Industry news

A legal challenge that had blocked South Lanarkshire Council from awarding a waste disposal contract has been lifted.

The Scottish local authority had been challenged by Patersons of Greenoakhill Ltd after they failed to win the bid for the two-year waste disposal and recycling contract, valued at £19 million.

Patersons of Greenoakhill launched action over acquisitions that the tender process did not comply with regulations and that the council had failed to evaluate and identify favourable bids.

The judge, Lord Tyre, cleared the way for the continuation of the tender process, saying that,“each of the grounds invoked by the pursuers is weak”.

Paul Manning, South Lanarkshire Council’s executive director of finance and corporate resources, said: “We welcome the decision which will let us continue with our plan to secure quality work at the right price for this tender.”

NHS Scotland moves forward with preferred bidder nomination

The NHS has delayed a patient data sharing scheme for six months after the programme faced criticism from GPs and patient groups.

The move to suspend the introduction of the programme until autumn comes after the NHS acknowledged that there was a lack of public confidence in the data sharing scheme.

The delay is designed to give patients further time to access the opt-out clauses and increase overall understanding of the scheme, with polls showing that two-thirds of England’s 26 million households had not seen leafleting on the scheme.

Chair of the British Medical Association's general practitioner's committee, Chaand Nagpaul, said: "While the BMA is supportive of using anonymised data to plan and improve the quality of NHS care for patients, this must only be done with the support and consent of the public, and it is only right that they fully understand what the proposals mean to them and what their rights are if they do not wish their data to be extracted."

Text messages used to transform NHS care

NHS moves forward with GP data collection

Coca-Cola has announced that it will seek to create savings over around $1 billion from the optimisation of supply chain and ICT services.

The drinks giant will move to increase IT service standardisation in an effort to create savings while focusing on media and marketing campaign investment.

The standardisation of IT services coincides with the recent migration to salesforce services including mobile applications allowing for a remote and flexible workforce.

The savings plan comes as the company’s share price dropped by nearly four per cent on the announcement of a $1.7 billion fall in net income over the fourth quarter.

Salesforce acquires Exact Target for $2.5 billion

Coca-Cola FEMSA Signs $100 Million Technology Services Agreement with HP to Support Growth

The Midlands has offered up a tender for a transport authority smart card system, with a potential value of more than £4.2 million.

The transport smart card system would be similar to the London Oster card scheme, providing alternative payment methods for transport services while providing valuable data allowing for analytics capabilities.

The tender process announced by the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive known as Centro, which represents the seven Metropolitan District Councils of the West Midlands, has placed the smart card tender as a framework contract, composed of six lots.

The lots will include the provision of backend systems, database services, card production and customer support.

Government seeks industry knowledge for nationwide smartcard

TfL terminates £100m Oyster contract

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) is moving to find alternative suppliers to Atos, according to leaked documents, for its work assessment contract.

The documents leaked to the Guardian reveal that the government is looking to create increased competition by bringing other private firms into the £500 million contract currently operated by Atos Healthcare.

The private organisations will be used to provide “further capacity” to the system, and then moving to “take over the whole contract” after the current contract expires in 2015.

The move comes after the disability minster Mike Penning acknowledged that one company having a monopoly over the assessment services was “flawed”.

A Atos spokesperson said: “We recognise that many people have strong feelings about work capability assessments. The constant flow of criticism inevitably has an impact on our staff”.

Atos secures £400 million BPO services contract

Committee calls for a ‘substantial shake-up’ of governance at DWP

Danish outsourcing firm ISS has said that it hopes to raise 8 billion Danish Crowns ($1.47 billion) from its IPO on the Nasdaq

The move to float the company comes after ISS was acquired by private equity company EQT and Goldman Sachs for €2.9 billion, before delisting the company on 2005.

The market floatation would represent the largest Nordic public offering since the financial crisis.

ISS intends to present a public offering before the end of march based on feedback from investors.

Chief Executive Jeff Gravenhorst said in the statement: “The intended IPO is expected to support our operational strategy”.

Royal Mail to be Privatised

Facebook floats 400 million shares at $38 each

FirstGroup has signed a new contract which will see the transport company continue to operate London’s First Capital Connect rail franchise.

The new contract will see the transport company operate services for a further six months up until September 14th.

The extension will extend services ahead of bidding for the future maintenance of the rail franchise, which will be incorporated with other rail links under the governments Thameslink project.

Rail minister says Thameslink may not deliver industry recovery

Carillion wins £120 Thameslink contract

The Scottish Renfrewshire Council has achieved savings of £20.9 million through the implementation of a procurement overhaul.

The modernisation of procurement services included a move to centralise services and processes and turn away from individual department purchasing.

The transformation of the procurement service at the council was headed by Julie Welsh, with the new centralised strategy focusing on improving efficiencies and increasing purchasing power by having one central purchasing team.

The overhaul has resulted in a dramatic rise in the council’s Procurement Capability Assessment (PCA) score in 2013, in contrast to low figures received in 2009.

Whitehall departments move to share information across government

Members of the Scottish Parliament welcome procurement reforms

Retain International which specialises in providing resource planning, management and scheduling services has been acquired by Capita.

The deal will see Capita acquire Retain’s current customer base, including four major accounting companies. The acquisition will see 23 Retain employees based in London move to join Capita.

The purchase of Retain will expand Capita's service offering with the addition of management and resource capabilities.

Managing director for justice and secure services at Capita, Sean Massey, said: “Retain International provides an intuitive, reliable and secure platform that allows organisations to extract information, including work productivity rates, revenues, budgets and forecasts all from a single point.”

Birmingham council carry out Capita contract review

Capita wins £4 million council IT contract

Failures to effectively collaborate and connect with businesses has cost the UK economy as much as £30 billion.

A study by O2 and the Centre for Economic and Business Research (Cebr) has reported that the UK economy is suffering due to ineffective collaboration and communication within UK businesses.

The study found that while employment rates where improving, productivity was declining since the onset of the recession.

The report identified that large savings could be achieved by employing technologies to reduce time wastage including unnecessary traveling in favour of remote working, however a risk-averse culture has held companies back from effectively employing new technology.

Graham Brough, chief executive at the Centre for Economic and Business Research, said: “ICT technologies such as smartphones, mobile apps and cloud computing are starting to drive business productivity and restore the competitiveness of UK workers.”

Hammersmith and Fulham Council deploys new virtual desktop system

Remote health technology to see uptake by NHS