Last week I was ruminating about the demise of the ‘flourishing friendship’ between the U.S.A and the UK. I then assured myself that normality would soon be regained and the two would be bosom buddies once again… how wrong could one be? Again there has been a difference in opinion between the two nations. This time it is over the decision to send the Lockerbie bomber back to Libya to spend the remainder of his sentence.

The Round-Up is weary of all the bad news in the past few weeks. Serious news is somewhat of an unusual occurrence in the summer months. This is because within the realms of journalism August in particular is known as the silly season for news. This, it is claimed, is as a result of newsmakers being off on holiday (not ALL newsmakers I might add). As next week is last week of the month the Round-Up will endeavour to bring some light hearted news your way.

Now I can commence with the serious outsourcing news that was reported this week.

The Canadian Press has signed a media outsourcing contract with Pagemasters. Pagemasters North America will provide newspapers in Canada and the U.S. with a complete range of editorial and production services.

Pagemasters currently provides editorial outsourcing for newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. As part of their services, Pagemasters prepares, edits and designs pages tailored to a particular paper’s specifications. Perhaps they could spell the end of the silly season.

This week also saw Pepco Holdings signing an energy efficiency contract with Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin will implement energy efficiency and conservation programs and services for Pepco non-residential customers in the District of Columbia.

Under the contract, Lockheed Martin will manage several programs to encourage Pepco’s commercial, governmental and institutional customers to identify and implement energy saving opportunities related to building performance. The Round-Up can’t keep up with all these new fangled outsourcing processes; outsourced media, outsourced energy efficiency etc.

Finally I can return to some old school outsourcing deals, Scandinavian Airlines has signed an F&A outsourcing contract with Accenture.

As part of the contract Accenture will provide services including; accounts payable, accounts receivable and accounting to reporting. Accenture will supply the services mainly in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom. They will be delivered through Accenture’s centre in Delhi, India.

Another mix-bag of news this week – silly season, innovative outsourcing processes and good old business process outsourcing. I can not promise you that next week won’t contain much of the same. However, by the looks of companies like Pagemasters I can’t even promise that I will be here next week. But I have a funny inkling that we haven’t seen the last of the silly season.

See you next week.