Industry news

In recent years, the charity sector has undergone significant turmoil. And as the media increases its scrutiny of the third sector, charities all across the UK have undergone a crash-course in learning how to grapple with ramped-up regulations and cuts to government funding.

An increasing number of charities are now looking to outsourcing as a means to tackle shrinking budgets and meet new regulatory requirements. Hence why the NOA, in partnership with DDC Outsourcing Solutions, deemed now the perfect time to launch its brand new series of Charity Sector Special Interest Groups.

The round table discussion

The first round table of the series took place on 10th May at Freeths, the UK-based law firm. DDC OS attended, and were accompanied by a charity sector-based client; the two having experienced a highly successful outsourcing partnership over the past couple of years, a case study that served to exemplify many necessary components of successful charity outsourcing.

Unsurprisingly, supplier-buyer relationships were at the core of the discussion. Trust and good communication were singled out as two of the most important priorities if the third sector’s outsourcing is to work well in the long term.

Those around the table felt that reputational risk looms very large for charities, especially after the recent media coverage of mismanagement on the part of some charities – the death of Olive Cooke in 2015 and other cases have caused concerns for how charities use their data. Accordingly, it is important that charities work with service providers they can trust their brand with, who put particular effort into understanding and carrying out the charity’s mission. On the other hand, it was agreed that a carefully chosen third party specialist could minimise the risk of charities misusing their own data.

Communication was seen as key here - DDC OS and the client charity shared how their own experience of how regular and open discussion were vital to the thriving relationship they’d built.

To read the full blog post here.

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Related: Event Launched to Help Charities Outsource Effectively

At a time when public sector outsourcing is simultaneously more prevalent and more widely criticised than ever, leading temporary staffing expert de Poel has worked wonders through its outsourcing partnership with North East Procurement Organisation (NEPO), achieving £1.23 million in savings in less than two years.

In addition to his, de Poel has also significantly reduced the need for administrative activities and overseen the use of almost 2,000 agency workers per week for NEPO’s customers, equating to over £30 million in spend.

Andrew Preston, Group Managing Director of de Poel, commented: “It is fantastic to be working with NEPO, offering the very best in temporary staffing solutions to their growing network of North East local authorities and associate members.

“We are delighted they have decided to extend the contract for a further two years; the target now is to grow the contract to a minimum of £40m in the next twelve months and continue to support NEPO in capturing further areas of their agency staffing spend, which were historically out of scope.”

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Related: Capita - Salford City Council partnership extended for three years

Thames Water has chosen Wipro, a major information technology, consulting and business process services company, to execute the transformation of its customer service and retail billing capabilities.

The move comes in response to the Open Water deregulated market – an agreement which will see 1.2m businesses and other non-household customers gaining rights to choose their water supplier.

Wipro will help Thames Water implementing a fast-paced SAP® industry solution for utilities billing, along with a new market integration gateway and a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform using SAP Hybris® Cloud for Customer.

According to Ian Cain, Managing Director, Customer Service and Retail, Thames Water, “The integrated solution that will be rolled out is intended to help Thames Water capture a single and unified view of each customer and will thereby, provide us with deeper insights about them, through analytics. This will enable us to have more meaningful interactions with our customers and help us serve them better.”

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Related: Accenture secures lengthy contracts with Wipro and RSA

EXL, the leading operations management and analytics provider, announced this week it will be partnering with Automation Anywhere in order to increase its Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities.

The deal will see Automation Anywhere providing an industry-leading RPA platform as well as business operations, analytics and industry expertise to EXL. The ultimate goal of the partnership is the automation of manual, repetitive tasks which will drastically improve EXL’s process efficiency without changing the underlying IT structure of the company.

According to Baljinder Singh, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at EXL, "The non-intrusive Automation Anywhere platform will complement EXL's proprietary technology, simplify integrations with clients, foster outcome-based engagement models and create differentiated, industry-specific solutions.”

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Related:The IT Function and Robotic Process Automation

Teleperformance has state it will hire 300+ employees for its call centre in Boise.

The new hiring campaign has been motivated in part by the temporary reduction in business volume with a particular US-based client. Teleperformance’s recent report stated: “Growth was dampened, however, by a temporary reduction in business volume with a client in the telecommunications industry for certain product lines due to an incident involving data security.”

The client referred to in the report is thought to be AT&T – which has been recently fined $25 million due to a data breach at its call centre in Mexico by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The recruitment of the 300 new employees will be done over the next six months, increasing the company’s call centre in Boise to more than 1000 employees.

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Related: Teleperformance brings 500 new contact centre jobs to Reno, Nevada

The Australian Antarctic mission has awarded Serco with a £160m contract to design, build and operate a new icebreaker research and supply vessel.

The contract has been signed for fourteen years. The project will start with a four-year “design and build” phase which will be followed by a 10-year operation and maintenance phase – the last phase can be extended by five years.

The new vessel will supply the Antarctic research stations with equipment, cargo, personnel and carry out research from its facilities on board – with capacity for 34 crew members and 116 scientists.

Mark Irwin, Serco’s Asia Pacific CEO, said “this project plays a vital role in supporting Australian and global Antarctic scientific programmes”. The new contract will expand Serco’s presence in the area, strengthening Serco’s expertise in project management and end-to-end vessel support.

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Related: Serco enters bid for £1bn Australian government detention facility

The EMEA’s outsourcing industry has had a stellar performance in the first quarter of 2016, according to the newly released Q1 EMEA ISG Outsourcing Industry Index. The value of the industry rose by 19 percent in the EMEA regions (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) to reach €2.25bn.

According to the ISG, the increase in the size of the industry when compared to the same quarter of 2015 was brought on by a rise in both contract value and volume.

ISG, the leading technology and market intelligence advisory company, measures industry value by summing up all commercial contracts in the region with an annual contract value (ACV) of €4m or more.

As was the case with the global market in the same quarter, contract restructuring was a key growth driver in the EMEA region. When compared to the same period of 2015, the ACV of restructurings rose 115 percent and contract volume for restructurings rose by 91 percent.

Unsurprisingly, ITO (Information Technology Outsourcing) and BPO’s (Business Process Outsourcing) were the frontrunners in terms of value generated for the industry. When compared to the first quarter of last year, the ACV of ITO contracts rose by 20 percent reaching close to €1.5bn.

With regards to BPO, the service has had its best performance in four years, having risen by 41 percent in ACV when compared to the first quarter of last year. ISG reports that a rise in contact centre and facility management deals has boosted BPOs’ ACV in the first quarter of the year.

As John Keppel, Partner and President of ISG declares, “2016 got off to a strong start in EMEA. The increased ACV and contract activity in the first quarter are a welcome contrast to 2015’s sluggish start and suggest a healthy market flow for the region".

As for the UK, the country saw a rise in ACV and contract volume of around 10 percent. The performance level is a welcomed change from that of the last two periods which saw UK activity consistently below historical levels.

Whether this rate of growth can be sustained, remains to be seen. As Mr Keppel forecasts, “ACV levels should remain in positive territory for the year due to the market's fast start in 2016. We see consistent demand in the UK and pockets of increasing long-term demand across several of the smaller EMEA markets."

To read the full report click here.

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Related: Outsourcing industry continues to impress in Q1 2016, says ISG

UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has selected Paris-based Sopra Steria to deliver a new digital regulatory market data processing platform.

The six-year contract includes a new platform to support the FCA’s ongoing regulation of firms, as well as catering to new requirements under the forthcoming Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) – which obliges trading venues and investment firms to submit market data on a wide range of financial instruments to the FCA.

The Chief Operating Officer at FCA, Georgina Philippou, said: “Having reliable, robust and scalable market data processing solutions is critical to our role in regulating capital markets”.

The new platform is meant to bring the FCA greater transparency, and a larger breadth and scope of information on reported transactions.

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Related: TfL appoints Sopra Steria, Capita and Deloitte for IT solutions framework

Historically, call centre outsourcing contracts have had a much bleaker track record than other types of deals such as BPO and IT outsourcing.

CIO reports this week that figures show between a quarter to a third of all call centre deals up for renewal in a given year end up being terminated – a much higher rate than other types of outsourcing, which average at 15 percent.

What is more alarming, according to a recent report by Everest Group, is that termination rates have risen exponentially over the last two years to an average of 50 percent where contact centres are concerned. On the other hand, those who choose to continue their previous call centre contracts generally decide to expand the scope of their outsourcing either adding geographies, lines of business, or high-value processes.

Everest Group analysts explain the dual trend by the fact that contact centre contracts are now subject to higher expectations on the part of contractors. Once an area of outsourcing where price competition was imperative, voice contracts are now seen as an essential part of the business strategy. Those unable to contribute their own share towards business growth and improvement are usually in for an unwelcomed surprise – contract termination.

Jeffrey Puritt, president of TELUS International, told CIO “Call centre outsourcing buyers now expect their incumbent providers to go ‘beyond the obvious’ of the service-level agreement, especially after the first few years of the relationship. Contracts are not renewed because these relationships have failed to deliver meaningful, long-term, value”.

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Related: Firstsource champions university-accredited degree for contact centre staff

Capita has won an extension to its customer service outsourcing contract with Debenhams.

The department store operator has decided to extend its contract with Capita until the beginning of September 2022 – valued at £72m in total.

The contract includes the provision of Debenham’s customer services function, the support of multichannel growth with the provision of insight as well as data analytics, and the managing of its online and retail store ordering and delivery services.

Andy Parker, Capita’s CEO, said “throughout our relationship with Debenhams we have helped the business develop and grow, and have successfully worked together to innovate and enhance the Debenhams customer experience… Capita will continue to provide excellent levels of customer services and through further we will support the business’s goal to deliver a world class customer proposition.”

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Related: Capita - Salford City Council partnership extended for three years