Industry news

This week the United Kingdom will be subject to a visit from Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Party of China, his first since he started his presidency.

Britain’s “visionary and strategic choice” – as Xi put it – to become Beijing’s strongest ally in the West, within 10 years, could bring further strength to the UK’s outsourcing industry, prompting far more foreign direct investment and potentially increasing the use of UK-based service providers by Asian companies.

The Guardian reported that roughly 150 deals will be sealed this week alone, in sectors such as healthcare, aircraft manufacturing and energy. The financial backing needed to kick-start the Hinkley Point nuclear reactor may also be found.

When tackling this subject, the FT points out that Osborne currently has a poor record when it comes to infrastructure investment. Since 2010 capital expenditure on infrastructure projects has fallen 5.4 per cent, at a time when extra spending in this area is crucial to unlocking Britain’s outsourcing potential and increasing national productivity. With the government reluctant to commit more taxpayer money to this cause during its current term, contributions will probably have to come from organisations based in foreign nations.

As a provider of services, China is one of the UK’s biggest competitors. In terms of expansion, China is way ahead. In the time it would take to build Heathrow’s third runway (assuming the project doesn’t fall through), KPMG estimates that China will have built 17 new airports of its own.

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Related: UK outsourcing to benefit from China stock market woes

A group of Interserve cleaners contracted to work onsite at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been put under disciplinary investigation and could be facing redundancy, after grouping together to write a letter to foreign secretary Philip Hammond on the subject of their pay.

The cleaners are currently paid £7.05 an hour and this will be brought up to £7.20 an hour next April, falling in line with George Osborne’s new national minimum wage. The cleaners were looking to discuss the discrepancy between this wage and the London living wage, as calculated by the Living Wage Foundation, which is £9.15 an hour.

A protest has been planned outside the Foreign Office next Monday.

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Related: Mitie joins Serco and G4S in embracing government’s national wage hike

Gloucester City Council has opted to extend its current outsourcing contract with Civica for another three years, lengthening the deal until at least October 2021.

The council has achieved savings to the tune of over £200,000 a year thanks to its collaboration with Civica, and expects the three-year contract extension to reduce costs by another £100,000. The outsourcing partnership has also allowed Gloucester City Council to increase the amount of council tax it collects and has vastly improved the efficiency of its benefits-claiming process.

The original deal involved the provision of the council’s IT services. However, in 2014 the council increased the scope of the contract, outsourcing back office, transactional and corporate support services to Civica.

Cabinet minister David Normal heralded the success Gloucester City Council’s outsourcing: “It demonstrates how a public-private partnership can help local authorities achieve savings while continuing to deliver an excellent service to the residents of Gloucester. I am pleased we will be continuing this partnership arrangement.”

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Related: Unison queries West Sussex County Council’s plans to improve customer service

Wipro has elected to sponsor a recently established non-profit research centre, which focuses on the application and development of technology related to the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) aims to “bring forth radical new capabilities throughout the Internet of Things value chain”.

Wipro joins Samsung, AT&T and AirWatch as a founding sponsor; between them, these companies will help to shape the director of the centre’s IoT research.

“Today, enterprises and academic institutions collaborate in a manner previously impossible to harness collective knowledge and innovate. We are happy to join forces with Georgia Tech and explore the possibilities of how the IoT explosion can transform the world in which we live,” said Dr. Alan Atkins, vice president and global head of IoT at Wipro.

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Related: Chelsea FC select Wipro as official digital and IT partner

Last night in Portugal, the winners of the European Outsourcing Association (EOA) Awards 2015 were officially announced.

The EOA Awards ceremony celebrated the successes of outsourcing buyers and service providers who have demonstrated the very best practice in pan-European outsourcing.

Kerry Hallard, CEO of the National Outsourcing Association (NOA), had high praise for the quality of the winning submissions, as well as those shortlisted:

“Once again we’ve seen a fantastic array of organisations offering up some of the best outsourcing examples that Europe and beyond has to offer, making this year’s awards ceremony particularly competitive. The winners must be immensely proud – every entrant and outsourcing partnership on the shortlist showcased the ability to provide business value in an exciting and innovative manner.

“It was fantastic to see such a wide variety of representatives from our industry sharing experiences, knowledge and ideas with one another. There was clearly some great networking going on, for the new-comers and more established firms alike. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors CGI, AICEP, Portugal Outsourcing and Miratech for their contributions and support.”

The winners of the EOA Awards 2015 are as follows:

European BPO Contract of the Year

Intetics

European IT Outsourcing Project of the Year

Miratech and Lindorff

European Outsourcing Service Provider of the Year

Conectys

European Outsourcing Advisory of the Year

Elixirr

Offshoring Destination of the Year

Bulgaria

Award for Corporate Social Responsibility

Avasant

Pan-European Buyer of Outsourcing Services of the Year

Minsk City Authorities

Outsourcing Works: Award for Delivering Business Value in European Outsourcing

ITC Infotech and Holland & Barrett International

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Related:

National Outsourcing Association Awards shortlist announcement

With more companies using contact centres for front-end customer engagement than ever before, the relationship between clients and their customers is increasingly dependent on the capacity of the call centre to respond to customer needs efficiently, informatively and professionally.

With an increasing focus today on personalised service, there is much scope, then, to not only take and deliver information efficiently, but also to build a brand’s relationship with its customers on an individual basis. Friendly, efficient and informative customer service will ensure long term brand loyalty and encourage word-of-mouth recommendation. So how can contact centres improve their reputation and increase customer loyalty by building meaningful rapport with customers?

The most important factor is a committed, well-informed and professional tone on the phone, which comes from long-term, happy and motivated employees. But are contact centres and their technology vendors delivering a working environment that sustains the levels of employee satisfaction required to drive productive, long term relationships? Employee absence and attrition levels are a good indicator of wellbeing and satisfaction within contact centres. Industry research over the last few years has shown that agent attrition and absenteeism remains high in the outsourcing industry.

In a recent white paper - Building Trust in the Workplace – I discuss whether we are missing the single most important part of any productive and successful relationship. TRUST. The paper suggests five practical steps that can be taken immediately to sow the seeds for a culture of trust in the call centre and ensure that agents have the tools and access to information to make informed decisions when on the phone to customers.

You can read the full white paper here:

Building Trust in the Workplace

The National Outsourcing Association (NOA) has told the London Assembly it is unfair to assume that the Metropolitan Police Service is liable to commit a “high-profile outsourcing failure”, Police Professional has reported.

The UK police news site quoted Kerry Hallard, CEO of the NOA, on her reaction to the London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee’s claim that the Met is likely to follow in the footsteps of the Ministry of Justice and get caught up in an outsourcing scandal with the private sector.

She told Police Professional: “Only outsourcing failures make for big headlines, yet the vast majority of public sector outsourcing is an undeniable success. The Met Police are experts in what they do – that’s policing. Outsourcing will allow the Met to focus on core tasks rather than IT and back-office services, which will be handled instead by third-party specialists.”

Ms Hallard also drew attention to the fact that, while the Committee’s “To Protect and Save” report briefly touches on the ongoing outsourcing relationship shared by Cleveland Police and Sopra Steria, it neglects to mention many of the positives outcomes Cleveland’s police force has experienced as a result: a 25 per cent reduction in cost, 31 more officers on the frontline and greatly enhanced technological abilities. The Met Police recently signed its own ten-year contract with Shared Services Connected Limited, a company majority-owned by Sopra Steria.

Kerry Hallard added: “I’m sure that the Met and other police departments around the country will be hoping to emulate Cleveland’s accomplishments.”

However, the NOA CEO did agree with the London Assembly’s recommendation that the Met should improve its commercial expertise, along with many other outsourcing contract managers working in the public sector. She said as much when she addressed the Assembly back in June.

The NOA offers specialised training to these personnel through its Public Sector Skills Academy, precisely so that they can upskill commercially and negotiate more competitively with their private sector counterparts.

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Related: How the UK’s police will cut down its £1 billion-a-year IT costs

Fujitsu and Gatwick Airport have announced plans to extend their successful outsourcing relationship by another five years, with the intention of removing the existing printer estate and delivering a “full technology refresh” which will include the use of single and multi-function printers.

This win comes off the back of a contract signed by Gatwick Airport, Fujitsu, Xchanging and Cisco to provide a communications infrastructure which will make devices in the airport more collaborative, with the addition of voice, video and instant messaging services throughout the building.

The new Fujitsu-Gatwick Airport deal will benefit over 2,750 personnel, including 1,100 office users, 1,500 operation users and 150 contracted users. The number of required printer assets will also be reduced by 20 per cent, increasing cost-efficiency. Customer experience for the airport’s passengers will be greatly enhanced as a result.

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Related: HMRC Issues £20 Million Tender for New Consultants to Advise on Aspire Transition

Capita has a made a bid to take over business processing, technology and procurement specialist Xchanging, causing the value of Xchanging shares to rocket by over 50 per cent.

However, Capita faces stiff competition from private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Xchanging recently revealed in a statement to the press that Capita placed an initial bid at 140p per share, in cash raised to 160p, while Apollo has made a separate offer of 170p per share.

The bids were made shortly after Xchanging admitted that its procurement division had performed poorly for the first half of the year; the company’s CEO Ken Lever has also indicated to the board that he intends to retire from his position at the end of 2015.

These takeover offers have come at a time when an increasing number of organisations are looking to outsource administrative processes to third party specialists, such as Xchanging, in order to increase focus on core tasks and improve their technological capabilities.

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Related: Xchanging finds supply chain risk is the greatest external challenge for businesses

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) completed a two-year project to bring IT services back in-house last month, Computer Weekly has reported.

The DVLA’s outsourcing strategy – set up while Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister – has existed for over 20 years, yet it only took CEO Oliver Morley a few days to make the decision to backsource the organisation’s IT after he joined in 2013. The claim is that this project will save at least £225 million over the course of 10 years, along with an extra £70 million saved in procurement costs.

Iain Patterson, the current CTO at the DVLA who will soon move back to the Cabinet Office, explained: “We looked at the architecture and the cost of standing still, which we estimated to be in excess of £230 million, and to run a procurement programme would have cost £80 million.

“For the most part we are doing it ourselves but we have plenty of partners – big and small – still with us, who will be doing a large part of the work. But we have the relationship directly with them, we coordinate delivery, we have mixed development teams and it is very important we own the overall model.”

The DVLA is the UK’s second biggest organisation for collecting direct debit payment, with larger UK revenues than even Amazon. Oliver Morley believes that, despite backsourcing, the DVLA is transitioning to digital at a rapid pace, with at least 90 per cent of its customers making use of the DVLA’s digital services.

“I would put us against anyone in the public and private sectors in terms of how much digital transformation we have done,” Morley said.

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Related: How the UK’s police will cut down its £1 billion-a-year IT costs