Industry news

Around 10,000 Deutsche Post workers intend to strike over the German organisation’s plan to outsource its parcel delivery service to the newly established Delivery Ltd. across 49 regional branches.

Labour union Verdi has also revealed that it will call for further strikes over the coming days, following the recent collapse of a round of talks concerning pay disputes.

Deutsche Post announced plans to create 10,000 new jobs by 2020. However, workers were required to accept lower wages as the firm attempts to maintain its dominant position in a rapidly growing and increasingly competitive market.

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Read this next: National Gallery Trustees Anticipate Third Strike Over Outsourcing

Socitm, the public sector IT manager society, has signed a two-year agreement with Knowledge Hub, the UK’s largest platform for public service collaboration.

Knowledge Hub will provide a single platform for the sharing of data and expertise among Socitm’s 1,650 group members.

The new service aims to help tackle challenges facing digital transformation at a local authority level, simplify the provision of online meetings technology and create a partner programme for suppliers. It is expected to go live in May or June.

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Read this next: Telecity - Interxion Merger Gets the Green Light

In 2006, the outsourcing industry employed roughly 43,000 people in Poland. Multinational consulting firm McKinsey has now forecasted that this figure could rise to 200,000 by 2017.

In an article on the growth of Poland’s outsourcing industry, the Financial Times has since reported that ‘Some estimates put the potential total closer to 500,000 employees in the coming decade, requiring a long and lucrative pipeline of property projects.’

This outsourcing boom has been attributed to the rapid growth of Poland’s business service industry over the past few years, caused by global financial companies favouring Central Europe as an offshore location for their back-office functions.

In 2013, Professional Outsourcing Magazine identified Poland as one of its 10 key competitors for offshore BPO. While more costly than the likes of India and Kenya, Poland’s population is well educated, highly skilled and the country offers particularly high quality infrastructure.

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German regulators have given Telecity the green light to proceed with the all-share merger it has in the works with Interxion Holding.

Both companies specialise in colocation data centre services. The new entity created as a result of the merger is expected to have the combined value of $4.5 billion (£3.07 billion).

Shareholders in Telecity will be given a 55 per cent stake in the combined company, with Interxion shareholders received the remaining 45 per cent. The new firm will be listed on the London Stock Exchange.

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Rio Tinto, the global mining company, are moving core IT Systems to an Accenture-managed cloud platform.

The programme works around the “as-a-service” model and will involve the upgrade of enterprise resource planning and information management.

Rio Tinto expects to see “significant” cost savings and transformation of services as a result.

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Read this next: Atea Purchases Baltic Cloud and Outsourcing Provider

Digital technology is at the heart of Labour’s 2015 manifesto and, if elected in May, the party plans to make digital government more transparent and accountable.

An interim document released last month suggested that, if just 25 per cent of councils migrated their websites to the gov.uk platform, it would incur savings of £8.6 million.

Labour also plans to create a Small Business Administration, designed to help small companies achieve more success with procurement.

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Read this next: Labour’s Outsourcing Plans Put Public Sector at Risk

A recent Datamation report argues that, with the increasing importance of Big Data, companies should look to outsource the management of their databases.

As companies continue to collect huge volumes of data to glean insights on business decisions, some executives are struggling to manage the increasingly unwieldy operations on their own. As a result, the report suggests that Data Centre Outsourcing (DCO) is a valuable tool for businesses to utilise.

Datamation suggest the factors that will spur the uptake of third-party database management will include when in-house data management is too costly, when companies lack in-house expertise, when resources need to be freed up, when increased agility is needed and when regulatory compliance in required.

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Read this next: Telecity - Interxion Merger Gets the Green Light

Airbus has disclosed plans to raise its outsourcing spend in India to $2 billion, shortly after Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi visited its offices as part of an international trip to France.

Modi’s trip was, in part, motivated by his desire to promote his country’s new ‘Make in India’ initiative. Airbus SAS, an aircraft manufacturing division of Airbus Group, is based in Blagnac, a suburb of Toulouse in France.

‘We are honoured to host Prime Minister Modi in Toulouse and convey to him our desire to forge a stronger industrial bond with India. India already takes a centre-stage role in our international activities and we want to even increase its contribution to our products,’ commented Tom Enders, Airbus Group CEO.

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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has suggested a number of outsourcing regulations for the country’s non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), in order to safeguard them from the ‘inherent’ risks of outsourcing.

The regulations include the proposal that NBFCs should not outsource core management and decision-making functions, along with a strict set of guidelines for how outsourcing should be carried out.

All of the proposals are documented in a draft report released by the RBI. ‘The outsourcing activities are to be brought within regulatory purview to protect the interest of the customers and to ensure that RBI has access to all books, records and information available with service providers,’ the report said.

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Read this next: Reserve Bank of India Demands Greater Outsourcing Care

Northamptonshire Council is to reduce its core staff to 150 people, by transferring 4,000 employees to four new service providers. Under the plans, the council will remain the majority shareholder in each service provider.

Whilst the council already outsources services such as street lighting and road services to Balfour Beatty and Kier, the new plans mean that the council will be reduced to a commissioning role, purchasing services from external bodies.

A report by the Local Government Association last year suggested that of the 27 county councils in England, Northamptonshire was the ‘least able to fund itself’, in part because it charges the lowest council tax of any shire authority.

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Read this next: Denbighshire Council Outsources Revenues to Civica