Industry news

At the end of August SuperGroup implemented an upgrade programme to its warehouse management systems to increase capacity and efficiency at its Barnwood site to meet future growth in demand. Once live, the business encountered some short-term issues in the transition which has caused a significant, temporary reduction both in the amount of stock and range of sizes reaching its UK stores.

Superdry estimate that the total cost of this isolated event, including the additional temporary warehousing capability and resulting lost sales during the period, will impact the current year's profitability by between £6-9 million. Stock levels will also increase by c.£2 million.

MOJ intends to procure the services of an ICT provider including any proposed sub-contractors and/or partners to host, deliver, manage and support ICT services to NOMS and its associated bodies from July 2012.

The contract will replace the current services pending transition of MoJ ICT Services to the Future ICT Sourcing (FITS) target operating model (TOM). This is a much wider programme that will change the way ICT services are delivered from the current end-to-end contracts by line of business to an MoJ wide "Service Tower" model with separate contracts for service integration, end-user computing, networks, hosting, and application maintenance and development. FITS contracts will be advertised separately. Procurement activity is likely to commence late in 2011 leading to award of contracts in 2013 and transition by 2015.

The contract being advertised in this notice is for the provision of the whole range of end-to-end services for a period of up to three years with options to extend by 2 further periods of 12 months. It will provide an interim solution that will ensure business continuity between the end of the current service contract in 2012 and the transition to FITS by 2015.

Vertex, a leading global customer management outsourcing business with clients in the private and public sector has signed contract with Avanta, a specialist employability, enterprise and skills provider, to support the delivery of the UK Government’s Work Programme.

Avanta is managing the Work Programme in the North West, North East and South East delivering services that help the unemployed back into work.

Vertex will support both inbound and outbound customer appointment contacts, including organising ‘back to work interviews’ as part of the wider Work Programme.

Andrew Warren, Managing Director for UK Public Sector, comments: “We are delighted to be helping Avanta contribute to the Government’s Work Programme and importantly to be helping people re-enter the workplace.”

Peter Brooks, Managing Director, Avanta added: “Vertex was selected because it understands the importance of providing ongoing support to job seekers. We are committed to ensuring our customers can benefit from dedicated support as they move into a job with a future. We look forward to working with Vertex.”

Red Hat, Inc. the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Gluster, Inc., a leading provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions for standardizing the management of unstructured data.

Red Hat is expanding into a critical part of enterprise infrastructure, which should enable it to deliver open storage solutions that protect customer investments as they approach the new era of computing.

"The explosion of big data and the new paradigm of cloud computing are converging, forcing IT to re-think storage investments that are cost-effective, manageable and scale for the future," said Brian Stevens, CTO and vice president, Worldwide Engineering at Red Hat. "Our customers are looking for software-based storage solutions that manage their file-based data on-premise, in the cloud and bridging between the two. With unstructured data growth (such as log files, virtual machines, email, audio, video and documents), the 90's paradigm of forcing everything into expensive, single-system DBMS residing on an internal corporate SAN has become unwieldy and impractical."

Tesco Bank has delayed a major system migration programme. This has followed severe problems the bank experience in June that locked out customers from their accounts for three days.

The issues were the result of a summer switch over from RBS to Tesco-run technology.

Clarke, once Tesco’s IT director, said the company was “slowing down” the migration in order to ensure the changeover goes “without a hitch”. The problems the bank had experienced were “not good”, he said.

The Cabinet Office is planning to begin the procurement of services for the G Cloud with the publication of a tender notice for a framework contract later this month.

The Government is developing proposals for G-Cloud. This cloud computing infrastructure will enable public bodies to select and host ICT services from a secure, resilient and cost-effective shared environment.

The initial framework is set to run for six months with a three month extension option. This is much shorter than similar contracts and is likely to be followed by another that is tailored to reflect feedback from suppliers and public authorities. All suppliers offering cloud-based services will be able to take part, and the framework will be open to all of the public sector.

Fujitsu has launched its Productivity Suite to provide UK organisations with a private cloud solution for desktop messaging, unified communication and collaboration.

The Fujitsu Productivity Suite is a tailored cloud solution that delivers Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Lync in a way that enables enterprises and government bodies to benefit from the advantages of a cloud-based approach, while addressing concerns around control, customisation and security.

Microsoft’s private cloud solutions offer deep insights into applications, cross-platform support and the ability to extend workloads between private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. The Fujitsu Productivity Suite enables organisations to choose whether the service is a private cloud service hosted in a Fujitsu datacentre or on the clients’ premises; a shared cloud service with common components shared with other clients; or a hybrid cloud delivered via a combination of Microsoft Office 365 public cloud service for some users and a private cloud option for others.

Tina Quenault director of Cloud Services, Fujitsu UK and Ireland said, “Our customers increasingly demand a flexible approach to cloud adoption – to have cloud on their terms. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for moving to the cloud because different organisations and different parts of a business need to be treated differently. Fujitsu customers can now adopt an approach that’s right for them, with the Fujitsu Productivity Suite enabling Microsoft’s market-leading productivity applications to be utilised via a private or hybrid cloud solution.”

Organisations looking to move to the cloud can, with the Fujitsu Productivity Suite, benefit from a service which is based and managed in the U.K. and tailored to meet their specific requirements. Fujitsu provides options for archiving and full disaster recovery as well as levels of security which can be accredited by, the Communications Electronics Security Group (CESG), the U.K.’s national technology authority for software assurance, to comply with specific security policies that may be incumbent on organisations or government bodies.

Lucas Searle, Virtualisation and Private Cloud lead, Microsoft UK, added: “We’re increasingly seeing organisations looking to adopt elements of both public and private cloud computing, often using them in tandem. This partnership with Fujitsu extends our commitment to providing this breadth of choice, with a singular focus on driving business value and flexibility for customers. Our comprehensive span of public, private and hybrid cloud solutions means that customers are able to focus less on their infrastructure, more on the needs of their organisation.”

Genpact Limited, in conjunction with the Minister of Trade, Industry and Tourism of Colombia Sergio Diaz-Granados, has announced the opening of its operations in Colombia, its second location in South America. In its new facility in the center of Bogotá, Genpact will begin providing business process management services to clients in several different industries.

At its press conference announcing the opening of the center, Genpact Vice Chairman Pramod Bhasin stated, “Colombia offers a favorable business climate for Genpact and for our clients – a rich talent pool with a high literacy rate and complementary skill sets, a healthy and growing economy, a number of universities with strong business curricula, a diverse array of industries, and open trade practices. Genpact is honored to establish its roots here in Colombia and become a part of its culture and thriving business community.”

Tech city will have absolutely no impact what so ever. It’s embarrassing to think that our answer to Silicon Valley is a cluster of small technology companies in the east of London which have so far done little more than stress testing for the Olympics.

Yes, its been referred to as Silicon-roundabout but is that really enough to compete? Let’s not forget that the companies on the roundabout are there because the rent was affordable and no other reason. According to Cameron our ambition is to “help make east London one of the world's great technology centres." Let’s recap for a moment, a world competing technology centre? Really? Think of what we’re up against: Silicon Valley houses the headquarters of the world’s top technology companies and accounts for 1/3 of all of the venture capital investment in the United States.

Booming economies in India and China are way ahead of the game churning out engineers, mathematicians and scientists by the bucket load. These economies and Silicon Valley have been around for decades nurturing entrepreneurs, shaking up the tech market and basically changing the way the world works. They have had the foresight to see how the world is changing and what is needed to compete. How is Tech City competing with that? Are we offering anything new or different? As far as I can see it will be a long time before we can create a credible alternative to Silicon Valley.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great start. The government are taking a strong position on the importance of developing an entrepreneurial climate in the UK and getting more involved in tech is obviously the way forward. Even Russia is jumping on the bandwagon with its tech innovation centre ‘Innograd’. But is it too little too late? Cameron and his government have a lot riding on Tech City which was launched last year with great furore yet its goals still remain unclear. No one is quite sure what the government wants out of it, except of course one thing; something in the UK that can directly compete with Silicon Valley.

Naturally the tech giants are backing it. Google and Facebook are creating ‘innovation hubs’ which are bound to attract talent and Cisco has announced a significant investment. But where will the real results come from, the innovation hub in Shoreditch or the global HQ in California? And how will this really affect business in the UK? My guess is it won’t. At least not for long time. Unless something drastically catastrophic happens to Silicon Valley, whatever gets built in Shoreditch really won't have a hope in hell of challenging the world’s greatest tech hub. Let’s face it, we’ve fallen well behind the times and a government funded technology centre is not going to change anything.

Improving professional HR standards in the industry – and minimising risks – can happen through talent management and standards compliance

It might even help when pitching for business or making a sale.

Increasingly, outsourcing operations are subject to personal and corporate accountability, to ensure standards are complied with and the project or ongoing work completed to maximum client satisfaction.

With some professional standards in the industry in a state of immaturity relative to those in long established sectors such as manufacturing, retail, financial services and IT, what can the owner of a business in outsourcing do to in order to minimise the risks posed by staff being unprepared or by insufficient investment in HR and staff development?

Easy to learn and use online tools are a new way to manage all aspects of the performance of staff, including board members, line managers and employees at the coal face/on the shop floor.

Competencies and job roles

The tools can link each employee’s competencies with their job roles, allowing a picture to quickly emerge showing who is best at what and which employees are best placed to handle compliance-sensitive work.

The manager of the tools can use the job roles function to ensure that employees have all mandatory competencies within their annual [or more regular, e.g. three or six monthly] performance appraisal. Staff can also be measured for their knowledge of, and performance in, non-mandatory competencies.

In some situations, e.g. where the project is complex or fast moving, appraisals may need to be carried out weekly, or more frequently where staff are tasked with adapting quickly and meeting objectives.

Identify

Administrators can identify the competency or competencies required for a specific role and then develop the skills of the person who is in that job role. In many cases, the job role will represent what the employer organisation wants the employee to develop into; for that to happen, the employer will need to have a degree of sophistication within its HR function, which may be quite basic or outsourced to an individual who may be too busy fire fighting to do much else.

In conclusion, the business will have different options available if it wants to improve standards compliance and performance. It may need to take a step back to review its HR function and seek advice on how to improve it if that function has been neglected in the drive for growth. It may have an FD on board who is responsible for HR and could include compliance. The MD or FD may feel comfortable about managing, or authorising the use of, online compliance and employee performance management tools.

Managing talent and complying with standards does have a spin off business benefit. It may be easier to close a sale – or generate interest, pre-sale – because the business can demonstrate that it has given a high priority to compliance, talent management and risk reduction.