Industry news

One of Michael Gove’s last acts as education sectary will come to pass as regulations permitting English local authorities to outsource child protection services will be established any day now.

Shadow children’s minister Steve McCabe confirmed Labour would wave the new regulations through but promised that a future labour government would scrap if things went wrong.

There has been strong opposition to the outsourcing of children’s services with 72,000 people signing a petition against the move as well as social work advisor Professor Eileen Munro voicing here concerns. The government responded to public distain by restricting the outsourcing agreements to charities and not for profit organisations.

Can Outsourcing Children’s Services Innovate Approaches to Social Care?

Wycombe District Council have signed a five year contract with Capita for the management of a fully integrated IT system hoping to transform its customer service. The contract which is valued at £14m will start in February 2015 and will replace their old managed services agreement with Northgate. Capita will work with Wycombe to extend their self-service opportunities available to citizens including an app they have designed named Engage which will integrate with the councils back office providing more up to date information to the locals.

NOA launches first qualification for the 3.1 million people in the UK’s outsourcing industry

The Bank of England (BoE) first outsourced the printing banknotes in 2003 and looks set to continue down the outsourcing path with a new 10 year printing contract to commence in April 2015. De La Rue who are the current printers of sterling bank notes have been announced as the preferred bidder for the 10 year contract. De La Rue the Basingstoke based firm will print £20 and £50 notes on paper and £5 and £10 notes will now be printed on the plastic polymer material. De La Rue is the largest commercial bank note printer in the world.

Bank of England moves to invest in compliance systems

Intelligent office UK, outsourced service provider of onshore business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions is planning to open its second onshore shared services centre in Glasgow.

The new centre will provide document production, document conversion and digital transcription services to law firms throughout the UK. It will also create over 100 full-time positions adding to its 700 work force.

Clients of Intelligent office UK include Stephenson Harwood, Wragge & Co, Bevan Brittan and Farrer & Co.

Outsourcing on the Up

BP have signed a five year deal with Infosys to provide IT services. The IT Service deal will help support the development of BP apps and improve IT across operations. Infosys has committed to train BP engineers at its Information and Technology University.

Infosys appoints Sikka from SAP as CEO

The National Outsourcing Association (NOA), the industry association and professional body for outsourcing, today launches the outsourcing industry’s first Level 2 qualification with founding client Capita. The qualification, 75% of which is achieved through work-based learning, provides the first broad-based standard for the UK’s 3.1 million employees in organisations which deliver outsourced services to the public and private sectors.

Capita, the UK’s leading outsourcing service provider, is the NOA’s first Learning Centre and founding client for the Level 2 Award following a three-month pilot across 60 employees within Capita Insurance and Regulatory Services.

The NOA has also been working closely with Capita on the development of the qualification to ensure that it is aligned with the real needs of service providers and their clients.

Kerry Hallard, CEO, National Outsourcing Association, said: “This qualification is a game-changer for the outsourcing industry. Outsourcing has oft been viewed as the accidental profession – something people find themselves in. Additionally, staff development and retention is the number one issue for the outsourcing industry today, as it continues to evolve to consistently deliver value-add, business transformation and innovation. This qualification recognises excellence in outsourcing skills and helps position outsourcing as a professional career of choice. But more than that, this qualification can up-skill the three million plus people currently working in outsourcing in the UK today and further help grow and improve this dynamic industry’s performance within the UK economy”.

Andy Parker, Capita chief executive, said: "The qualification is centred around engaging, work-based learning and has successfully wrapped a framework, best practice, assessments and independent verification around the day job. Following the pilot, we now plan to embed the qualification within our employee learning and development programme across Capita. The qualification will serve as a differentiator for talent in the industry, provide assurance to customers of outsourcing services, bridge the skills gaps for people transferring into outsourcing companies from the public and private sector and recognise excellence across the industry."

Parseq have won a 5 year deal with Centrica the U.K’s largest energy supplier who’s businesses include British Gas. Parseq will manage legal and financial documentation, cheque processing, cash payment processing and handle 20,000 mail items per month for Centrica. The BPO provider currently process more than 100,000 documents a day and £2bn of electronic payments a month.

Labour hits back at Centrica ‘scaremongering’

According to a recent article in The Daily Star, Dhaka based service provider ServicEngineBPO is planning to increase its workforce to 1,000 over the next two years.

In an interview with The Daily Star, ASM Mohiuddin Monem, chairman of the company, said the US-Bangladesh joint venture company had registered 35-40% growth of revenue a year since its inception in 2006.

ServicEngineBPO checks backgrounds of customers for financial institutions and provides medical appointment assistance for US hospitals.

Teleperformance buy Aegis USA (AUI)

Bristol City Council is moving its ICT infrastructure to the cloud in order to reduce costs by 30%. The two year, £1.5m contract was procured via the governments G-Cloud framework. Eduserv was awarded the contract and will take over the day to day management of the councils ICT and transformation programme.

Think-tank reveals government could save £42 billion per year by 2020

In a recent PwC report “Claim to fame: Positioning the claims function for operational excellence”, the multinational professional services network has advised that to be successful in claims transformation, companies should create efficiencies from scale in an outsourced operating model.

They went on to advise that where appropriate insurance companies should outsource to deliver high-quality service to claims customers.

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