Industry news

Continued economic inertia sees U.S. continue with stimulus plan

Signs of continued economic instability have led members of the U.S. Federal Reserve to continue with the current stimulus policy in a bid to promote recovery.

The culmination of a two day meeting has resulted in the decision that the Federal Reserve will continue to buy $85 billion worth of government and mortgage based bonds per month, as a bid to stimulate spending.

A statement released after the meeting, said: "The committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labour market or inflation changes".

The change in policy differs from past expectations that the Federal Reserve will seek to reduced bond buying, and move in line with the U.S. fiscal policy, which has now received blame for restraining growth.

New U.S. federal budget sees a decline in funding after inflation

US trade group send letter to congress criticising Chinese IT supplier ban

The High Court Judge ruling on the Barnet Council vs Maria Nash case regarding the outsourcing of services, confirmed that the council should have done more to consult with the public.

The ruling this week, which saw Barnet Council win on a technicality, would have been secured by the Barnet Alliance and Maria Nash, if they had succeeded in bringing the case earlier.

NOA Chief Executive Kerry Hallard said “Justice Underhill’s comments leave other councils’ outsourcing ambitions in a precarious state. While today will be seen as a victory within Barnet Council, it raises issues of transparency that will have big implications for any public sector agency who needs to save money without cutting services.

She added that: “Justice Underhill actually said Barnet Council ‘had not complied with its obligations’ towards its people and that it ‘‘never set out to consult about its outsourcing programme at all.”

The failure of the council to consult effectively with the public has led to calls for increased consultation from the outsourcing industry with the public regarding the delivery of services.

The NOA’s Kerry Hallard said: “Having an industry standard benchmark level of public consultation would allow negotiations and requests for proposals to be conducted safe in the knowledge that the rug will not be pulled out from under them in the High Court, and may go some way to more positively changing perceptions about outsourcing.”

Barnet resident challenges council’s plan to outsource services

The floatation of Royal Mail is set to begin today as Business minister Michael Fallon looks to complete a move to privatisation for the postal service within 12 months.

Michael Fallon has revealed that the investment banks that will run the floatation of the royal mail will be appointed by the end of May.

Examples of the successful privatsation of mail services have been citied in Germany and Austria to argue for the floatation of the state service, with delivery times being better than the state run competitors.

The move by the government to privatise the service is designed to achieve stability with Mr Fallon saying that new measures were required in order: “to put Royal Mail onto a long-term sustainable basis”.

Royal Mail to post strong profits before privatisation

Royal Mail: profit & privatisation

All 24 ministerial departments have now completed their migration to the new central website domain at GOV.UK, with the migration of services being initiated back in October 2012.

The migration undertake with the support of the Government Digital Service (GDS), now sees all of the departmental sites gathered under one domain.

The transitional program comes as an bid to make the online service easily accessible to the general public, alongside increasing cost savings by developing efficiencies.

With the ministerial departments now operating under the new domain, the GDS will now focus on transitioning public bodies and non-ministerial public sector departments to GOV.UK.

Government reveals plans for centralised procurement registration service

Sita UK are poised as leaders of a consortium, to take over the running of waste disposal for six west London councils, in a scheme valued at £900 million.

The consortium, including Lloyds Banking Group and the Itochu Corporation, along with Sita UK and its partners, has been selected as preferred bidders by the six councils (West London Waste Authority).

The new contract will see 300,000 tonnes of waste, from around 600,000 homes, transferred from a landfill disposal scheme to a new process in which waste would be transported to an electricity plant to be burnt.

The consortium must now be given final approval in order to secure the contract, which would see £900 million paid over the 25 year lifetime of the service delivery.

Chairman of West London Waste Authority, Bassam Mahfouz, said: “For too long we in west London have been sending the waste we didn’t recycle to pile up in landfills. This new contract means that virtually nothing will be sent to landfill.”

Supplier sourcing leader at Google for EMEA and LATAM, Gabháin Neary, has described how the internet giant relies on outsourcing core essential services that do not directly deliver value, in order to drive efficiencies.

The move to outsource essential services in the supplier sourcing process has allowed Google to deliver greater efficiencies, allowing buyers to focus on value creation.

Mr Neary said during the ProcureCon Indirect conference that Google looked to: “Eliminate, automate or outsource any of the non-value transactional work- it has really freed up ourselves, and it is a never-ending exercise to constantly refine that”.

He added that by employing external parties to “support us in supplier sourcing now- my team are now just focused on doing stakeholder engagement.”

Google on collision course with European data regulation

Google acquires new London site

Union leaders are set to meet with major pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, regarding the movement of a large R&D site.

The company is seeking to move the site from its current Cheshire location to Cambridge including the migration of nearly 2,000 jobs, by 2016.

The move comes as AstraZeneca seeks to reduce costs as the company faces the expiry of several drugs patients and a lack of new drugs in its product pipeline.

The proposed Cambridge location is designed to place the company on a level setting with global competitors.

Unions have expressed concern regarding the impact of such a move to the economy in the North-West, with union Unite's regional officer, Gary Owen, saying how: “The company is creating a skills crisis for the local economy”.

Sales fall at AstraZeneca as competition and price rises take their toll

AstraZeneca enters into partnership with Chinese Pharmaron to increase development speeds

The new Italian prime minster Enrico Letta has warned that the country faces a “serious economic situation" at the opening of talks designed to resolve economic difficulties.

With the expectation of an increasing number of bad debts across the country during 2013, Italy is struggling to take measures to halt its shrinking economy.

The conference meeting today is designed to stimulate economic recovery with plans to reduce tax on workers and young people.

The prime minister said that: “We will die of fiscal consolidation alone, growth policies cannot wait any longer.” He is expected to travel to various EU capitals including Paris and Berlin during this week as the country seeks to encourage development aid from the EU.

Markets in Italy have reacted positively to the day’s meetings, with a 1.4 percent rise in the Italian FTSE MIB, as the new government raises market confidence from renewed stability.

PMI reports show German industry contraction

UK prepares for 2013 budget

O2 has entered into a ten year contract with BT, in a deal which will see BT provide network services in support of the rollout of 4G services by O2.

The contract will see the delivery of increased backhaul capacity, which will support O2 in migrating services to high speed Ethernet based services.

Along with increased speeds, BT will construct a new high capacity transmission network to deal with increased volumes of data through 4G services.

In addition to supporting the delivery of new 4G service, the long-term contract with BT is also being used to launch a range of applications and services, while reducing overall traffic costs, from the expected increase in 4G traffic in coming years.

BT secures a further two superfast broadband projects

O2 in discussions with Ofcom to speed up 4G auction

The European Outsourcing Association Awards took place last night in Amsterdam. The ballroom of the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky was filled with the cream of the European sourcing industry, who watched on earnestly waiting to see if it would be them who claimed a prestigious best practice award.

Best practice insights from the award-winning projects (and other selected entries) will be available soon in the sourcingfocus.com EOA Awards commemorative supplement.

And the winners were:

BPO Contract of the Year

• CBRE

IT Outsourcing Project of the Year

• EPAM Systems Inc

Outsourcing Service Provider of the Year

• 60k Ltd

Outsourcing Advisory of the Year

Overall Winner

• Olswang

Highly Commended

• Juan Crosby, CMS

Offshoring Destination of the Year

• South Africa (BPeSA)

Outsourcing End-user of the Year

• Momentive

Award for Innovation in Outsourcing

• Sykes Global Services and Genworth

Award for Corporate Social Responsibility

Joint winners:

• Capgemini BPO

• Teleperformance EMEA

Award for Best Multi-sourcing Project of the Year

• National Rail Enquiries

Outsourcing Works - Award for Delivering Business Value in a Pan-European Outsourcing Project

• eClerx Services Ltd - Global Parts Selector Launch and Expansion

Outsourcing Works - Award for Delivering Business Value in a Single European Outsourcing Project

• Aletea SPA (for Italy)

• Sitel and John Lewis (for the UK)

EOA Chairman Martyn Hart said “The EOA Awards provide a much-needed platform to champion the companies and projects that are driving the European outsourcing industry forward. Innovation and added value are right to the fore of the awards entries – many of these outsourcing projects are providing true business transformation, changing the way things are done across Europe. A huge thank you to everyone who entered, and of course, huge congratulations to the winners.”