Industry news

Staff working in Allied Irish Bank’s IT division have voted to accept the bank’s outsourcing proposals, meaning that roughly 220 employees will be transferred to Infosys and Wipro, who will be providing technology support services.

The vote was put to the members of the Irish Bank Officials’ Association that are involved with AIB’s IT. The IBOA explained that the intention of the transfers is to enhance job security for workers and to protect their pension entitlements.

Early in June, AIB assured its employees that no redundancies would result from its plans to outsource numerous functions within its application development and maintenance division.

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Related: Infosys sets aside $10 million to invest in Irish startups after AIB contract win

MidlandHR has successfully completed a project for Newport City Council to ensure the council is fully prepared for expected changes to teachers’ pension scheme in England and Wales.

The two organisations have conducted a successful outsourcing partnership since 2005, hence why MidlandHR’s pensions team of was chosen to manage these legislative updates. The council currently uses the company’s iTrent software to managed payroll for its 6,500 employees, which includes 1,500 teachers.

"MidlandHR carried out an initial evaluation to understand how we were operating iTrent and how we were using the system to handle our current teachers’ pensions,” said Erica Gibson, HR integrity officer at Newport City Council. “This stage was key to the success of the project as MidlandHR’s experts really took the time to understand our requirements.

"Successfully delivered via remote services, the team began by analysing, cleansing and preparing the data in line with TPA legislation and teachers eligibility statuses… Working in partnership with MidlandHR on this project has been fundamental to its success and we haven’t had one issue arise since the transition. Their willingness to engage early, and take the time to understand our expectations and requirements was critical, and meant we have avoided what could have been a very challenging period for the council.”

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Related: arvato partners with NHS National Services Scotland on HR delivery contract

Computer Economics’ “IT Outsourcing Statistics” study for 2015-16 has found that disaster recovery is the most practical and cost-effective IT service for organisations to outsource, more so than desktop support, help desk functions or e-commerce applications.

This result came as something of a surprise, seeing as disaster recovery only ranked as the seventh-best IT function to outsource in 2014. However, this time 92 per cent of enterprises surveyed claimed that, having outsourced this function, the cost remained the same or dropped lower than when it was provided in-house.

“IT organizations outsource disaster recovery primarily to reduce risk rather than save money, and this is what the study has generally shown in the past,” said John Longwell, VP research for Computer Economics.

“We think one reason for the change is the maturation of disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Using on-demand cloud infrastructure for disaster recovery can be cost-effective if you don’t need to maintain the excess capacity.”

Read the full report here.

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Related: Research reveals what steps the UK must take to become a world-leader in outsourcing

Infosys has launched “Zero Bench”, a new internal app that will allow existing Infosys employees to apply for projects taking place within the company that suit their skillsets.

Zero Bench has been designed to ensure that all company resources are being utilised to the fullest extent possible and to prevent external recruitment taking place when it isn’t strictly necessary. The app was inspired by Uber, which is similarly designed to maximise convenience and cut down on unnecessary effort, famously disrupting the transport industry as a result.

"Zero Bench is a next-generation people initiative that aims to maximise the potential of our talent who are currently trained and in between projects or on bench,” commented Ravi Kumar S, global head of delivery at Infosys.

“This is a gamified platform for people to post modular work based on their project requirements. We have seen tremendous response since the launch, supplemented by continuous communication through our internal channels.”

Other outsourcing firms such as Capita have also recently found success bringing gamified systems into the workplace.

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Related: 100,000 employees replaced by robotic automation at India’s top three service providers

Everest Group has release two reports identifying digital banking leaders in the UK and the US using its new Ability | Performance | Experience (APEX) Matrix.

When commenting on the report outcomes, Everest VP Sarah Burnett said that increased competition meant those in the retail banking sector were having to become more “agile and innovative” and that they will have to start “thinking and acting like startups” in order to appeal to digital natives.

The APEX Matrix compares digital functionality across mobility, social, online and branches/ATMs to the business impact of those investments, judged in terms of customer experience scores, brand perception and financial impact.

In the UK Barclays saw the highest score in terms of digital functionality while Lloyds Bank was rated highest for business impact, with HSBC and Santander also leading in those areas.

In the US Citibank lead the way for digital functionality while Capital One was an outright leader in terms of business impact, with Wells Fargo and Bank of America also scoring well for both criteria.

Access both full reports here.

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Related: Co-operative Bank and Capita agree on £325 million acquisition

Serco’s reported revenues for the first half of 2015 show signs that the outsourcing services group is stabilising, despite a post-tax loss of £92 million and a 28 per cent decline in revenues from UK central government.

The group lost its contract to run the Docklands Light Railway line in London, with deals involving the National Physical Laboratory and Colnbrook immigration removal centre also coming to an end.

Serco said in an official statement: “Following the significant disruption to our customer relationships with UK central government in 2013 and the subsequent corporate renewal process that was put in place over the course of 2014, rebuilding the pipeline is now a major focus, and we will look to identify new opportunities in our core markets of justice & immigration, defence and transport in the UK as they emerge from policy decisions taken by the new government.”

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Related: Serco Seeks Redemption after £1.3bn Operating Loss

US technology provider CSC has acquired Fixnetix, a UK trading technology group, in order to make strides in the high-speed trading and data services markets.

CSC and Fixnetix will both continue with plans to develop an array of services targeting banks and brokers, such as high-speed trading and a variety of other IT services. Both businesses see this as a lucrative market, with many banks looking to make the switch from trading over the phone to trading electronically.

According to speculation in the FT, the acquisition may have cost CSC just over $100 million.

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Related: Co-operative Bank and Capita agree on £325 million acquisition

G4S experienced significant financial losses on the stock market recently, after Goldman Sachs lowered the firm’s share rating to “sell” one day after its half-year results were published.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs cited a “fiercely competitive” security business environment and disruptive technologies “creating opportunities for new players” as current trends that will take away from G4S’s business, hence the downgrade.

The bank also claimed that economic pressures in Africa and Latin America are likely to negatively affect the company and impact on its end-of-year results.

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Related: G4S wins £80 million EDF Energy contract to guard new nuclear power plant facility

After confirming that its integration with new $4 billion acquisition IGATE will be complete by mid-2016, Capgemini has announced that it plans to expand its engineering services team in India as soon as things are settled.

"Definitely, engineering services is the next big thing in the IT industry," explained Aruna Jayanthi, CEO of Capgemini India. "We started an engineering services team 18 months ago and we will expand that going forward… Indian companies are realising that to go global you have to have a world-class technology backbone and that's driving a lot of the business. Our preferred set of customers has begun to invest.”

Despite the rise of digital technologies, many Indian IT firms are investing in engineering services first and foremost, an area that is expected to grow faster than any other Indian business sector this financial year.

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Related: HMRC will take on 250 Capgemini workers to ease Aspire contract transition

Research from arvato has revealed that the size of the local government outsourcing market rose from £53 million in 2005 to just shy of £100 million in 2010 during the coalition government’s time in power.

arvato stated that this rapid increase was caused in part by the uptake of shared service arrangements. However, global BPO director Debra Maxwell says that, despite this rise, “adoption of genuine shared services among local council has been relatively low”.

With further cuts to council funding expected from the government’s next spending review later this year, Debra expects councils to embrace outsourcing in previously unchartered territories, in an attempt to find revolutionary new ways of improving efficiencies while maintaining services at the same level.

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Related: Local councils embrace outsourcing as part of austerity-driven innovation push