Industry news

The Jockey Club has launched a programme to provide procurement and outsourcing services to sports organisations. The club operates 15 racecourses in the UK, Jockey Club Services (JCS) offers FAO, HRO, ITO, customer-related marketing and consultancy services. JCS already provides services to two cricket clubs and has agreements in place with 11 Football League clubs. The pilot which ran across 15 racecourse produced savings of 40%.

NewGalexy launches cloud-based solutions for law firms

According to research from Kroll ontrack and Blancco, 61% IT managers admit their organisations have not taken measures to be GDPR compliant.

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aims to unify data protection laws to meet the challenges of the digital age and strengthen the protection of online personal data.

When enacted into law, it will require all businesses handling EU residents’ data to delete personal information on request or when it is no longer required by the organisation, and encourage the use of auditable deletion procedures for companies processing personal data.

Those non-compliant could face fines with data breach sanctions up to €100,000,000 or 5% of annual worldwide turnover for the most serious infractions.

Nottingham Trent University (NTU) has signed a contract with Logicalis worth £1.7m for a data centre refresh. The deal will see NTU reduce the number of servers they use at the data centre facility which will cut down carbon emissions by approximately 48% by 2020 ad a 40% reduction in power consumption and cooling. With this move they are preparing for a hybrid cloud approach where they plan to keep critical business data on site and then send other stuff to the cloud.

Business support specialist NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) has been appointed to handle a range of employment administration services on behalf of Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Within the five-year contract NHS SBS is administering the payroll and pensions requirements for the Trust’s more than 4,000 employees, providing a streamlined efficient service that will free-up time for in-house staff to spend on more value added activities.

The contract, which recently went live, underlines the growth of NHS SBS’s employment services division which now works with 73 NHS clients and is responsible for paying more than 200,000 NHS employees with an accuracy rate of 99.8%.

Alan Evans, Aintree’s HR project manager, says: “I have been impressed with the professional way in which the transition has been managed. We are confident that Aintree has made the right decision in selecting NHS SBS to provide our payroll and pensions services.”

Tasy Warn, NHS SBS director of employment services adds: “We’re delighted to be working with Aintree. It has been vitally important to provide a smooth transition of the services and this has been successful, partly because of the close working partnership we have established. This partnership will continue as our team becomes an extension of the in-house team.”

The Department of Health shortlists suppliers for ESR contract

Cognizant today announced it has acquired Cadient Group, a full-service digital marketing agency that serves a broad spectrum of life sciences companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, consumer health, and medical device industries.

This acquisition further strengthens and expands Cognizant's digital marketing capabilities, enabling brand marketing leaders to transform the way they position their offerings in the digital landscape as they design, develop and introduce multi-channel marketing initiatives, launch brands, build communities, drive insights and analytics, and create a compelling customer experience. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Life sciences companies around the world have significantly increased their emphasis on web, mobile, and social engagement with all of their stakeholders, while increasingly leveraging enterprise-level analytics to drive a customer-centric approach to marketing and sales.Pennsylvania-based Cadient Group has more than a decade of experience in providing digital strategy, marketing, and technology and analytics solutions to industry leaders and emerging companies in the life sciences industry.

As part of this acquisition, more than 100 digital specialists—with expertise across brand strategy and planning, content development, user-centered design, multi-channel analytics, and digital, social and mobile marketing—will join Cognizant. This acquisition also brings to Cognizant digital assets and intellectual property including Reveal, an insights and analytics platform; Immerse, an experiential marketing platform; and OneVoice, an advocacy campaign management platform.

"The life sciences industry is undergoing structural disruption as marketing services enable new digital ways for companies to engage with patients and providers and create compelling user experiences," said Shankar Narayanan, Vice President and Global Markets Leader of the Life Sciences practice at Cognizant. "In an increasingly competitive industry with many digitally active stakeholders, the acquisition of Cadient Group will complement Cognizant's digital and interactive solutions capability. It will help brand marketing leaders to innovatively transform their brands, manage customer experience across multiple channels, maintain quality standards and comply with regulations, and achieve greater return on marketing investments. We welcome Cadient's digital specialists to the Cognizant family and are confident that our combined capabilities and digital assets will help both life sciences and broader healthcare companies gain a competitive advantage by managing the information that surrounds organizations, processes, products and people—what we call Code Halos."

"Becoming a part of Cognizant uniquely positions us to deliver integrated solutions to life sciences marketing and sales teams around the world," said Stephen Wray, President and CEO, Cadient Group. "Clients will now have enhanced access to the best creativity and craftsmanship of a design firm combined with the best-in-class management and execution capabilities of a large consulting and technology firm to produce superior customer engagements at the brand and enterprise level. Together, we are ideally positioned to deliver on this promise."

Cognizant buys into US healthcare – at a price

Dorset Police have confirmed they will outsource the protection of crime scenes to a private security firm, Securitas Ltd, after a successful four month trial. It is estimated 3,000 police hours each year will be freed up by using Securitas and therefore allowing officers to focus on front lines matters. The decision comes as part of the forces attempt to save £10m by March 2015.

Dorset County Council releases tender for ICT services

HP (Hewlett-Packard), the American multinational information technology company, plans to separate its computer and printer business from its corporate hardware and services operations.

In the past HP have announced tens of thousands of job cuts and more recently has been going through a restructuring plan.

A formal announcement about the split is expected soon.

HP to transform Worcestershire County Council ICT

Aegis have been awarded a five year contract to provide customer support services for Punjab National Bank, one of the largest nationalised banks in India. The support will be from their centres in Gurgaon and Bhopal where they will start with 500 people but plan to increase it to 1500 people over the next five years. Aegis will provide customer lifecycle management support for the banks products and services including deposits operations, internet banking, lending services and core banking processes. Aegis have won over 12 banking BPO deals in the last 18 months.

Flipkart to create hybrid customer service strategy

According to recent KPMG research, almost three quarters of global businesses will increase their investment in outsourced services. It also shows that more firms are taking advantage of global delivery models including functions such as finance, procurement and HR delivered centrally, often offshore.

KPMG's survey found that 72% of big businesses plan to increase outsourcing spending, while 61% said they will increasingly use global shared services for IT and business processes over the next two years, with offshore services accounting for a larger portion of both. The State of Services & Outsourcing in 2014: Things Will Never be the Same report also indicates that enterprises plan to increase their offshoring activities by 20% to 30% over the next year.

Outsourcing is not dead – according to Horses for Sources

Quindell, provider of sector leading expertise in Software, Consulting and Technology Enabled Outsourcing, has experienced a recent drop in its share price but doesn’t know why.

According to the article written in The Telegraph, shares fell by 9pc in Friday’s trading, closing the week at an 18-month low of 137p.

In early September Quindell announced that the joint venture with RAC had ended and that it would take a £3.5m hit to buy out the motoring company’s share of the project.

PwC urges insurers to outsource