Industry news

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain said on Wednesday it would strengthen its cybersecurity laws to better protect essential services like water, energy and transport by bringing outsourced information technology services under the scope of existing regulations.

"The services we rely on for healthcare, water, energy and computing must not be brought to a standstill by criminals and hostile states," cyber minister Julia Lopez said.

The government said it would update 2018 regulations which were designed to make sure companies providing critical services improved their cyber security.

Citing cyber attacks like 'CloudHopper', in which hackers targeted big tech companies, Britain's digital department said the rules needed to be updated to cover companies that provide services such as security monitoring and digital billing

Read more on Reuters here.

An outlook on the importance of building supply chain sustainability.

In brief

• Supply chain practitioners are increasingly adopting strategies to build a vigorous system.
• Cost reduction is not the only focus of organizations, as was earlier
• Technology can help digitize the supple chain and make it more transparent and resilient. 

Read the full article on EY here.

Unilever’s new chief procurement officer Willem Uijen has outlined how the company is using its sourcing strategy and supplier collaboration to “raise industry standards”.

Uijen, who started the role in September, said in a blog suppliers who demonstrated action taken on sustainability standards would be prioritised.

Read more on CIPS supply management here.

During the last International Business Matchmaking Forum, an event organized in Houston by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Tourism of Colombia and ProColombia —the country's promotion agency— business appointments were made between 215 Colombian companies, of which 76% (164 companies) were MSMEs, and 118 international buyers from 15 countries, with the Americans being the true protagonists.

Read more on PR Newswire here.

More and more businesses are choosing to outsource their IT support to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of technology. Outsourcing IT support can offer a wide range of benefits for any growing business, from cost savings to greater flexibility and access to expertise. This article will explore ways outsourcing your IT support can add value to your company. 

Read more on Flux here.

Tackling rising prices within the parameters of public procurement.

One of the main symptoms of the current economic crisis is rising prices, for individuals and businesses. Brexit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are just two contributory factors in fuelling increases in prices across the supply chain in the UK, particularly the cost of raw materials, labour and transport.

Public-private sector contracts often have to be publicly procured and if you are involved in public procurement, whether as a procuring authority or a bidder, high inflation and rising prices only bring uncertainty. The question on the minds of suppliers and authorities alike is what this means for the successful delivery of projects, and whether the new Procurement Bill is likely to provide additional assistance?

Read more on Shoosmiths here.

No one can say they weren’t warned about the likelihood of a global pandemic or a war in Ukraine. And, in the light of President Xi Jinping’s recent comments at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, where he reaffirmed his government’s commitment to take control of Taiwan one day, no one can say that companies should not think about what comes next.

Indeed, most of the risks that a company will face do not fall into the category of what the mathematician and philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb termed “black swan” events: random, highly improbable events that have enormous impact. A trade dispute, a viral epidemic, a product failure, a cybersecurity breach, a tsunami — these are not “black swans” but, as the business writer Michele Wucker memorably puts it, “gray rhinos”: highly probable, highly predictable, high impact, but neglected threats that are charging toward the company like a crash of rhinos (who show visible signs of aggression and whose attacks can thus be predicted nearly 100% of the time).

Read more at Harvard Business Review here.

Five years ago, in 2017, a Harvard Business School Professor opined in the Harvard Business Review that neurodiversity is a competitive advantage which employers should embrace within their workforces1. The Review’s article identified that the sometimes extraordinary skills of many neurodiverse individuals were not being tapped into by employers because of the traditional way in which companies found and recruited talent and decided who to hire and promote.

Fast-forward to 2022 and this thinking is gradually becoming mainstream. Employers are increasingly recognising that the benefits of a neurodiverse workforce are considerable, including access to more of their employees’ talents and diverse perspectives that can help their business to increase competitiveness.

Read more on Lexology here.

London, 25^th October, 2022;  Multilingual messaging provider ChatLingual is thrilled to announce its partnership with HGS UK, a leader in providing world-class customer care and digital innovation for contact centre operations.

The partnership marks an exciting time for international brands looking to make advancements in their customer experience. With HGS’ decades of expertise and their shared vision with ChatLingual, this partnership will be sure to help companies to support their multilingual customers. HGS UK will be able to support customer support transactions in over 100 languages across all non-voice channels combined with native or bilingual agent voice support. This empowers HGS to provide better support to meet their client's needs now and in the future.

“This partnership is a fantastic opportunity for HGS to better support its international clients by providing a more effective level of multilingual support for customers. Recruiting and retaining multilingual staff has become more challenging and expensive as a result of global pressures including Covid labour shortages, and the cost-of-living crisis. Partnering with ChatLingual helps us address multilingual support for all digital channels which today represents the largest share of overall demand. Through using their award-winning  platform, the need to attract native speakers is dramatically reduced, and with digital contact now representing conservatively 70% of demand, the remaining 30% of voice contact requiring native support becomes much easier to manage.” Graham Brown, Chief Revenue Officer, HGS.

“Partnering with HGS is an incredible opportunity for us to help bring our leading-edge multilingual technology to the BPO space and we are looking forward to the innovative ways in which HGS and ChatLingual can pioneer a modern CX frontier. We are elated to be partnering with HGS to bring innovative solutions to companies looking to modernise their CX,” commented ChatLingual CEO, Justin Custer.

About HGS

HGS provides world-class customer care and digital innovation for contact centre operations locally and globally.  Their solutions ensure high-quality conversations, in the customer channel of choice resolving contacts first time all underpinned by great people, cloud technology, digital innovation (automation, analytics, and artificial intelligence) and a collaborative partnership to optimise and future-proof.

HGS UK has over 3,000 employees making a difference to some of the world’s leading brands, central and local government partnerships.  Although locally managed, they are part of the HGS group, a multi-million-dollar business, bringing global best practice, backing and investment.

Connect with HGS:

Website:https://hgs.cx/locations/uk/

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/showcase/hgs-uk

About ChatLingual

ChatLingual provides the world’s most comprehensible multilingual messaging platform; supporting customer interactions in over 100 languages in real-time across chat, email, SMS, and social channels.

Trusted by enterprises around the globe, ChatLingual enables companies to quickly provide multilingual customer support, allowing agents to converse with customers in their native language—no bilingual hires or translators required.

ChatLingual brings multilingual support to companies across verticals through its messaging solutions:

●      ChatLingual Agent Desktop

●      ChatLingual App for Salesforce

●      ChatLingual App for LivePerson

●      ChatLingual App for Zendesk

●      ChatLingual App for Genesys

●      ChatLingual Translation API

Connect with ChatLingual:

Website: https://chatlingual.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chatlingual/

Notes to editors

For media enquiries please contact Tina Stanley TSA PR tina@tinastanleyassoc.com or +447909967657

It is hard to overestimate the importance of supply chains in the modern world. The global economy pretty much depends on its smoothness and uninterrupted flow. Rapid expansion is the name of the game right now, and the faster you can move materials, resources, tools, and products around, the higher your chances of success are. 

As with any system with a lot of interconnected components, supply chains can be extremely vulnerable to a large number of factors. They can vary from simple schedule problems and untimely deliveries to global disasters that change the very economic landscape these chains are built upon.

Read more on Business Review here.