Industry news

The Chancellor George Osborne detailed the success of the UK’s austerity programme while moving to increase SME support and encourage outside investment in today’s budget announcement.

The budget announcement along with statistics from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) highlighting the success of the Chancellors overall economic programme measures, included announcements of tax reliefs for small and medium businesses, support for the manufacturing sector and social programmes in preparation for next year’s elections.

Future predictions from the OBR highlighted continued recovery from deficit, with a predicted surplus of £5 billion by 2018-19, but the Chancellor warned that while the new budget is designed to build on growth, their was need for continued caution and austerity, with the OBR warning of future of uncertainty.

Annual budget policies included:

1: Business tax cuts with corporation tax reduced to 21 per cent.

2. Increased funding for businesses working in UK sciences and technology including funding for big data.

3. Manufacturing subsidies including £140 million in funding to be made available for flooding damages and infrastructure repairs, with £200 million being made available for for local infrastructure projects including pot-hole repairs.

4. Development of housing projects including £150 million to be made available for the right to buy housing scheme along with housing construction programs.

5. Polices aimed at highlighting links to Scotland including tax breaks for North Sea Oil & Gas.

6. Plans to support export growth, which the OBR expects to double, backed by increased funding and reduced taxes.

7. Social policies including the removal of inheritance tax for emergency services personal that die in the line of duty.

8. Stamp Duty changes designed to prevent avoidance abuse and loopholes.

9. The introduction of a new £1 coin to reduce current high levels of fraud impacting the old coinage.

Chancellors budget continues government SME support

Capita has succeeded in winning a bid for a five year contract to create a deliver an online contact centre for supermarket chain John Lewis.

The contract is valued at £93.5 million and will see the development of a digital service designed to provide integrated services to customers, both online and in store and help to fuel the companies continued success from online sales.

The new contract replaces the incumbent supplier Teleperformance with the switchover scheduled to occur over the next few months, with 500 employees moving under TUPE from Teleperformance to Capita under the contract.

The online site will be based in Glasgow, where Capita currently have 5,000 employees situated, with expectations of expansion over the contracts lifecycle to an additional 2,000 extra employees.

Andy Parker, Capita chief executive said: "Capita has extensive experience of working with household names from across the private sector, including major retailers. We appreciate the importance of becoming fully immersed in a company's brand values to ensure that customer experience is at the heart of service delivery."

John Lewis reports massive surge over Christmas period

Atos has signed a five year contract with IT provider Kelway, which will see the provision of datacentre and framework services alongside support services.

The contract is believed to be worth around £150 million over the five year period is expected to deliver significant efficiency savings.

Phil Doye, CEO of Kelway, said: “We’re continuing to impress leading global brands with our comprehensive range of solutions and services. Working with Atos will provide another opportunity to help a successful organisation achieve competitive advantage with the right technology.”

Atos to manage personal data removal

Atos moves to exit disability assessment after death threats

The Department of Work and Pensions has moves to end its jobs website known as Universal Jobmatch, after the site became too expensive to operate.

According to documents seen by the Guardia n, the DWP will likely move to end the service after two years when the contract comes to an end.

The website has also been plagued by a host of fake job listings including parody MI6 listings and drug courier positions for the mafia. Fake postings also included scams aimed at DWP users which asked for money for criminal checks or sought to gain details for identity fraud.

Labour MP Frank Field when investigating the site said that it was: “bedevilled with fraud”.

DWP consults suppliers over procurement plan

DWP defends Universal Credit IT

IBM has been selected to provide outsourced services to the Adani Group, with the contract representing one of the largest outsourcing deals seen in the Indian It market in recent years.

IBM has been competing against other enterprise level competitors including HP and Wipro for the contract, which is valued at around $200 million. The deal for delivery of IT services is expected to be closed within a two week period.

IBM already has a strong history of contract success in the Indian marketplace, with the American based group investing heavily in securing business in the domestic IT market.

IBM acquires analytics firm for network monitoring

IBM factory workers strike over Lenovo purchase

Morrisons has revealed a series of new IT programmes designed to reverse the supermarket fortunes after it revealed pre-tax losses of £176 million.

The supermarket said that the IT programmes were necessary to in order to transform an antiquated legacy IT infrastructure into a 21st century service capable of handling customer and business demands.

Morrisons’ chairman Sir Ian Gibson, said: “we do not yet have a meaningful presence in online and convenience - the two fastest growing channels in the grocery market - have clearly held us back, and the overall performance of our core business has been disappointing.”

Sir Gibson identified that the supermarket was hoping to drive businesses by developing loyalty programmes and personalised couponing with new IT programmes, with digital capabilities such as these haven proven to be highly successful in other organisations.

IT upgrade trips up Morrisons

Limited online presence impacts Morrisons

BPO is growing as businesses seek to deliver transformation and business value from BPO models.

Research carried out on the behalf of Accenture has revealed that BPO outsourcing has reached a tipping point with customers expecting more from their outsourcing programs than suppliers are currently delivering.

The research revealed that while 49 per cent of industry professionals are planning to embark on transformative BPO programs over the following two years, currently 2/3rds of BPO projects are focused on only delivering cost savings.

The research found that six out of ten clients believed their current BPO providers were failing to effectively drive transformation.

The future of the back office

Accenture extends seven-year with leadership provider

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has recommended that the government moves to apply the Freedom of Information Act in order to allow for greater transparency and openness.

Chair of the PAC Margaret Hodge said: "Private provision of public services has become big business, with half of all public spending on goods and services going to private providers of contracted-out services.

"We believe government needs to urgently get its house in order so that this expenditure is properly open to public scrutiny, and that measures are put in place which will improve services and secure a better deal for the taxpayer."

The PAC referred to past public sector outsourcing project failures including G4S and Serco, saying that increased transparency would heighten the government’s ability to negotiate with suppliers and improve communications in order to avoid repeats of the Olympics.

MPs criticise Sellafield nuclear site contract

Commons public accounts committee criticises BT broadband monopoly

Global outsourcing firm Wipro has announced that it is partnering with shopping centre giant Westfield to provide a scalable platform.

Westfield, which has 90 shopping centres throughout the world, will receive innovation tools and analytic capabilities through the partnership.

The scalable platform will help to standardise services, improve employee experiences and deliver costs savings by reducing management overheads.

Peter Bourke, CIO at Westfield said: "A key component for growth is the people that form the core of Westfield. As we grow, we required a future ready and scalable people platform and Wipro’s ability to deliver value, helped us standardise our process while working seamlessly with Westfield as one team. The successful go live is a testimony to our strategic planning and foresight in IT, as we continue our endeavours to become more efficient and scalable."

Biplab Adhya, Vice President, Oracle Applications, Wipro Ltd said: “We are delighted to partner with Westfield and go live with the first such implementation in the APAC region. Wipro’s expertise has helped Westfield automate and unify their HR business processes, leading to a consistent end user experience and an integrated Peoplesoft HCM system.”

Wipro awarded 10 year contract with Carillion

Wipro announced as enterprise award winners

The Government Digital Service (GDS) has moved to explore plans to combine the Cloudstore and the Digital Services Store into one single public sector marketplace.

The announcement of the planned merger comes after enthusiasm was expressed for a combined service that could capitalise on the two services’ potential.

The announcement on the G-Cloud blog detailed that the government would continue with further research, and that if initial findings provide a correct assessment, then the G-Cloud will move to deliver changes through an alpha build shortly after Easter.

Government plans for CloudStore upgrade

Suppliers call for G-Cloud changes