Industry news

Despite the technology being a few years old now, there is still a lot of cloud-related hype doing the rounds, and especially for those companies that have not had much experience engaging with external IT suppliers, separating the wheat from the chaff can be difficult. Therefore businesses need to be aware of several crucial factors in order to make their migration to the cloud as smooth and as fast as possible.

• Firstly, companies have to be aware of the content that is located in the cloud and the targets they aim to achieve, for example regarding quality, costs and flexibility. This is essential to get a suitable solution avoiding unnecessary costs. In the process of selection companies should choose a cloud provider who is able to create added value with innovation and a convincing operating model.

• Over-inflated promises of the providers are generally not trustworthy. Therefore references should be claimed in order to check the offers in terms of their cost benefits and quality.

• A specific drafting of a contract is very important. Every flaw should be excluded, otherwise after the contract is signed the customer can sometimes be showered with change requests, even regarding Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and customer-specific runbooks. Inevitably, this leads to expensive and unnecessary transition costs.

• In general, it should be clarified that the customer retains the entire control of its own IT, especially when it comes to critical business systems.

• Fast migration depends on the choice of the right cloud model which covers the customer’s needs and wants. Experience has shown that hybrid cloud services are popular because they unify the aspects of flexibility, scalability and data security.

• A monolithic outsourcing strategy can lead to there being a lack of expertise across all levels of the cloud management function; multi-sourcing however, allows a company to partner with different external suppliers who are specialised in a certain service. For this approach, only cloud providers without a “Vendor Lock-in” are qualified. This then brings with it its own issues of managing the delivery of multiple third parties and challenges in service governance. Businesses which deploy an overarching management platform to comprehensively orchestrate various cloud infrastructures will have the advantage of greater flexibility.

IT environments are, in general, very complicated infrastructures and therefore migrating a multitude of different applications to the cloud that each adheres to their own configuration is not a task that should be taken lightly. Choosing the right provider(s) to help make migration as painless as possible is the first step businesses will make in their migratory journey, and following these tips should help ease the transition.

Outsourcing business processes abroad remains popular, with the promise of huge cost savings still attracting many advocates. With the Government recently stating that rather than restricting outsourcing, it is to encourage service providers to set up delivery centres in the UK, perhaps now the scales are beginning to tip the UK's way.

When considering dictation costs, the promise of cheap hourly labour rates from businesses prepared to undertake the transcription in far flung corners of the world was tempting for many organisations. However, comparing these costs with those from businesses based solely in the UK requires a working knowledge of the transcription process and an understanding of the way the prices are calculated.

The hook used by many overseas providers to attract UK businesses is their perceived low service costs. But often the rates quoted are for the length of time taken to type the document, rather than the length of the dictation sound file, so it's a bit like comparing apples with oranges. If in doubt, organisations should ask service providers to undertake a free cost analysis based on expected service levels.

Obviously there are major language considerations too. Much of the work undertaken includes plenty of words and phrases capable of tripping up the unwary or perhaps individuals that do not possess English as their first language. A few of the common mistakes clients have experienced in the past include Warsaw instead of Walsall, Council for Counsel, disperse for disburse and insure for ensure. The list is almost endless, particularly if you need to write to Mr Lees in Leeds about his lease.

Correcting mistakes just lengthens the whole process, either at the service provider end or back in the UK where the client spends more time correcting the finished document. All of which, adds expense and narrows the perceived cost advantage of overseas providers.

Given the nature of the service, fast turnaround times for transcribed dictation are critical to the quality of service provided, particularly those servicing the legal sector, where time really is money and the cost is more dependent on how quickly the individual talks throughout their dictation. And in our experience, for lawyers in particular, this can be pretty speedy.

The legal services sector is a large consumer of transcription services and has issues peculiar to the sector beyond the more traditional issues surrounding Data Protection. The recent changes to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) guidelines have toughened up the stance taken with UK law firms outsourcing their work overseas and that includes dictation. It is far more difficult to assess who exactly has access to information once it has left the European Economic Area (EEA) or more specifically the UK.

UK based service providers also offer much longer office hours, often from 8 in the morning to midnight, with even longer hours if required. Again some corporate lawyers find the need for transcription in the small hours of the night, long after secretaries have gone home and these extended hours services provided in the UK fit the bill perfectly.

With UK service providers working a similar calendar to their clients, enjoying and suffering the same holidays and national celebrations, there is less chance of unexpected interruption to the service with office closure days falling out of sync.

Many service users like to speak to the typists undertaking their work; it's something we actively encourage to ensure difficult requirements are addressed before transcription begins. This is an aspect of the service to have grown from the reduction in support staff in organisations in almost every sector, both public and private. When work is complicated, needed urgently or is expected to be ongoing, clients will speak with the typists, reflecting an approach that ensures outsourcing firms become very much part of the wider support team that organisations now rely on.

The ongoing recession ensures many legal and medical secretaries seek employment with businesses like DictateNow that can utilise the years of experience they have in their particular fields of expertise. Many law firms now understand the benefits of using transcription service providers that can offer hundreds of qualified legal secretaries, all based in the UK and ready to go at a moment's notice.

The transcription sector continues to grow and the number of jobs created is large, with a growing number of UK organisations sending their dictation to UK based businesses, rather than overseas - definitely a cause for optimism for the UK economy.

The importance of the outsourcing industry to the UK economy cannot be overestimated, with the Oxford Economics report for the Business Services Association in 2011 putting the total value in the region of £200 billion. The sector supports around 3 million UK jobs and the argument for many more jobs returning from overseas is getting more persuasive as each day passes.

Senior policy officer Rohan Silva has called for a £10 billion reduction of public sector IT budget.

The recommendation came during a treasury office briefing and would allow according to Silva, for increased savings, while still providing for improved public sector IT services.

The savings would be achieved through improvements in IT contracts, increased flexibility and developments in technology.

“People are talking about very big figures and potential savings in the Welfare budget, but it’s my view that over time we can take just as much out of IT. I think we can take £10 billion out of public sector IT spending in the years ahead, without any change in the experience for the citizen,” said Silva.

China based phone giant Huawei Technologies expects to see rising profits in southern and eastern Africa as demand in regions are set to grow.

Growth of up to 30 percent is expected to occur over the next three years within certain regions as demand for mobile devices including smart phones jumps.

At present mobile market penetration remains very low with less than 5 in 100 Africans holding a mobile subscription.

Huawei is also expecting to receive increased demand from private enterprises and the public sector as it focuses on developing enterprise level services in the region.

Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service (CFRS) have deployed a PSN to provide collaboration services between the service and other national fire and rescue departments.

The PSN will provide networking and data transfer services, with a 60 times increase in transfer speed of data from the old service and will allow the service to procure services through the public sector Cloud Store programme.

The network which was built to public sector standards, was created and will be supported by Updata.

The public sector will seek to use more private services according to the chief executive of Capita over the next two years.

Departments that are likely to make the move towards private services over the next two years are likely to include the ministries of defence, justice along with local authorities according to Paul Pindar, the CEO of Capita.

Pindar, said: “One of the clear themes that came through [from a meeting with the Cabinet Office] was that we're now in the second half of the football match and the activity needs to kick off again.”

The outsourcing giant expects growth of 3 percent during 2012 with increasing growth generated by public sector business despite negative headlines surrounding projects run by G4S and CSC.

Britvic and AG Barr, owners of such brands including Robinsons and Irn-Bru, are set to merge in a deal worth £1.4 billion.

The merger would create a dominant drinks company within the European market, with ownership split between Britvic with 63 percent and AG Barr owning the remaining 37 percent.

The merger between the two companies would see reductions in the combined work force of between 8 and 12 percent.

Accenture has announced it is expanding its global network of Innovation Centres for SAP® solutions with the opening of a new centre in Centurion, South Africa. Focused on accelerating the development, delivery and commercialisation of business solutions based on SAP technologies, the centre will help clients increase speed to market, enhance flexibility, and improve business performance.

The Accenture Innovation Centres for SAP solutions bring together Accenture's functional and industry expertise with the latest SAP technologies, including the SAP HANA® platform and mobility and cloud solutions. Supported by teams of professionals from Accenture and SAP, the centres provide clients with process-specific business solutions, thought leadership around existing and emerging SAP solution-based technology, and the industrialisation of the resulting solution, content and delivery methods.

In particular, the Accenture Innovation Centre for SAP solutions in Centurion is focused on innovating new solutions for growth industries, such as telecommunications, utilities, mining, banking, public sector, automotive, consumer goods and retail.

"The new Accenture Innovation Centre for SAP solutions will help our clients in South Africa and the Sub-Saharan Africa region derive even greater value from their investments in SAP solutions and accelerate business results in the highly competitive market environment," said Willie Schoeman, managing director of Technology, Accenture Southern Africa.

Executives from some of the world's most-recognised firms have been grilled by MPs on the issue of tax avoidance.

The head of Google UK and top managers from Starbucks and Amazon appeared before the Public Accounts Committee.

Starbucks admitted the Dutch government had granted a special tax deal on its European headquarters, which receives royalty payments from its UK business.

Amazon and Google also confirmed they used favourable European tax jurisdictions for their UK businesses.

Amazon's sales are handled out of Luxembourg, while Google's advertising space is sold by a team in the Republic of Ireland, the executives confirmed.

Genpact Limited, a global leader in business process management and technology services, is recognized as a “Leader” in the Global Banking Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Market Report published annually by the global consulting and research firm Everest Group.

Everest Group conducts an annual study across global banking BPO service providers to analyze the changing dynamics of the BPO landscape and assess service providers across several key dimensions. As part of Everest Group’s 2011 Global Banking Research, 12 banking BPO service providers globally were assessed on the firm’s Performance, Experience, Ability, Knowledge (PEAK) Matrix, a proprietary framework that provides an objective, data-driven, and comparative assessment of providers based on their absolute market success and delivery capability. Everest Group identified Genpact as one of the “Banking BPO Leaders” for 2012 based on its market success and delivery capability.

“Genpact’s global banking BPO business has emerged as a ‘Leader’ in our research due to its ability to deliver a broad set of capabilities and capitalize on market opportunities,” said Rajesh Ranjan, vice president, Everest Group. “Genpact’s focus on process excellence, strategic use of technology, balanced shoring approach and investment in domain capabilities should help Genpact maintain its success in the industry.”