Industry news

London Gatwick Airport has today announced it has chosen Getronics to provide key IT services across its campus. Getronics will be responsible for firstly providing an interim service desk and service management function while Gatwick transforms its IT strategy and secondly providing application management of all the airport applications for four years.

As part of its wider IT transformation strategy, the airport worked with Getronics to overhaul its service desk to bring it in-house, raising the capability of IT Operations Centre staff to own and resolve faults, incidents and service requests, and taking responsibility for service management.

Mark Cook, CEO of Getronics, says, “We’re proud to be working with one of the UK’s busiest airports, helping them to deliver quality customer services through the innovative application of technology. We’re a firm believer in our ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ approach, and so developed a collaboration platform that brings all the airport’s service providers together, so that they can make significant improvements to their IT infrastructure.

China has seen slow growth in August, with the official purchasing managers index (PMI) falling to 50.6 from the heights of March’s 50.9.

While the economy continues to grow with PMI results over 50, the slowing in growth went against market expectations.

SMEs are also showing signs of a decline in exports from economic slowdown, with a PMI survey index, sponsored by HSBC, showing a fall of 1.1 to a PMI of 50.5 for March.

The fall in the PMI suggests that Chinese companies are holding negative expectations for future growth.

The results suggest that even China has not remained exempt from the impact of recession throughout global markets, including Europe and the U.S.

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US Employee Outsources Job to China

The UK Cabinet Office reveals plans for the creation of the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), in a move to centralise procurement services.

The move to centralise public sector procurement comes as departments succeeded in achieving significant savings in ITO from consolidation practices.

The new service would see the joining under one roof of multiple cabinet office teams alongside the Government Procurement Serviceas as part of a cost saving exercise to centralise services and increase public sector buying power.

The new CCS according to the Cabinet Office will: “work with Departments and wider public sector organisations to ensure maximum value for the taxpayer is extracted from every commercial relationship”.

The new service is expected to be functional by the end of autumn 2013.

Scotland awards £100 million procurement framework

Ghana has created a panel known as the Government-Development Partners Group, consisting of leading figures from within private government as well as foreign ambassadors, in order to monitor and develop public procurement projects.

The group including the chairman of the Bank of Ghana, the cabinet secretary, presidential advisors, and the National Development Planning Commission, is designed to develop public sector procurement projects and advise on legal procurement policies.

Speaking at the launch of the Government-Development Partners Group, President Mahama said the group would move to reduce costs and waste relating to public sector procurement projects.

Growth in Egypt, Turkey and South Africa predicted to overtake Russian and Brazil in 2013

A new report has revealed that SMEs are employing shared services and outsourced specialist support, as businesses seek to revamp their service offering.

The report carried out by logistic providers CitySprint found that 65 percent of UK SMEs had been forced to overhaul there work practices, in order to adapt to current economic pressures.

The report also detailed that SMEs had become more open to collaborating and sharing services, and that 1 in 8 would even work with competitors to gain business benefits.

Alongside a more open attitude to shared services, SMEs were also found to be taking advantage of outsourcing services, moving to a ‘size zero’ business model, with a focus on the businesses core strengths.

By moving to a core business focus SMEs have been able to adapt to economic pressures, with 400,000 new jobs coming from SME expansion in 2013.

The full report can be accessed here.

Collaborate UK

Predicting and tracking risk is seeing finical institutes increasing their uptake and use of analytic services and capabilities.

A survey released by analytics company FICO has revealed that more than a third of retail banking firms that responded are seeking to incorporate big data into their risk analytics.

40 percent of respondents are intending to invest in improving their finical analytics systems aimed at credit applications, 28 percent of respondents said that they would be investing directly in marketing analytics.

The European Credit Outlook report found that the uptake of data analytics reflected the move by financial institutions to increase the reliability and security of risk management services in light of the banking crisis and new legislation based on past aggressive risk-tasking.

A report from consultant providers Accenture has revealed that the UK is failing to employ innovation to drive sales.

Research published by Accenture showed that organisations found it more important to be innovative for employees than customers.

Business leaders who responded to a survey said that reduced IT budgets and the need to focus on employee productivity and cutting costs had led to a reduced focus on innovation.

“A tough economy over the past few years has led businesses to concentrate on cutting costs and improving employee productivity, making the focus on innovation insular”, said Andrew Poppleton, managing director of Accenture's UK and Ireland technology group.

Contact centre provider Genesys have paid $5 per share for application provider SoundBite Communications, in a deal worth around $100.4 million.

The acquisition comes as part of an on-going move to expand Genesys’ portfolio of services and move to provide cloud based services. In buying SoundBite, the contact centre is looking to offer services to new markets alongside current customers.

In turn SoundBite will now be given access to Genesys’ user base as both businesses benefit from the exchange of data, with Genesys’ revenue predicted to grow to over $135 million under the deal.

With both companies approving the acquisition, the deal is expected to be finalised by the end of 2013.

Provider of service management software BMC to bought for $6.9 billion

GSK releases opens innovation platform

BT has been awarded a contract valued at £37.4 million for the creation of public service network between three police forces.

The PSN is expected to create savings of up to 20 per cent for Thames Valley Police, Hampshire Constabulary and Surrey Police, who operate under the South East Police Shared Network Services Agreement, with savings being generated from shared services, centralised and standardised technologies and promoting economies of scale.

Anthony Stansfeld, Police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley Police, said: "This is a great example of police Forces using their combined purchasing power to deliver significant savings for their force and enabling opportunities for closer working in the future."

South West Wales police drives savings through shared service centre

Solent NHS Trust have signed a seven year outsourcing contract with CGI which will see the modernisation of IT infrastructure including increased mobile and shared service capabilities.

Over the contract lifetime CGI will deploy new infrastructure across 130 Trust sites and to thousands of healthcare professionals, with an overall focus on remote working.

Dr Ros Tolcher, Chief Executive of Solent NHS Trust, said: “CGI is able to offer us the flexible services that will save our clinicians time and, in turn, help us better support our service users.”

NHS moves to deploy business intelligence platform to improve health trials

Accenture deploys cloud platform for NHS radiology centres