Industry news

Metro Bank, the first new high street bank in the UK for over 130 years, has agreed to outsource its recruitment function to RPO specialist, Consort Group, for a further three years. The deal follows on from an initial agreement to outsource recruitment to Consort concluded in March 2009.

Consort Group is targeted with bringing the total number of Metro Bank employees to 400 by the end of the year as part of a drive to expand the bank’s existing Store network to a target of 200 sites by 2020.

“Our focus is on our customers,” says Metro Bank CEO, Craig Donaldson, “and to make sure that we provide them with the best possible service, we have taken the view that we should partner with the experts in process areas such as recruitment and IT, the best of breed who can provide us with flexibility and scalability. We’ve chosen to work with Consort Group because getting recruitment right is incredibly important to Metro Bank – our people and the service they provide are the key points that set us apart from the competition. Consort have shown they have the passion, the commitment and the expertise to deliver exactly the sort of people this organisation needs.”

“The relationship between Metro Bank and Consort Group works so well because we are both highly entrepreneurial businesses with a total focus on customer service,” says Consort Group director, Julie Bullock. “Working with Metro Bank is a fantastic opportunity to create and build a state of the art recruitment function which can identify, attract and deliver the type of individual who will make the bank’s ambitious growth plans happen.”

National Savings and Investments is planning to set up an IT outsourcing contract worth between £700m-£1.5bn to replace its current deal with Siemens when it expires on 31 March 2014.

In an advertisement in the Official Journal of the European Union, it says that it plans to start its procurement in the last quarter of 2011.

On 11 July it will hold an event in London to provide information on the scope of requirements, sourcing model and procurement timescales.

The European Commission (EC) has approved CSC's acquisition of healthcare software maker iSoft.

The acquisition was announced earlier this year after iSoft suspended shares and put itself up for sale. Many believed the deal was necessary for CSC to preserve its contracts with the NHS, which have recently been slammed by the National Audit Office (NAO) as bad value for money.

GlassHouse Technologies, a global provider of independent data centre consulting and managed services, has announced that it has been selected to lead the IT infrastructure upgrade at Olswang LLP, one of Europe's leading law firms. Under terms of the deal, Olswang will completely outsource its IT department to GlassHouse, tasking them to manage the infrastructure, automate manual processes, improve efficiencies and streamline IT operations. These managed services support and IT enhancements are critical for Olswang as it looks to sharpen its edge in the highly competitive legal industry and continue to expand operations globally.

The project, which kicks off in July, is a continuation of work by Systems Group Integration, acquired by GlassHouse in September 2009, and is a combination of GlassHouse’s managed services and consulting services. GlassHouse will help run the Olswang environment more efficiently, outline best practices for operations and provide overall support for the infrastructure. The initial project will focus on three distinct initiatives – workspace management, exchange migrations and archiving.

Key to the agreement was GlassHouse’s global reach and Olswang’s ability to outsource its IT operations. The integration of the GlassHouse team with the Olswang IT staff allows for a deep sharing of knowledge on modern IT infrastructure implementations while also providing the Olswang IT staff with benefits like added IT resources to complete projects and the ability to reallocate staff to focus on other mission-critical initiatives.

“Our rapid growth and drive to expand globally necessitated a more strategic approach to better manage our existing and newly acquired operations,” said Clive Knott, IT director at Olswang LLP. “With GlassHouse’s expert team, we are outsourcing our IT operations to a knowledgeable third-party to automate processes, reduce costs and improve efficiency across our organisation. Integrating into GlassHouse’s IT team has given us the flexibility to accomplish our IT goals while also providing benefits and the capability to reallocate staff to broaden their expertise on strategic IT initiatives.”

Oxfordshire County Council is looking to get another provider to run its £7.8m supported living and daytime support service, with 12.5 full-time equivalent posts lost in the process. The service employs 284 staff caring for 380 people, providing day centre care, transport, and help with tasks such as moving house.

The move is part of plans to slash £114m from the council’s budget over the next four years.

Last night, disabled rights champion Mark Smyth said: “We have been working with the council to manage the cuts, but when the council gives up its responsibilities in this area it can, in some instances, be frightening for people with learning disabilities."

HCL Technologies Ltd., a leading global IT services provider has announced its partnership with Trintech, a leading financial software provider. HCL will leverage Trintech’s Last Mile of Finance platform to deliver its customers with cost reduction and process improvement capabilities.

“HCL is glad to collaborate with Trintech which is a perfect fit to HCL’s strategy to offer wing-to-wing F&A services across O2C, P2P and R2R by adding ‘disruptive technology’ to F&A levers. We are confident that Trintech’s Last Mile of Finance platform will bring tangible improvements to our clients R2R processes, thereby enabling HCL to support clients in key operational and strategic areas of business,” said Randy Mueller, Vice President – F&A, Business Services, HCL Technologies Ltd.

Trintech offers a robust web-based platform on which HCL can transform its clients’ R2R processes. By leveraging Trintech’s Last Mile of Finance platform HCL will provide clients with complete, real-time visibility across multiple ERPs and disparate legacy systems; the Trintech platform enables HCL to automate clients’ reconciliations and streamline the entire financial close process to ensure compliance, improved cycle times, and reduced costs.

‘Trintech is pleased to include HCL in our partner portfolio. BPO services have matured and are not just about labor arbitrage any longer. Process standardization and operational excellence, enabled by technology such as Trintech’s ‘Last Mile of Finance’ platform, delivers year-on-year efficiency gains, providing standardisation, control and automation as well as visibility and transparency across the organization which is now key for CFOs particularly when looking to outsource to external providers,” said Paul Byrne, CEO Trintech.

A UNISON survey reveals that more than half of all councils have backtracked on outsourcing contracts by bringing services back inhouse, or are considering it, after failings by private companies.

The UK’s largest union’s evidence proves that privatisation is a risky experiment, as these councils revealed money was drained, standards were driven down and they had a lack of control over the services.

60% of council officers surveyed said the need to improve efficiency and reduce service costs had led them to consider bringing services back in-house. After cost, 44% of respondents said there was a need to improve service quality.

When the scale of savings was compared to the scale of the service back in-house, almost 13% of respondents said insourcing could lead to savings of up to £25,000 a year. A further 8% reported savings of up to £250,000, 6% said £500,000 and 5% said £1 million could be saved per year.

Other advantages of insourcing included flexibility (64%), greater local responsibility (52%), improved staff morale (33%) and better terms and conditions (25%).

Dave Prentis, UNISON’s General Secretary, said: “This survey exposes the real danger of outsourcing services to private companies. Councils currently seeking it out as an easy option must realise that it will cost them more in the long run.

“These private contractors have failed on their promises and the councils have been left with huge costs and lower standards of services. As well as the huge impact on the public, privatisation risks the jobs, pay, pension, terms and conditions of hardworking staff.

“The quality, efficiency, accountability, flexibility and economics of inhouse public services just cannot be matched. Councils under pressure to review their budgets must learn a harsh lesson from this research - keeping services inhouse is best for the community, workforce and the economy.”

This research commissioned for UNISON by APSE, gives evidence of major contracts being brought to an end and services coming back inhouse - benefiting workers and the public.

The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that it has entered into a radical new contract with BAE Systems Detica to provide security services through a managed service arrangement.

The contract will cover a full spectrum of information assurance and cyber security services. Detica will focus initially on support and advice around the Ministry's IT architecture, its security policy, governance and risk management and compliance with regulatory requirements. It will also advise on cyber security and protective measures.

Optional components include security testing, protective monitoring of both internal and external activity, and forensics.

This announcement follows a hard fought competition using the Office of Government Commerce Buying Solution framework.

The engagement offers a significant benefit from traditional security engagements in that it provides a very efficient way for the MoJ to secure a wide range of information assurance and cyber security services through one supplier, thus enabling a substantial cost saving.

Traditionally departments have augmented their security teams through the use of contractors, often in response to temporary requirements. These arrangements have led to an ad hoc mix of suppliers and teams which doesn't always deliver the desired result within budget.

Detica will provide an on-going service to the MoJ which should enable the MoJ to make substantial cost savings around its security requirements and transfers delivery risk from the MoJ to Detica by being outcome based. Performance metrics will be gathered to monitor efficiency and allow the service to improve over time.

Bob Nicholls, Head of Information Assurance (Information Communication Technology), Ministry of Justice comments: -This contract introduces a new way of working for my ICT IA team and we anticipate it will deliver real benefits to the Ministry of Justice, both in terms of security and cost efficiency. Protecting the Ministry's data and systems is vital to the smooth running of the Justice system and we look forward to working together closely with BAE Systems Detica to achieve this."

Datanomic brings its risk and compliance screening application to Oracle

Oracle has acquired Datanomic, a provider of enterprise customer data quality software and related applications for Watch List compliance screening, as part of its data integration and master data management (MDM) offering.

The combination of data quality products from Oracle and Datanomic is expected to provide data quality capabilities for any data domain, including purpose-built capabilities for customer and product data.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca agreed to sell its dental implants and medical devices unit Astra Tech to Dentsply International for $1.8 billion (1.1 billion pounds) in cash.

The U.S. dental company, which beat off bids from rival medical technology groups and private equity firms, said on Wednesday the acquisition would increase its revenue by around 25 percent and would be immediately accretive to earnings.

Astra Tech, which had revenue last year of $535 million, is the world's third-largest dental implants maker after Straumann and Nobel Biocare. It has a separate medical devices arm focussed principally on urology and surgery.