Industry news

The Southwest One (SWO) contract between IBM, Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Borough Council and Avon & Somerset Police is due to end in 2017, and reports have identified that savings have not been as great as originally expected.

Savings of £10m were originally targeted; this has now been downgraded to £5m, with savings of just £3m having been identified to date.

The Councils involved are now reviewing their ICT options in order to make a decision next year that can support a transition.

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Gartner research has found that the use of Indian IT service providers in Nordic countries is growing by 20 per cent per year, while the growth in the traditional supplier market has only been 2-3 per cent annually.

Nokia, DNB and ABB all favour Indian providers. HCL Technologies and Wipro have both announced that they will be investing further in the region, which covers Finland, Iceland and Scandinavia.

Mika Rajamäki, a research analyst with Gartner, commented: ‘Sweden has the largest market, but Indian companies seem to have the highest market share in Finland, around 4 per cent.

‘In Denmark, Sweden and Norway, their market share is around 1 per cent, but these figures are from 2013 and there were some major deals last year, so the figures have definitely grown. Average market share for Indian companies in the Nordics is probably around 4-5 per cent, closer to 5 per cent, and in Finland it will grow to 6-7 per cent this year.’

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Health and safety training company Survivex has secured a contract with Hercules Offshore to provide an outsourced training management service (TMS).

Hercules Offshore, which provides a range of services to oil and gas providers ranging from drilling to decommissioning services, has signed a long-term contract worth more than £500,000 yearly.

The TMS team will be responsible for producing a comprehensive training matrix, identifying skills gaps and creating individual training plans for Hercules employees.

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The Shared Services and Outsourcing Network (SSON) has released a report covering the impact of five mega-trends on the shared services industry: optimised services, digital automation, data analytics-driven business intelligence, new skill sets and customer-orientated services.

The report initially revealed that over 40 per cent of European shared services organisations (SSOs) use shared services to improve business performance, while only 8 per cent do so predominantly to cut costs. However, the majority still measure the performance of their shared services with cost-based metrics.

In order to optimise service delivery, 69 per cent of the SSOs surveyed plan to bring in new technology, while 52.5 per cent want to add additional scope to the services they offer and 35 per cent plan to outsource more.

When the SSOs were asked which practices are relevant to their future digital strategies, 70.5 per cent including ‘Enabling end-to-end process flows’, while only 24 per cent answered ‘Robotic process automation’.

The vast majority of Europe-based SSOs are in the process outlining and implementing their data business intelligent strategies; the majority also saw service excellence as the most valuable skill to enhance, more so than leadership or subject matter expertise.

SSOs in Western Europe favour ‘Customer relationship management technology solutions’ to drive better customer service. However, those in Central and Eastern Europe believe that ‘Customer interaction frameworks’ are more effective.

To find out more, download the full report '2015 State of the Shared Services Industry Report: Focus on Europe' from the SSON website.

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The lower house of the Brazilian National Congress has approved the preliminary text on a bill that would pave the way for companies to outsource more work, in an effort to lift strict rules governing which roles can currently be outsourced.

While the bill was being discussed in parliament, protests sparked across 12 Brazilian cities, including the capital Brasilia, where police and protestors clashed outside the Congress building.

Despite this, the Chamber of Deputies has voted in favour of the measures. However, the bill still requires the approval of the Brazilian Senate and the signature of President Dilma Rousseff, whose party is opposed to the measures.

Deputy Arthur Oliveira Maia urged Brazilians to remember that outsourcing is a global practice and condemned the exaggerated warnings of those criticising the bill, saying ‘People are creating a terror scene and apocalyptic scenery that has not happened in other countries.’

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B. Rama Raju, founder of Satyam Computer Services, has been found guilty of embezzling millions from the company, as have two of his brothers and seven other company officials.

All ten will now be sentenced, and it is likely that all will be given life sentences. Investigators say that Raju and his fellow executives cost the company’s shareholders 140 billion rupees ($2.28 billion USD).

A year after the scandal erupted, Tech Mahindra bought a majority stake in Satyam Computer Services and changed the company’s name to Mahindra Satyam.

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Research conducted by the Cloud and Data Centre specialist Node4 has found that almost half of the UK’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are struggling to hire IT staff with the necessary skills and qualifications.

The skills shortage is most severe in South East England, where 65 per cent of SMEs find it difficult to recruit qualified staff for their in-house IT operations. 60 per cent are struggling in the North East and the East Midlands, and things aren’t much better in the capital, with 46 per cent of London’s SMEs suffering from an IT talent shortage.

It is no surprise then that 79 per cent of the UK’s SMEs see IT outsourcing (ITO) as a highly viable option. The vast majority agreed that outsourcing IT infrastructure ‘removes the headache’ of IT management and finding the right personnel.

Paul Bryce, Business Development Director at Node4, commented: ‘The nationwide struggle for skilled talent is a major concern for businesses. With a large number of SMEs frustrated with technical limitations and the day-to-day administration of their infrastructure it’s hardly surprising that local outsourcing has become a preference so that organisations can continue to win more business, beat the competition and succeed.’

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Lithuania-based Atea has bought UAB Baltnetos Komunikacijos, a leading cloud and IT outsourcing provider in Lithuania.

The acquisition is reportedly worth €10.4 million and will come into effect on 9 April 2015. Atea is a leading IT infrastructure and systems integration provider with 6,500 employees across 90 locations.

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HP and Microsoft will be working together to provide digital solutions for the public, automotive and financial sectors.

The new relationship will see HP providing ‘Business Process as a Service (BPaaS)’ solutions for Microsoft’s Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.

HP’s BPaaS solution is expected to help organisations with tailored industry solutions, enabling them to deliver digital, mobile and social interactions with their customers.

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Thousands of workers across 12 of Brazil’s cities have taken to the streets in order to protest a proposed congressional bill that will promote outsourcing.

Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest business hub, saw peaceful protests of just under 1,000 people. However, thousands turned out to protest in the capital Brasilia, resulting in clashes with police, who fired tear gas at the demonstrators.

The discussed legislation would facilitate outsourcing across a wide array of industries in both the private and the public sector.

Brazil’s Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) union organised the demonstrations, claiming that ‘the bill withdraws, in practice, rights won by workers with difficulty and gives bosses the legal right to employ as they see fit.’

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