Industry news

Westminister Council, on behalf on other councils, has put out a tender to outsource back-office functions, in a bid to improve efficiency and cut costs.

The tender is part of the Athena Programme, which is a pan-London initiative which aims to create a regional single ICT platform for public sector organisations.

The tender states: The Council, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea ("the Tri-Borough Authorities") have aligned themselves as strategic partners and have embarked on a number of different activities to streamline services and deliver savings. These activities include a programme of work looking at an outsourced service (including the hosting and where applicable the processing of transactions) of the back-office services which are the subject of this notice, namely, finance and procurement, HR and payroll, e-Sourcing, property asset data management and business intelligence ("back-office services").

The Council is undertaking this procurement on behalf of itself and each of the other Tri-Borough Authorities and the following London Borough Councils: Bexley; Bromley; Camden; City of London Corporation; Ealing; Hackney; Hammersmith and Fulham; Hillingdon; Hounslow; Islington; Kensington and Chelsea; Kingston upon Thames; Newham; Richmond upon Thames; Southwark; Sutton; Tower Hamlets; Waltham Forest; Wandsworth, JVC (as defined below), any arms' length management organisations, subsidiaries or other companies or businesses under the control or influence of any of the aforementioned London Boroughs and any Schools within the control of any of the aforementioned London Boroughs (each a "participating authority"). The Council will enter into the Framework on behalf of itself and each of the other participating authorities.

Skanska UK has signed a five-year enterprise agreement with Asite for the use of Asite’s award winning collaborative Software as a Service technology (cSaaS). The deal sees Skanska implementing Asite’s eProcurement and supply chain integrations solutions throughout the entire organisation and across their supply chain relationships.

Asite’s technology will provide Skanska with a single integrated solution for the procurement process across their portfolio of construction and facilities management works. Both Skanska staff and their supply chain partners will use Asite eProcurement to manage their purchasing cycle including tendering, purchasing, delivery logistics and goods receipt, and payment processes. As part of the enterprise solution Asite will be closely integrating with Skanska’s back-office ERP system, Sage Intuita. By automating and streamlining the purchasing process, Asite’s technology significantly reduces transaction costs and will ensure that Skanska are furthering their aim of creating true partnerships with their supply chain.

Andy MacAskill, Skanska UK Supply Chain Director, said "We are delighted to be working with Asite as our platform provider to deliver eProcurement across our supply chain. Asite will be an important part of our vision to deliver a One Skanska best practice approach to the procurement of materials, products, services and subcontract packages throughout project lifecycles. The implementation of eProcurement will provide significant efficiency benefits to our supply chain and contribute to establishing Skanska as the leading construction procurer in the UK."

Ladbrokes plc has signed an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Stadium Technology Group (“Stadium”) – a Las Vegas-based supplier of software and in-game betting applications to sportsbook operators.

Stadium supplies its innovative, licensed technology to a number of sportsbook and third party suppliers in Nevada and Delaware. The deal sees Ladbrokes enter the US market at a time when a number of states are exploring liberalising gambling.

Casinos that utilise Stadium software directly or through third party suppliers include: Atlantis, Cosmopolitan, Crystal Palace, Golden Nugget, Hard Rock, M Resort, Palazzo, Treasure Island and The Venetian.

Ladbrokes Chief Executive Richard Glynn commented: “The size of the US market and potential for positive regulatory change in the coming years make it a sensible place to establish a presence. Stadium Technology is already one of the key software suppliers to casinos in Nevada and Delaware and it has the potential to expand.”

Logica, a leading business and technology service company, has announced that Taylor Wimpey, one of the largest homebuilders in the UK, has renewed its IT outsourcing contract with Logica for another five years, in a deal worth £15.2 million. Taylor Wimpey has been a Logica customer for nine years and this new deal will see the relationship extend to 2016.

Logica will provide outsourcing of IT infrastructure management, technical applications support, managed testing and project delivery services for the UK house building business, with work taking place from Logica locations in the UK, India, and the Philippines.

Andy Feldon, CIO for Taylor Wimpey said, “We chose to renew our contract for another 5 years following a thorough external benchmarking process, which not only confirmed value-for-money, but also positioned Logica as the right technical partner to work with Taylor Wimpey on its extensive programme of change.”

QlikView and Rosslyn Analytics Join Forces to Help Businesses Accelerate Performance and Profitability with Contextual Enterprise Intelligence

New York and London – January 19, 2012 – Rosslyn Analytics, the global leader in cloud-based business intelligence-as-a-service (BIAS), has announced that it has joined QlikTech’s Qonnect Partner Program for Technology Partners.

This expanded partnership with QlikTech, a leader in Business Discovery – user-driven Business Intelligence (BI), enables QlikView customers to leverage Rosslyn Analytics’ award-winning cloud-based enterprise data services and analytics platform, RA.Pid, to make better and faster decisions by obtaining a contextual view of enterprise data in seconds.

The RA.Pid platform is a revolutionary step forward in enterprise information management. For the first time, individual decision-makers not only have direct access to consumer-like end-user friendly tools to extract and transform unstructured enterprise data into information in real-time but entire networks of business users have instant access to any information, at any time, from a single analytics platform featuring QlikView.

Cognizant , a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, has announced the availability of an Automated Coupon Redemption (ACR) solution, part of its IntelliStoreSM “intelligent store of the future” platform. Cognizant IntelliStoreSM ACR is designed to help retailers and manufacturers drive sales, reduce costs, improve customer loyalty, and enhance the shopper experience by integrating online, mobile, and in-store shopping.

Cognizant IntelliStore ACR is a cloud-based service offering that offers a way to embrace paperless digital coupons. Purchased as a service with minimal upfront cost and no in-store hardware, Cognizant IntelliStore ACR was created with Intelligent Clearing Network (ICN), an innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that electronically delivers and clears both digital and paper coupons through a single connection at the point of sale (POS). Manufacturers, media companies, and retailers receive real-time redemption information for digital and paper coupons the moment the incentive clears the POS system in grocery, drug, and mass-merchant retailers.

The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in Northern Ireland (DHSP) has awarded Axon Solutions a £20m contract to create efficiencies and streamline processes in its human resource and finance functions through the introduction of a shared services system.

DHSP is currently made up of ten separate organisations, which employ approximately 70,000 staff, where each has its own disparate organisational structures.

Genpact Limited, a global leader in business process and technology management, has announced it has been awarded a three-year contract extension by global consumer product goods (CPG) leader Kimberly-Clark for comprehensive finance and accounting (F&A) services and high-end analytics.

Under this new agreement, which extends the five-year contract that expired in December 2011, Genpact will continue to help Kimberly-Clark increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its F&A operations as well as its key business capabilities such as trade promotion management and predictive analytics.

“Genpact’s solid F&A services, domain expertise in the CPG market, and high-end analytics have provided unique insight that has helped us drive efficiencies and increase operational effectiveness across multiple processes,” said Mark Buthman, senior vice president and chief financial officer, Kimberly-Clark. “We have a terrific relationship with Genpact and we look forward to extending our partnership and leveraging the increased bottom-line value it will bring to our business and our customers.”

In an online broadcast yesterday from Microsoft Corp. headquarters, Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft Server and Tools Business, laid out how Microsoft’s private cloud solution will help businesses move faster, save money and better compete in 2012. He highlighted how companies, such as webcast participants Lufthansa Systems, T. Rowe Price and Unilever, can use Microsoft System Center 2012 to build and operate private clouds for the delivery of business applications across both private and public cloud platforms. System Center 2012 is available today in a Release Candidate as a single, integrated private cloud management solution for the first time.

“IT leaders tell me that private cloud computing promises to help them focus on innovation over maintenance, to streamline costs and to respond to the need for IT speed,” Nadella said. “We are delivering on that promise today. With System Center 2012, customers can move beyond the industry hype and speculation, and progress into the here and now of private cloud.”

Collaborative working has gained a lot of corporate interest in recent years. The drivers are compelling: improved business communications and workforce productivity.

However, this adoption is not limited to the multi-nationals. We have seen an increasing interest from small to medium sized companies in collaboration tools that not only give them integrated communications services but also capabilities to connect with partners and customers externally.

For example, Microsoft SharePoint has made it onto the radar of many SMEs with its ability to manage work flows and create web sites / portals that link to the rest of the supply chain. With Microsoft Lync available on mobile (and desktop) devices, instant communications are sleeker and easier than ever.

What cloud does here is that it accelerates the adoption of these great technologies even faster! Imagine how much time and resources it takes to roll out these applications to thousands of users across a number of different locations? With cloud, the shift to more collaborative working can be rapid.

Is there any caveat? Of course! While these technologies offer attractive functionalities and serve the purpose of workforce collaboration, there is always question around how they are integrated with the rest of the applications. Employees nowadays are also looking for more integrated experiences from their IT versus having to switch between different applications, for instance email, for something that serve the same purpose