Industry news

The UK government has awarded a landmark contract to Tata Consultancy Services to administer Britain's new national pension scheme. TCS will take charge for the new personal pension accounts, known as Nest, that are due to be launched in 2012.

The deal was not expected to be signed until after the upcoming election, but was by TCS on Tuesday. It covers an initial 10 years with a possible extension for another five.

This announcement comes just days after BBC reports that Labour is planning to sign-off on new NHS NPfIT agreements before the general election.

Indian bank Punjab and Sind have announced they have signed a long-term contract with IT service vendor, Wipro to provide IT outsourcing services.

Under the deal, Indian firm Wipro will provide the bank with, system integration, provisioning and management of core banking solution and enterprise applications, including the banks entire underlying IT infrastructure.

Wipro also plans to undertake both the commissioning and management of the banks data and disaster recovery centre, enhancing service and support for the bank and according to Wipro, ‘enabling centralised banking operations across the country’.

Queensland Department of Education and Training has renewed its outsourcing contract with Unisys’ Australian subsidiary, to provide IT services to the department.

Under the $41m Australian dollar agreement, Unisys will continue to provide IT services to all Technical and Further Education institutes across the state, supplying IT services to students, teachers and administrators at 90 campuses across 13 Queensland institutes and the Australian Agricultural College.

Unisys will continue to support approximately 330 servers and 19,000 desktops whilst managing local and wide area networks and providing help desk services to serve approximately 75,000 support calls per year.

Tony Henshaw, vice president, Asia Pacific, Unisys Global Outsourcing and infrastructure services said the experience gained so far had helped Unisys work closely with the Department of Education and Training design a targeted solution to meet the department’s future needs.

“Under the renewal, we are committed to implementing a modernised solution that adopts new tools to enable greater levels of automation, improved service levels and efficiency,” he added.

The Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) market is expected to grow at almost 20 per cent this year, reaching an annual contract volume (ACV) of US$3.7 billion, according to Everest Consulting.

Although new contract signings were lower in 2009 compared to recent years, new FAO spending continued to grow organically through contract extensions, representing almost 40 per cent of 2009 ACV growth.

About 35 percent of all currently active FAO contracts, valued at US$5 billion, are up for renewal during the next three years. Everest expects this cycle of contracts renewal to fuel organic growth going forward as buyers focus on expanding the value they generate from FAO.

“As the global economy continues its path towards recovery, we expect to see the FAO market regain traction, driven by new deals and scope expansions, as well as more than 45 contracts up for extension this year,” said Katrina Menzigian, research VP at Everest. “We foresee increased adoption across industries and geographies to continue. Beyond the United States, we expect contract signings in the domestic Asia-Pacific market as well as Rest of Europe to rise.”

Readers can click here to read an extract of the Finance & Accounting Outsourcing Annual Report 2010.

The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has signed a six-year contract with Fujitsu to manage around 140,000 desktop computers for its staff.

Fujitsu claim the contract is the single biggest desktop outsource deal in the UK.

The contract will enable the DWP to make savings on desk-side support and hardware costs and reduced electricity consumption which will bring the DWP’s carbon footprint down.

Joe Harley, DWP IT director general & chief information officer said: “This is the first in a series of competitions to replace our existing IT and telephony services contracts by 2015 and it sets the tone by delivering significant benefits for the DWP and as a framework for Government wide IT.”

Net-a-Porter.com, a luxury online fashion retailer, has signed a contract with Claranet to provide web hosting and connectivity services that will support its expansion plans

Playboy’s chief executive Scott Flanders has announced more outsourcing contracts to follow in the coming year, making Playboy more profitable, according to the Chicago Tribune,

This follows previous news that Playboy Enterprises had outsource all business functions except editorial to American Media.

Flanders told the Chicago Tribune that the Chicago-based media conglomerate could cut its headcount of 573 employees by half as partners take over its existing operations and expand into new ventures.

Playboy also will proceed with plans to open "four or five" additional entertainment venues with partners by year-end, including a casino in Mexico and a nightclub in Miami.

Cleveland Police in the North-East of England are set to outsource all 999 call operations to a private company in a bid to save millions of pounds as public sector budget cuts continue to pose implications, it has been widely reported.

Cleveland police will appoint a private sector partner to provide both control room and other backroom functions.

The decision, which has been criticised by the Police Federation, is believed to amount to a wholesale change that would make policing less accountable and leave private company employees in control of incidents on the streets, said chairman, Paul McKeever.

However, Cleveland’s chief constable, Sean Price defended the plan, the public would benefit from potential £20 million savings and the "modern methods" used by private companies would mean customer satisfaction would also be improved.

The chief constable also reinforced the importance of calls, insisting any new staff would be expected to meet national call handling standards by answering 90% of all switchboard calls within 30 seconds and all 999 calls within 10 seconds.

"We would rightly be held to account by the public, politicians and media should things go wrong, however this situation is not of our choice but we have to recognise the realities and unless we are able to continue modernising the way we operate we could in a very short time be facing the prospect of having to consider big cuts in both jobs and front-line policing,” he said.

Mobile communication services provider NII Holdings has signed an IT outsourcing deal with HP Enterprise Services.

Under the agreement the outsourcing service provider will manage NII’s IT applications and technology infrastructure support services throughout Latin America and its headquarters in the US.

Technology giant, HP aims to standardise processes, consolidate technology infrastructure support services and employ new technology to assist NII’s customer offering.

It will also provide applications development, management and testing services that include NII's software development processes, billing systems and applications support.

Alan Strauss, chief technology officer of NII, said: “Using the expertise of HP and the experience of our employees, we will standardise our processes and leverage the opportunities to increase our operational flexibility, improve cost efficiencies, and improve our service quality.”

First Food Services, the Burger King franchisee in the United Arab Emirate (UAE), has announced the launch of the Burger King Call Centre, it has been reported. The call centre will be a centralised service point that allows customers in the UAE to dial one dedicated number to place orders at any Burger King restaurant anywhere in the country.

Equipped with an integrated database of customer contacts, the call centre will provide support in both English and Arabic, and will take customer orders, answer queries and receive complaints.

Yasser Abdel Azim, general manager of First Food Services commented: “With the launch of this call center, Burger King customers in the UAE now have a number to place orders - irrespective of the restaurant location.”