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In December 2014 Northamptonshire County Council announced plans to outsource services in a bid to save £148 million over the next five years.

The council currently employs around 4,000 staff but plans to downsize to a core workforce of 150 once the outsourcing project is complete. The majority of its services will be outsourced to four independently operated “community interest companies” that will be free to compete with others for council services.

Representatives from UNISON, Britain’s biggest trade union, have expressed concerns regarding the future jobs of current council staff (who are likely to be TUPE’d) and whether other councils will follow Northamptonshire’s lead, suggesting that this project could be “the beginning of the end for public services as we know it.”

Tonia Williams, regional organiser at Unison, said: “The way this is being presented to staff is that everything is going to be okay, you will all have jobs in the new community interest companies.

“But what they are not really being honest about is that they can set these companies up, but further down the line the contracts for Northamptonshire’s council functions could go out to the open market.”

However, earlier in the year council leader Jim Harker claimed the council’s traditional methods “not only no longer work financially, but also do not meet the needs of the citizens.”

The changes are likely to be the biggest seen in Northamptonshire County Council’s 125 year history.

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Related: Local councils must find extra £1 billion by 2020 to fund new minimum wage

Capgemini’s community challenge has taken place for the fourth year running - 25 students were brought together for a week, split into five groups and given the opportunity to help charities of their choice.

Team Crane, who worked together in order to raise donations and awareness for Telford District Rotary Club, were this year’s winners, due to the impressive feat of redesigning all existing media for one of the charity’s causes, as well as introducing a number of exciting new marketing campaigns.

Edward’s Trust, Small Woods, Homestart and Telford and Wrekin’s Council for Voluntary Services were the other charities focused on during the event.

The week was seen as a huge success; the participating students were said to have left Capgemini and the charities involved “speechless and amazed.”

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Related: Capgemini finalises acquisition of IGATE

Staying on top of the latest threats to a business can be a significant investment in resources – technology, staffing, and management of IT estates are all necessary. Cyber threats are covert and so organisations often don’t know an attack is happening or even whether a security breach has taken place – various reports, including Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, puts the discovery of data breaches into weeks and months.

This is compounded by the fact that cyber security is complex. Managing the myriad of security solutions within an organisation can be challenging to say the least. This problem only grows as a business gets larger. In the largest organisations you’ll find dedicated IT security teams – but this is costly and out of reach for many SMEs. The compromise is that IT teams need to take on security roles as well as continue with their day-to-day work.

Which takes me to my third point quite nicely – cyber attacks are continuous. There is no let up. Attacks happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week and they happen all year round. Anecdotal evidence from a number of IT security professionals also suggests that cyber attacks actually increase during public holidays, when staffing levels are often at their lowest.

Having a robust security infrastructure in place will always be vital, and will stop the majority of threats targeting your network, but a determined hacker will always find a way. They only need to find one small weakness in the network security architecture to gain a foothold into the organisation.

The benefit, therefore, of outsourcing part, or all, of an organisation’s security operation is that managed security service providers can make threats visible, help to eliminate the complexity of security and are able to provide continuous monitoring, freeing up internal IT personnel to focus on other business critical IT operations.

Is the firewall king?

Firewalls are the perfect example of the challenges faced by IT teams. They are often overlooked and neglected for more innovative technologies that can protect against Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), zero-day exploits, advanced malware and other threats.

Firewalls were first developed and deployed 25 years ago, and have been on the front lines protecting organisations ever since. Firewalls have two main purposes – they filter traffic coming from the Internet coming into your network, blocking the known bad traffic and threats, and controlling what information your network is sending outside the corporate network.

A firewall works by breaking down TCP/IP traffic into packets, which it then inspects to ensure it meets the criteria set out by the firewall policies and rules before letting that traffic through. Firewalls will block everything that hasn’t specifically been allowed, but rules and policies can be amended and configured as and when needed. Alternatively, you can allow all traffic through a firewall and set specific policies to block certain traffic.

And here lies the challenge. For home users, and for small businesses, managing firewalls is often as simple as ensuring each computer and laptop has a firewall, but as the number of devices grows, so does the challenge of ensuring firewalls remain fit for purpose. Gartner noted that through 2018, more than 95 per cent of firewall breaches will be caused by firewall misconfigurations.

Let that sink in for a second. 95 per cent of firewall breaches are essentially down to human error and not through some flaw in the technology itself.

This all comes down to the management of the firewall and ensuring that rules and policies for allowing, and denying traffic, are robust enough to protect the organisation, without being overly restrictive from an employee’s perspective. But, it’s not just firewalls that need managing – almost every piece of IT security equipment needs similar time and focus to ensure they’re working to maximum effect.

Ultimately, managing firewalls and other network security products is a major task and one that requires dedicated internal IT security teams. For many there simply isn’t the budget to have enough skilled IT pros internally, so increasingly we’re seeing end-user organisations outsourcing parts, or all, of the security operations.

A managed service can help to solve the problems of covert attacks, complex security, and continuous cyber attacks. But more importantly, outsourcing the IT security element of your network operations means that IT teams can focus on their core competencies, leaving the complex management of security to the professionals

Networks First is a leading managed IT services and network support provider based in the UK.

arvato UK has landed a contract with NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to deliver HR though the launch of an innovative online self-service platform.

NHS NSS provides shared services and strategic support to NHS Scotland. The organisation will roll out “HR Connect”, an HR system developed by arvato, to be used by 3,600 specialist NHS staff based in 24 different locations around the country.

The platform will provide those employees with 24-hour access to a wide range of HR policies, procedures, guidelines, tools, hints, tips and a library of FAQs. A similar arvato system is currently being used by East Cheshire NHS Trust and resulted in a 25 per cent drop in the number of HR helpdesk calls within its first year of implementation.

“The new system will enable staff to access the information they need and carry out their line management responsibilities without having to rely on the HR Service Centre that only operates in office hours,” said Jane Fewsdale, workforce information, systems and business support manager at NHS NSS.

“With our staff spread far and wide across the country, this is an important development for the organisation, making things easier for our employees while delivering efficiencies and reducing the administrative burden on our HR team.”

Sally Campbell, director of health at arvato UK, commented: “Together with the budget challenges organisations are facing, the clear link between employee-wellbeing and patient care, identified by the Francis Review, is driving HR departments to fundamentally change how they deliver services.

“Our central platform, which now delivers services to more than 40,000 NHS employees across the UK, was developed in a live NHS environment and will provide National Services Scotland with a wealth of best practice support.”

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Related: Xerox wins £40 million NHSBSA printing contract

Fuji Xerox has signed an eight-year contract with the South Australian government worth AU$33 million, to assist with moving the state’s property administration system to an online platform.

The document management solutions team at Fuji Xerox will do so using its integrated land information system (ILIS) – the software will replace 28 legacy applications used by the client for over 30 years now.

Relational Data Systems, a Fuji Xerox software partner, will be responsible for configuring ILIS and will also partner in providing ongoing support. ILIS was originally developed by Fuji Xerox for the Australian Northern Territory government during the early 1990s.

Stephen Mullighan, Australian Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, said: "This new system gives the legal, finance, and conveyancing industries 24/7 access to core business systems and access to government information and products via a single login."

Fuji Xerox co. is a joint venture partnership between Fuji Photo Film co. and Xerox.

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Related: Xerox wins £40 million NHSBSA printing contract

The FT has reported that four of the largest providers of outsourced services to the public sector – Serco, Mitie, G4S and Interserve – have welcomed George Osborne’s plans to bring up the minimum wage to £7.20 per hour from April 2016.

All four companies have said that their long term public sector contracts include provision to adjust in the case of new government legislation.

A spokesperson from Serco said: “We welcome any measure that addresses basic pay within the UK and provides a consistent approach to pay levels across our industry.”

Many care homeowners, however, have claimed they have no such protection and currently employ around 40 per cent of their staff on the minimum wage.

Martin Green, CEO of Care England, commented: “We want to see employees in the care sector being better paid, but there is a big question over affordability… the increase in the minimum wage will lead to some business failures.”

He went on to add that smaller businesses would be hit particularly hard, while their larger equivalents may withdraw from areas where local authority funding becomes particularly tight.

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Related: How the summer Budget will affect the UK outsourcing industry

Analysis by the Local Government Association (LGA) has found that local authorities in England and Wales will have to find more than £1 billion by 2020 to pay for the new national living wage, the FT has reported.

This will have to occur in unison with further funding cuts expected in the spending review later in 2015 – the LGA suspects that councils in England may have to face a £3.3 billion reduction in central government funding by 2017.

Gary Porter, chairman of the LGA, called for the government to step up its funding: “If government were to fully fund the cost of introducing the national living wage to council staff and care workers, councils could avoid extra financial pressures being placed on them as they continue to protect services, such as caring for the elderly, collecting bins and filling potholes.”

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Related: Giant outsourcing suppliers welcome minimum wage rise due to contract provision

Wipro Digital has announced that it will soon acquire Designit, a global strategic design agency that specialises in the design of transformative product-service experiences.

This investment will allow Wipro to join other dominant Indian service providers in the evolution of digital services – Tata Consultancy Services recently announced that it will be training 100,000 staff members as digital professionals over the next 12 months to meet customer demand.

Rajan Kohli, senior VP and global head of Wipro Digital, said: “Our clients are looking to us to help them transform their businesses and move at the speed of digital. Solving these complex challenges starts with strategic design and fuses a human-centered method with innovative technology solutions delivered by multi-disciplinary teams of strategists, designers and engineers.

“With our acquisition of Designit, we will complement the capabilities of an established design leader with our engineering heritage and bring compelling value to our clients.”

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Related: Indian service providers bet on Obamacare to boost North American outsourcing business

In today's global regulatory environment, it is difficult for international banks and other financial institutions, with extended enterprises, to effectively manage their corporate and regulatory compliance efforts. With the currently ongoing introduction of a major new European Union ('EU') banking and financial legislation this becomes more and more valid for the ones operating in the single European marketplace. Moreover, it is a clear policy of the European Commission in this area to lead "regulatory dialogues" with the USA and Switzerland on the equivalency of “supervisory objectives" in a way to find synergies in an increasingly globalized world market.

The newly adopted and upcoming EU banking and financial legislation involves the following areas and associated main acts: banking (see Figure 1), investment services and market infrastructures (see Figure 2), insurance (see Figure 3), retail financial services (see Figure 4), covering regulatory and prudential rules for credit institutions, investment firms and financial conglomerates. The main objectives behind such crucial reforms involve, among others, the following: to achieve soundly regulated and safe financial institutions through the establishment of a common framework ensuring prudential oversight and consumer protection all over the European internal market; to achieve an integrated market for banks and financial conglomerates in the EU; to make it more difficult for transactions to mask money laundering activity; to make financial markets more efficient, resilient and transparent and to strengthen the protection of investors (MiFID 2).

Figure 1. Main new and upcoming EU banking legislative acts:

Figure 2. Main new and upcoming EU investment services and market infrastructures acts:

Figure 3. Main new and upcoming EU insurance legislative acts:

Figure 4. Main new and upcoming EU retail financial services legislative acts:

Despite the anticipated impact of the above new and upcoming EU legislation on the business landscape, enforcement officials are likely not to be giving banks and other financial players any breaks for improper behavior.

Another key area of your compliance program to be affected by the new EU legislation will be anti-money laundering measures. The fourth EU anti-money laundering Directive (Directive (EU) 2015/849 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing) took effect from 26 June, 2015. It imposes various compliance requirements on businesses (see Figure 5 for brief guidelines).

Figure 5. New EU anti-money laundering legislation:

While striving to ensure maintenance of a regulatory compliance and risk mitigation management program, and to monitor and review it on a regular basis, banking and other financial institutions may incur disproportionate compliance costs in the process of outsourcing such non-core activities to external service providers.

In this connection, there is a clear trend towards an ever increasing legal process outsourcing ('LPO') demand in Western Europe. Outsourcing your corporate and regulatory compliance management to a secure and reputable LPO provider located in Southeast Europe ('SEE') is an innovative approach that would provide you with strategic competitive advantages such as:

(i) Achieving significant cost reduction of 40% to 60% compared to the respective fee rates for identical services to be charged in the rest of Europe and the USA, while enjoying first-class quality services.

(ii) Using your preferred type of pricing model (hourly rate, or project / value-based fees) depending on your specific needs.

(iii) Exploring standard process and automation, innovative IT solutions and other innovative legal process reengineering for delivering you cost-efficient and better solutions.

(iv) Exploring the deep talent pool available in the SEE region will help you achieve best performance while working nearshore in almost the same time-zone as in Western Europe. For example, Bulgaria possesses a strong labour pool suited to the Business Process Outsourcing ('BPO') sector with in excess of 60,000 students graduating annually from all Bulgarian universities. Approximately 50% of the graduates obtain degrees in majors suitable for the needs of the BPO industry. The labour pool also provides a strong international language base, with 98% of the students enrolled in secondary school in Bulgaria studying a foreign language and 73% at least two foreign languages.

(v) Focusing on your core activities and spending more time with your clients.

(vi) Using the deep roots, knowledge of civil law and all EU languages and cultures necessary to address the nuances of local markets in Europe.

Therefore, it is anticipated that the ongoing introduction of a brand new EU banking and financial legislation would boost LPO development in SEE given: (i) the need for banks and other financial institutions to adapt their European operations in strict compliance with it; and (ii) the significant growth potential in the SEE Region of the LPO sector and the BPO industry as a whole. By the way of example, Bulgaria is ranked as the best outsourcing destination in Europe in 2015, and 3rd worldwide for BPO and shared services (Cushman & Wakefield, rating for 2015 - see Figure 6).

Figure 6. Cushman & Wakefield, BPO Rating, 2015:

In order to determine which countries to include in the Index, Cushman & Wakefield has used the Foreign Direct Investment Markets (www.fdimarkets.com) and Tholons databases. The next stage has determined the parameters to assess each country against one another. The key parameters that any BPO operator should consider are those related to three principal criteria: Costs, Risks and Conditions, as follows:

Cushman & Wakefield, BPO Rating for 2015:

First LPO Europe is a secure LPO provider located in the EU (Sofia, Bulgaria), delivering first-class quality work with multilingual capabilities. We are experienced and well-equipped to help investment banks, credit institutions, private equity firms, hedge funds, insurers and other financial institutions adapt to the EU regulatory changes. Our complete compliance platform is designed to deal with all your compliance needs, regardless of how small. Our subject matter experts can provide you with the detailed guidance to apply the new EU banking and financial legislation, based on your institution’s unique risk profile. For more details, visit our website http://www.rslaw.eu/ and contact our Executive team:

Vesselin Boianov, Partner, E: v.boianov@ic-see.com

Zlatina Ruseva-Savova, Partner, E: zruseva@rslaw.eu

In light of AstraZeneca’s decision to scale back the amount of business it outsources to India, the Wall Street Journal has suggested that Indian suppliers will have to adapt their services accordingly or face a rapid decline in business and revenues.

This results from the fact that cloud computing is becoming far more popular with organisations like AstraZeneca, which previously favoured outsourcing IT services offshore to India. The Journal reports that, now companies increasingly favour accessing their servers and software via the internet rather than on local networks or personal computers, cloud computing is starting to bite significantly into the profits of those making up the Indian outsourcing industry, posing a huge risk to service providers that fail to adapt.

“It’s like what happened when Amazon arrived,” said C.P. Gurnani, chief executive of Tech Mahindra Ltd, referring to bookstore chains like Borders, which closed down, and Barnes & Noble, which had to reinvent itself.

Outsourcing currently accounts for roughly 20 per cent of all of India’s exports of goods and services.

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Related: Indian businesses strengthen UK ties with new bilateral agreement