a certain area, for example Europe, and if so make this a term of the contract. Leading Cloud providers will have a strong grasp on which information must be held in particular localities so double check that your provider understands the data demands of your sector.

By enabling rapid access to leading technology on-demand, Cloud computing is a cost effective and flexible alternative to inefficient, in-house IT systems. Cloud computing is the future; however the fear of potential security breaches is understandably making organisations question whether moving to the Cloud is worth the risk. By working with a specialist partner, organisations can minimise these risks and benefit from all that Cloud computing has to offer.