Industry news

Lincolnshire Police Authority has revealed the names of five organisations which are competing to provide a range of support and policing services over the next ten to 15 years.

The Authority and the Force need to meet an anticipated budget reduction in the next four years of £20 million. In March they started a process to identify potential strategic partners willing to help them continue to develop solutions.

The contract in Lincolnshire, involving the widest range of services ever offered in a single contract by any UK Police Authority, will be worth around £200 million over 10 years. If taken up by other Forces, spend across UK policing as a whole could total £2billion over the next decade.

Those invited to participate in the next stage of the search for a strategic partner are:

THE CAPITA BLUELIGHT ALLIANCE

SERCO AND LOGICA

STERIA WITH RELIANCE

NORTHGATE INFORMATION SOLUTIONS Ltd

G4S

The range of services being considered includes:

Human Resources

Finance

Information Technology

Legal Services

Estate and Fleet Management

Strategic Development and Project Management

General and Specialist Administrative Support

Criminal Justice Support and Custody Provision

Control Room Services

Police Authority Chairman Barry Young said: ‘We are delighted that companies with national and international reputations are interested in joining us to transform the way in which we do business. We have had experience of working with partners for a number of years – although not on such a large scale – and we know that new and compelling ideas can flow from collaboration and partnership.

Put simply, our intention is to provide the best value and best possible policing for the people of Lincolnshire’.

Chief Constable Richard Crompton, said: ‘This is a really exciting opportunity to save considerable sums of taxpayers’ money whilst transforming the service that the public receive from Lincolnshire Police.

I look forward to the next stage of the process as we seek to find the right strategic partner to work with in the long term’.

Logica, a leading business and technology service company, has announced the signing of two new contracts for the European Galileo satellite navigation Full Operational Capability (FOC) programme. The contracts with the two ground system prime contractors, whose respective contracts with the European Space Agency (ESA) under a programme of and funded by the European Union were signed at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget on 22 June 2011.

A €42 million contract is for elements of the Ground Mission Segment (GMS). Working with Thales Alenia Space France, Logica will have security responsibility for GMS, plus provision of the new Galileo Security Facility and encryption Key Management Facilities. The Galileo Security Facility will act as the security control centre for the complete Galileo system and will be installed at the two Galileo Security Monitoring Centres planned for France and the UK.

The Logica GMS facilities are the heart of Galileo’s Public Regulated Service (PRS).

The second contract, valued at €13.5 million, is for elements within the Ground Control Segment (GCS) of the programme. Working with Astrium UK, Logica will provide:

The Satellite Constellation Control Facility - the core of the GCS - which will control and operate the Galileo 30 satellite fleet once fully operational

The Satellite Key Management Facility, the security facility for the GCS.

Commenting on Logica’s role on the programme, the European Space Agency, said, “Logica is an important player on Galileo and we are very pleased they have been selected for this significant role on the FOC programme. Logica’s ability to combine leading security capability with the implementation of complex technical systems is central to the success of Galileo.”

The UK’s largest online luxury children’s fashion retailer, Childrensalon, has appointed ADA Technology Services to deliver a six-figure hosted support services contract over the next three years.

The partnership will play a key role in delivering the luxury brand’s expansion plans, which have already seen the online retailer’s turnover triple since the beginning of 2009.

ADA will provide a complete hosted infrastructure with 1st, 2nd and 3rd line telephone support including onsite escalation. Harnessing the IT managed service specialist’s nationwide presence, off-site replication will be delivered from its West Midlands data centre, whilst monitoring, technical account management and virtual CIO services will be delivered from its South East headquarters.

Ian Davidson, Childrensalon’s IT Director, comments: “We have experienced phenomenal growth over the last three years and this has highlighted weaknesses within our existing IT infrastructure. With over 230 designer brands available through a business that is extensively e-commerce driven, we cannot afford for our systems to fail and ADA has been appointed to provide a level of scalability and reliability that cannot be achieved internally. This partnership will allow us to redirect the 15 per cent of company resources spent maintaining our servers on growing the business.”

NATS, the leading air traffic control organisation, is to implement a multi-million pound project to transfer all its desktop IT services to a cloud-based infrastructure. By creating a secure, virtual desktop environment the company expects to reduce costs by £9 million over the next four years, shrink its environmental footprint, improve flexibility and enhance the service it provides to around 6,000 staff.

This is the largest implementation of cloud-based infrastructure in the transport sector to date and will allow more effective collaboration between NATS staff and business partners across NATS locations, over multiple geographic regions. Staff will have access to the services, information and applications they need for their particular role, creating a customised experience.

The new service will be trialled with more than 300 users during 2011 and will be rolled out to all staff in the first half of 2012.

Gavin Walker, Head of IS at NATS, said: “This project is part of our Future Workspace vision and is crucial to the NATS growth strategy, providing us with a flexible and responsive IT framework that doesn’t add to our footprint. Staff will be able to access the applications they need, wherever they are, and will have a consistent experience regardless of the device they are using.”

The NOA was proud to host its fifth annual Summer Party and Outsourcing End User Experience at Lawrence Graham Offices, London on Thursday 14th July.

The event was not a typical conference with drinks flowing, a live band playing jazz and an exciting line up of end users speaking about their outsourcing triumphs, failures and all round experiences.

Speakers included representatives from the Land Registry, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Surrey County Council, The Co-operative Financial Services, HML and NOA Pathway.

Martin Hart, NOA Chairman, opened the event: “The NOA is the pre-eminent organisation in the UK that enables and promotes successful outsourcing for the benefit of end-users, suppliers and supporting intermediary organisations.

“I feel very honoured to launch our fifth Summer Party and I hope you all leave this event with great memories and some invaluable insights from our fantastic speakers.”

The first speaker, Paul O’Hare, Head of Outsourcing Practice at Kemp Little LLP, and NOA Board member talked about getting the pre-contract phase of outsourcing right. He explained how often, when a business case for outsourcing is signed off, it is handed over to lawyers to get the deal done.

Paul also focused on the all important exit strategy. “If you don’t get your exit clauses built in at the beginning, you’ll end up paying at the end, when the suppliers take their last chance make a bit of money, when there’s no incentive to give good service.”

He emphasised the importance of taking up supplier exit references, from ex-customers who have been through exit, to understand reasons for leaving, and how the supplier acted during the transitional phase. Paul commented that the recent NOA best practice guide on exit strategies is now available on the NOA website.

One of the many highlights of the event was the NOA Pathway Certificate presentation. Students from HML and The Co-operative Financial Services, who successfully completed the NOA Pathway certificate, received their qualification from Yvonne Williams and Martyn Hart, at the end of the event.

Congratulations to The Co-operative Financial Services’ Graham Bower, John Campbell Sam Hannah, Jo Robinson, Bernie Tattler, Richard Woodroffe and HMLs’ Anu Biswas, Ben Chambers, Oliver Chambers, Sarah Green, Ciaran Leonard, Samantha Mayfield, Bronagh Mellon, Pete Proctor, Wayne Robinson and Andrew Swallow.

Brian Brodie, HML CEO, commented: “The NOA qualification is a vital part of our strategy in moving the business from 'experts in mortgage servicing' to 'the ability in Financial Services outsourcing'.

“The need for professional outsourcing people has been evident for a while in that we need to lead the thinking of our clients and partners more in our relationships. This is even more important as we become agnostic of product and try to win business from people who are already doing this themselves…’

Event Chairman, Martyn Hart, invited questions from the floor, and all the speakers were instantly inundated with questions from people wanting to tap into their vast experience. The evening was wrapped up with plenty of flowing drinks, nibbles and mingling on the Lawrence Graham balcony overlooking Tower Bridge. Overall, the summer party were a fantastic evening for the outsourcing industry and one which has made everyone excited about the NOA Summit and Awards 2011.

For a full breakdown of the speakers’ presentations, please visit www.noa.co.uk

Forthcoming NOA featured event:

NOA Summit & Awards

9th & 10th November 2011

Park Plaza Riverbank Hotel, London

Award submission deadline - Friday 5th August

How SMEs have benefitted from using Dotsquares, their two Indian development centres and offices around the world.

How Do You Compete Effectively Within an Established IT Outsourcing Marketplace? This was the question Bankim Chandra asked himself when starting the company in 2002. The obvious answer was to open two development centres in Jaipur, India and support them with a global network of offices to offer exceptional service and build long lasting relationships with customers. In this way very competitive pricing models can be offered combined with the customer care that has come to be expected of UK, USA and Australian based companies.

We have been providing IT solutions across multiple technologies and platforms including PHP, .Net, ASP, HTML, Flash and mobile apps for Android, Blackberry and iPhone as well as new versions of current technologies such as HTML5.

Cluttered Marketplace creates confusion

The offshore market is now saturated, with companies from Shanghai to St. Petersburg vying for business. This landscape, of extensive choice of supplier, makes standing out and being recognised as credible ever harder. Any offshore company often has an uphill battle to convince new clients that the corporate values of service and reliability, not forgetting technical ability and business communications skills are just as strong as an onshore company.

In the outsourced web development marketplace there is a tendency to try and shout loudest to claim the most attention. The landscape is full of companies and individuals claiming they are the next best thing, but when the development work is underway, clients all too often find out the harsh realities. This reality is that anyone looking to outsource their work must ensure their due diligence has been thorough and that they are dealing with a credible organisation in order to avoid finding this out.

Tailored support for start-ups

As experts in the web development outsourcing field we know what the reality is when a company is just starting up and is in its infancy. Cost is an obvious consideration to those in this situation, as is the quality of the work produced. The same can apply to those companies looking to start a period of expansion. The company has responded to these and other issues by ensuring that resources applied to a project can be easily scaled to any particular development phase. Sometimes additional resources are required at the start to ensure the project is running smoothly from day one. Then these can be rolled off once the initial phases have been completed, or rolled back on if required at a later date. This approach allows the client to focus in on their most important job, and their core competence: building up their own company.

Communicate for success

With often no physical interaction between client and supplier, one of the key factors in the success of any IT project, let alone one being conducted offshore, is clear and concise communication. Mr. Chandra, our Managing Director, quickly realised this is a vital component and set up an online project management tool, which, when combined with a local rate phone number (via VOIP), Skype, email and MSN established clear lines of communication. Projects from as far afield as California (12.5 hours time difference) enjoy excellent communications, allowing both developer and client to work in harmony.

A cohesive approach

By responding to some of the pitfalls experienced by companies looking to outsource, we have put in place an approach that enables them to tackle a wide variety of enquiries. With expert developers in .Net and PHP, combined with other technologies and dedicated graphic designers they can apply a cohesive approach for most clients.

Once the development work is complete many companies would be looking to get their developers on to the next project. The overriding principle being to create an effective “pipeline” of business that is profit driven. This can lead to a poor final product that may not be fit for the client’s purpose. A thorough testing phase at the conclusion of each project ensures a viable solution is always provided, with a product that is tailored to the requirements, yet scalable for future upgrades.

Dotsquares

In all, the entire experience offered by Dotsquares is one of helpful consultancy to ensure the client’s requirements are fully explored, the estimate reflects the work looking to be carried out, and the development teams bring to bear their years of experience to ensure successful and timely projects are returned to clients. It proves that offering a great service and price is still a priority for most people when choosing a supplier. After all we are in the business of Building Business Builders!

John Cotterell, Chief Executive at Endava, explains that UK organisations can benefit from choosing Romania as their nearshore location for IT projects

The current economic climate is forcing world-leading organisations to re-evaluate both their local and overseas IT outsourcing options to improve efficiency and costs. These organisations are now looking to balance their location risk by moving some IT spend away from offshore regions, such as India, and utilise other talent pools in new, nearshore locations. This nearshore option is becoming more attractive for IT projects, due to time zone, proximity, cultural empathy and quality of work.

The nearshore option

When considering any offshore location criteria, decisions should be based not only on price, but on the quality of the labour pool and level of cultural empathy with the UK. Thankfully, new, ‘nearshore’ locations of central and Eastern Europe have emerged that are closer and more accessible to the UK than ‘traditional’ offshore locations.

These nearshore regions are becoming an increasingly attractive alternative for UK firms to outsource business process outsourcing, IT services and engineering projects. A particularly popular nearshore location is Romania - famous for the world’s 2nd largest building and of course Dracula.

Romania has made a huge leap in the IT outsourcing arena following EU entrance at the beginning of 2007 and is now a highly attractive destination. The country is a new offshore star in Europe according to the A.T. Kearney’s 2009 Global Services Location Index - ranking 19th and having the highest climb compared to all the other countries in the analysis (14 places – see Appendix 1 from A.T. Kearney report), while the other countries in the region have seen a decline in the rankings.

Romania’s well-established IT centres have been shortlisted by KPMG in the top 31 emerging locations worldwide for IT-BPO outsourcing, with Cluj-Napoca being the most interesting location in Romania after global companies like Nokia, Emerson, Office Depot, Genpact or Evalueserve opened subsidiaries here in 2008.( Appendix 2 – excerpt from KPMG report)

Apart from the common advantages of nearshore destinations, including similar time zone, cultural affinity, lower overhead related to project set-up (i.e. travel costs), which in the long term, reduce the overall risk of a project, Romania is seen as a unique location. It is easy to reach with a 2-3 hour flight from London, is a member of the EU and has 5 major IT clusters to choose from: Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara, Iasi and Brasov.

IT talent

However, Romania's key strength remains the availability of skilled IT services labour pools at competitive costs. (Gartner Research 2007 – appendinx 3)

The IT professionals in Romania are recognised for their technical excellence, as well as, for their strong engineering background - which comes from a long-established tradition in technical higher education. Each technology cluster has a top-tier technical university and about 8,000 graduates are added to the IT labour pool each year, while there is a pool of about 134,000 people for various technology-oriented jobs (Gartner Research 2007 – appendinx 3).

Also, the fact that many IT companies already have established a strong foothold here - including giants like Microsoft, Oracle, Siemens, Infineon, Alcatel, Freescale, EA Games etc. This contributes to building specialist skills in niche areas, high levels of technical proficiency in leading-edge technologies, as well as software skills.

Good communications with nearshore teams is also a major factor to consider. Romania is known for having a multilingual labour market and this has led to Oracle opening a call center in Bucharest that is operating in 13 languages. Technical staff possess excellent language skills – Gartner reports that 60% of the IT workforce speak English, but from our experience figures are actually higher and all our employees are fluent in English.

Competitive infrastructure

Due to increased demand for high-quality infrastructure, the telecom infrastructure is currently being modernised and office space is available at highest standards. All these combined with only a two-hour time difference makes daily communication and reporting very easy throughout the project lifecycle.

Moreover, the leu, which is Romania’s national currency, has recently depreciated and is contributing to the strengthening of Romanian IT outsourcing vendors’ competitiveness. In this way Romania has kept its lower cost profile compared to other member states in the region (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic).

Romania’s nearshore capability is most powerful and valuable to outsourcing clients in the UK when applied to highly-transactional, complex IT projects with evolving business requirements and new technologies, where the quality of the engineering and development teams and trouble-free communications ensure project success.

Outsourcing trends / looking ahead

In the current economic environment, across the industry verticals, it is expected that the Financial Services sector will be most active in outsourcing projects due to dramatic budgets reductions and the consequential drive to find lower cost methods of delivery. This situation will bring new opportunities to outsourcing vendors in Romania holding deep industry expertise.

As Romania is an EU member state, banks and financial services organisations will find software engineering and development expertise within the EU in a legally- and politically-stable environment, enabling them to match their compliance requirements with cost-effective and rapid project delivery.

As the world adapts to new risks and constraints, the opportunities are larger than ever in Romania for companies that want to outsource IT services and BPO projects. The rewards will go to those companies first to identify them.

A shared legal service between Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Borough Councils has recently been launched. The new team will be called ONE LEGAL

A combined service will deliver cost savings to both Councils which will save money for taxpayers. An additional key benefit is the greater knowledge and skills base of the new team which will better equip it to support the varied and often complex legal work arising from the challenging business agendas of the two Councils.

ONE LEGAL is based at Tewkesbury Borough Council and retains a presence at the Municipal Offices in Cheltenham.

Leader of Tewkesbury Borough Council Cllr Robert Vines said: "I am delighted to see the launch of this new shared service, which really highlights the benefits of working together with Cheltenham Borough Council. We are committed to providing excellent, value for money services that really meet the needs of our customers - and this is clearly reflected in the shared legal service."

Proposals that could see private parking wardens operating in Bournemouth are set to go before the council.

The borough council is still working on a business case to outsource parking enforcement to private contractor Mouchel.

Mouchel already runs the council’s revenues, benefits, ICT and facilities management departments after signing a £150m deal in December.

HCL Technologies Ltd. has warned that a historic U.S. rating downgrade over the weekend may lead to a temporary slowdown in business in the industry's biggest outsourcing market as fears of a double-dip recession sparked a sell-off in India's technology stocks.

The downgrade may lead to a slowdown in business in the immediate term, Shami Khorana, president of HCL Americas, said in an interview late Sunday. Clients in the U.S. might feel cost pressures immediately and go slow in their spending decisions, Mr. Khorana added.