Industry news

Company makes investment in social e-commerce

Wal-Mart has announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire, Kosmix, a social media site.

Kosmix, based in Mountain View, Calif., has developed a social media technology platform that filters and organizes content in social networks to connect people with real-time information that matters to them.

Kosmix was founded by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, early pioneers of online shopping, whose first company, Junglee, was acquired by Amazon.com in 1998. The founders and the Kosmix team will operate as part of the newly formed @WalmartLabs and continue to be based in Silicon Valley.

Kosmix's innovative technology platform searches and analyzes connections in real-time data streams to deliver highly personalized insights to users. The platform powers TweetBeat, a real-time social media filter for live events with more than five million visits last month; Kosmix.com, a site to discover social content by topic; and RightHealth, one of the top three health and medical information sites by global reach.

"We are expanding our capabilities in today's rapidly growing social commerce environment," said Eduardo Castro-Wright, Walmart's vice chairman. "Social networking and mobile applications are increasingly becoming a part of our customers' day-to-day lives globally, influencing how they think about shopping, both online and in retail stores. We are excited to have the Kosmix team join us to accelerate the development of our social and mobile commerce offerings."

"The world of social media is exploding and for millions of consumers their social connections matter hugely in their daily lives," said Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix. "Our work has focused on developing a social genome platform that captures the connections between people, places, topics, products and events as expressed through social media -- be it a feed, a tweet or a post. We are thrilled to join one of the world's largest companies and combine our work with Walmart's vast online and offline retail businesses."

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and the company anticipates it will close during the first half of this year.

Fujitsu has worked with Cardiff University to implement Salesforce.com rollouts for two of the university’s customer-facing departments - the Centre for Lifelong Learning and the Knowledge Transfer Centre.

These implementations enable significantly increased response times to potential customers for both departments, as well as a much-needed central point in which to track customer engagement.

The university’s Centre for Lifelong Learning sells professional certifications and part-time training courses to postgraduates, businesses and the public. The University had previously employed a spreadsheet-based, offline system to manage courses, making it difficult to quickly access and share information and providing staff with a limited view of the status of courses. This offline approach resulting in missed revenue generating opportunities.

To address these issues, Cardiff University identified a need for an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) system, enlisting Fujitsu’s help in configuring and supporting a Salesforce.com deployment. For the Centre, Salesforce.com provides an integrated system for sharing data regarding course booking sales, delegates and trainers, ensuring all staff have online access to the same constantly evolving information. The system also facilitates comprehensive analysis of courses, helping to quickly identify course popularity.

The university’s Knowledge Transfer Centre (KTC) aims to enable businesses of Wales to gain access to the unique facilities and expertise that exist within the Cardiff School of Engineering, a subsidiary of Cardiff University.

The school required a robust way to capture and manage contact with businesses and government departments that may be interested in the research and innovation within the department. With no prior way to track conversations, business opportunities were being lost and multiple contact with the same companies occurring.

The Salesforce.com system offers comprehensive tracking and management of customer and client engagement, enabling the KTC to maintain company and contact records and attach records of specific engagement with each contact. By tracking conversations, the KTC could better measure the needs and outcomes of contact with target organisations from a single online hub that can be accessed by all staff.

Simon Parker, director, Knowledge Transfer Centre and Cardiff University, said: “Fujitsu’s advisors quickly understood our needs, converting these into simple enhancements to Salesforce.com, which we now use on a daily basis. Salesforce.com has since become invaluable in managing multiple simultaneous projects, ensuring we optimise our time in talking to companies and following leads.”

Mark Peplow, senior consultant at Fujitsu UK and Ireland, said: “Fujitsu prides itself on recognising and deploying the most effective and flexible solution in improving organisations’ efficiency, and quickly identified Salesforce.com as an ideal package for the University’s various requirements. We believe that many other higher education establishments can benefit from similar deployments.”

Fujitsu offers a range of services for business-critical applications. As well as CRM and cloud products such as Salesforce.com, Fujitsu also offers information management and application outsourcing services and works with leading providers such as Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.

CGI Group, Inc. a leading provider of information technology and business process services, has announced the signing of a three-year, $3.1 million contract with the City of Ottawa to advise and assist the City in support of its Service Ottawa initiative and implementation of the City’s Five-Year Technology Roadmap.

When implemented, the City’s Service Ottawa initiative will fundamentally transform how residents receive City-supplied services. It is an approach to deliver consistent, predictable, high-quality information and services to Ottawa residents and to generate significant operational cost savings.

“We are very proud to have been selected by the City of Ottawa and to support them in this major transformational initiative”, said Alain Brisson, Senior Vice-President, National Capital Region, CGI. “We look forward to assisting the City in implementing its Five-Year Technology Roadmap and achieving the Service Ottawa objectives.”

The contract, with an initial term of three years, is for systems integration services that include subject matter experts and expertise required for the planning, definition, design, implementation, co-ordination, integration, testing, deployment, training, program and project management, and operational support associated with projects implemented under the auspices of the Service Ottawa initiative.

Accenture and The Hackett Group Supporting Universities’ Drive To Lower Costs and Boost Efficiency of Administrative Functions

Accenture and The Hackett Group has announced that they are working together to support the efforts of U.S. universities to reduce administrative costs and improve efficiency in response to ongoing financial and operational pressures. Recent joint work has included the following projects at:

•The Inter-University Council of Ohio (IUC) – The Institutional Excellence and Shared Services Assessment evaluates the functions of finance, human resources, IT, and procurement to identify opportunities to lower delivery costs, increase service effectiveness and lower operating risk. The project provides a collective assessment for the IUC and individual assessments for each of the IUC’s 14 member universities.

•Indiana University (IU) – A benchmarking assessment covers human resources, payroll, marketing and student services functions across the seven campuses in the IU system. An analysis of the physical plant’s financial operations at the Bloomington campus also has been conducted. Strategic recommendations have been developed to support IU efforts to increase operational efficiencies in response to budget pressures.

•Miami University – The Strategic Analysis of Support Services project will lead to a multi-year strategy to enable the university to increase organizational efficiency and achieve cost reductions in administrative and other support services without jeopardizing service levels essential to its mission and strategic goals.

•The University of Massachusetts – An assessment and benchmarking covering the procurement and accounts payable functions across the university’s five campuses provides recommendations for sustainable cost savings opportunities, improvements to purchasing tools and approaches to leverage the collective purchasing power of five campuses.

“Universities are under the same tough circumstances as most state and local governments, namely a widening gap between stagnant or slow-growing revenues alongside fast-growing expenditures needed to deliver core services,” said Dan London, North American managing director for Accenture’s Health & Public Service operating group. “Drawing on approaches that have proven widely successful in helping businesses streamline and become more efficient, educational institutions and systems have tremendous opportunities to make better use of scarce budget resources.”

According to The Hackett Group Global Benchmark Practice Leader Anthony Snowball, “The operational challenges universities face today are similar to those in the corporate world. Institutions must pay employees, manage suppliers, sustain complex IT infrastructure, and resolve issues around redundancy, standardization, and disparate technology platforms.

“These universities are to be commended for their commitment to excellence,” said Mr. Snowball. “They understand that they need to consider all options in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their business operations enabling them to better direct their resources toward their core missions of educating students and performing leading edge research.”

Contact Centre Steering Committee

Thursday 7th April

The NOA Contact Centre Steering Committee, chaired by Ria Barnabas, Recom, and Martyn Hart, NOA Chairman, continued its focus on the creation of best practice at the April meeting.

The steering committee has decided that the best way to promote contact centre best practice is to produce a NOA endorsed checklist.

Drawing on the experiences of the group, the checklist will help others avoid the potential pitfalls when outsourcing their contact centre functions.

The release and checklist will contain the following information:

• Press release – NOA checklist / Index information

• Statistics from The UK Customer Satisfaction Index to be used to emphasise the importance of the contact centre and produce an eye-catching headline / introduction. The 5 brands ranked top under Telecommunications and Utilities are all outsourced..

• Checklist

• Steering committee contributors mentioned in the release. NOA, sourcingfocus.com, end-users, suppliers and analysts. Credibility to the paper etc.

The checklist will be created from the follow list of contact centre considerations. Certain subjects will be split into sub-headings at the next steering committee.

Client Considerations

 Strategy – company’s endorsing outsourcing

 Clear responsibilities – is there a job description – how /where they fit in the organisation

 End User customer engagement – who is responsible in specifying (how do you know the end users’ needs)

 Governance model and mechanism for change

Client When Assessing Suppliers

 Communications (backup) / trust

 Escalation

 Capabilities (also region) (to develop with the business needs)

 Costs

 Innovation

 Security

 Application Support

 Agents

 End User Profile analysis and Fit

 Sustainability

 Transparency*

 Case Studies*

* added at the request of the steering committee.

Attendees included: Ria Barnabas – Recom, Martyn Hart – NOA, Brian Hannon – Conduit, Iain Banks – Response, Tina Stanley –Teleperformance, Will Allister – Aegis Global, Steve Feeney - Genesys Telecommunications, Paul Corrall – sourcingfocus.com

NOA Public Sector Steering Committee

Thursday 7th April

The Public Sector Steering Committee follows on from the NOA Public Sector events of 2010. The aim of the committee is to discuss and brainstorm "strategic lessons for successful outsourcing and shared services in the public sector."

The committee was chaired by Paul Robb, NOA Representative for Suppliers, who initiated the discussion with an overview of the public sector cost challenges and the ‘perfect storm’..

Public Sector Cost Challenge

• Public Sector survival in Austerity…

• CSR Average 19% reduction in Departmental spend (over 4 years)

• “I’m afraid there’s no money left..” Liam Byrne (to David Laws)

• Significant pressure on back and ‘middle’ office spend: transformation required

MoD – 8% over 4 years, back office cuts c.30%

Health Service ‘ring fenced’ – back office cuts c.25-30%

• HMIC: Level of cuts unprecedented in working lives of senior managers across police and wider public sector

• Land Registry: Fee income dropped 30% (year on year)

• £80bn + Public Sector spend on private / voluntary sector services

• One-third of Public Sector services outsourced

The Perfect Storm - Three power forces coming together…

• Technological – Cloud, web based apps

• Commercial – Lock in of legacy contracts, protracted procurement, adversarial approach, input-based approach

• Financial – Cash and capital rationing, once-in-a-generation cost pressure, labour arbitrage, ‘sweat the asset’ – not enough

• Public Sector to re-think the way it delivers services (non-core and core..)

• Outsource Industry to transform at all levels – or miss the boat..

Key Questions

• How can the Public Sector benefit from Private / Voluntary sector Involvement?

• What are the barriers to outsourcing and shared services?

• What changes are required?

- Public Sector

- Outsourcers

Steven Littlefair, Steria, said: “There seems to be a growing maturing in the public sector moving forward and huge opportunities and challenges are present. It is also hard not to generalise but there are vast levels of complexities in the sector.”

There are opportunities to encourage outsourcers to enter the UK market to require processing facilities and take over certain business centres with no redundancies.

Colin Cram, Marc1 Ltd, said: “Outsourcing back office issues can not solve budget issues as they provide only a small amount of public service functions. Outsourcing will have to become more frontline to reach the required savings.”

Barriers

Offshoring – Widespread public sector offshoring on the table? The traditional offshore destinations are now increasing in cost.

Security – Unfounded political and security concerns regarding data. Public concerns about national security and stigma with the security of offshoring public services.

Expectations – “The public sector can not simply set out the perimeters / constraints of an outsourcing contract with a supplier and expect the required cost savings.”

Red tape – There is a need to speed up the outsourcing process but it is hard with the public sector due to changing requirements

Advisory services – can be problematic and have their own interests at heart

Vision – The public sector needs a more streamlined and transparent strategic vision to reduce costs through outsourcing

Procurement process – Lengthy, expensive

Suggestions

• More collaborative outsourcing needed

Clive Parminter, Capgemini, said: “Shared services enable best practice within cuts. Councils sharing best services and even services should be used more to improve capability.”

• Outcome pricing maturity

• Streamlined procurement processes

Actions

• Committee to produce outsourcing recommendations / outsourcing benefits paper (Colin Cram to assist?) – Ongoing

• Next steering committee to be arranged by Events

Attendees included:

Paul Robb NOA Rep for Suppliers, KPMG

Paul Corrall sourcingfocus.com

Leslie Willcocks LSE

Mario DeVarges Bolton Council

Clive Parminter Capgemini

Rainer Majcen Arvato

Colin Cram Marc1 Ltd

John Callachan DDC Group

Steven Littlefair Steria

David Goldsmith Ventura

Bill Hull TLT

Michael Scott RPC

Will McAllister Aegis Global

Stuart Wilson National School of Government

NOA Innovation Steering Committee

Wednesday 13th April 2011

The NOA innovation steering committee met to discuss potential research into innovation, share best practice, work together towards an NOA innovation framework, develop upcoming outcomes for the innovation seminar outcomes and confirm 18 month steering committee objectives.

Discussion Notes

• Innovation has to be flexible and is not needed for every project and collaboration. The management of innovation is critical

• Who sets innovation vision? A consistent definition is needed

• Innovation in multisourcing is more prevalent

• Getting suppliers to work together to maintain delivery of innovative services is crucial

• Example of best practice – contractual obligation for suppliers to attend ‘innovation workshops’

• Theme of ‘collaboration’ is ongoing and essential in innovation

• Cloud gives opportunities but it needs to mature before it becomes viable for corporate use

• Suppliers are driving the way forward with innovation through best practice

• Increase Cloud innovation. Cloud without governance

Research Topics

• How viable are the new technologies?

• Sustainability of contractual prices

• What makes innovation work and fail?

• Is Cloud stripping innovation?

• New technology and legal frameworks

• Account management and innovation

• Driving innovation in outsourcing

• Developing product innovation

• What is innovation integration?

‘Driving innovation through collaboration’ research to be conducted before the innovation seminar (8th June) by a quantitative perception online survey.

Lee Ayling to liaise with Tony Morgan, Dominic Dryden and Derek Parlour to produce survey questions.

Attendees included:

Lee Ayling – NOA Innovation Director, Kristina Holland - Bleum, Nicky Sessions - Hudson and Yorke, Dominic Dryden – Olswang, Tony Morgan – IBM, James Barber - Lloyds Banking, Nick Pantlin - Herbert Smith LLP, Derek Parlour - National Rail Enquiries, Ed Dennehy – Virtrium, Bridget Fleetwood - Pinsent Masons, Malcolm Robinson - Carphone Warehouse, David Marsh - Siemens IT Solutions and Services, Paul Corrall – sourcingfocus.com

NOA Masterclass - Relationship Management

Tuesday 19th April 11

Masterclass Summary

The NOA Masterclass in Relationship Management was chaired by Steve Briggs, NOA Representative for Corporate Users. Presenters from AstraZeneca UK Limited, Infosys, Royal Mail and Reynolds Porter Chamberlain used their experiences, along with case studies, to discuss this stage in the NOA lifecycle model.

Royal Mail

Antony Hayes, Royal Mail, said: “Many people believe that relationship management is a strange concept as it not something which one would traditionally think of being ‘managed’. It is really about getting the best out of a partnership for your company’s objectives.”

The presentation from Royal Mail outlined their own award-winning collaboration with CSC.

Where Royal Mail Began

• Delivery capability: service & projects

• No choice or competitive tension

• Managed to contract, mutual benefit not there

• Newly formed retained supplier management team

• Trust because our relationship management skills were immature and naive

Royal Mail Vision

• Recognition around issues and mistakes

• Openness – we shared multisource strategy, IT vision, challenges

• Contractual accountabilities on both sides met or removed if unnecessary

• Both sides performing well and engaged in terms of service and cost

• Proactively managed the relationship

What Royal Mail Did

• Acceptance of the problem – took a while, required management change on both sides

• Equivalence

• Improved and joint programme and relationship management on both sides

- internal training – all responsible for the relationship

• Engage extended team, treat as our own, in UK and India + subcontractors

• Consistency: Penalties for failures and recognition of successes

Royal Mail Tips

• Get recognition for the need to ‘manage your relationships’ in your organisation

• Accept the ups and downs. When you enter a business partnership, it is a long journey

• Use regular checkpoints, praise, incentivise and recognise staff for the efforts

Infosys

Srikanth Iyengar, Infosys, stressed the importance of the governance schedule along with culture and trust.

Goverence

• Clear metrics for measurement

• Relationship scorecard e.g. Innovation SLA

• Dedicated individuals from all sides including 1 person to manage relationship management

• Appropriate changes should be made over time

Culture

• Regular interaction between teams on the ground

• Continuity of teams – importance of stable teams

• Varying dimensions of culture. Focus on geographical and corporate identity

• Investments in training and re-skilling

• Celebrate wins and advertise war stories

Trust

• There is no substitute for performance

• Bad news does not become better over time. Be open about bad news and avoid a blame culture

• Important to develop a shared vision of the journey going forward

• Not every issue has to be dealt with contractually

AstraZeneca

Ken Morris from AstraZeneca commented on the characteristics of a contract and relationship learning.

• ‘Service Effect’ (Split of ‘What’ & ‘How’)

• Assets transferred to suppliers

• KT & Education for internal & suppliers

• Benchmarking

• Credits & Penalties for SLA’s & Customer Satisfaction

• Global Operations & Delivery

• Joint Governance

Relationship Leadership: Up-front

• Objectives

• Vendor Supply strategy

• Pricing

• Roles & Responsibilities

Relationship Leadership: On-going

• Transparency of activities

- Process Optimisation (lean 6 sigma)

• Transparency of costs

- Understanding of cost drivers (high/low)

• Overall P&L

- By Service Tower

- By Time

• Leading to collaborative working

- Customer understanding of charges and levers

- Efficiency - Stop waste, duplication, low value activities

- Redirect investment to raise value & performance

Reynolds Porter Chamberlain

Sanjay Pritam and Peter Lumley-Saville, Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, emphasised the importance of getting the contract right. A contract should be used as an aid in relationship management and promote openness, flexibility, fairness and integration.

Sanjay said: “A relationship is a fundamental human thing and it will ultimately bring issues which will need resolving. Communication is vital and the contract should be used as a framework - an organic structure in practice. There is no contractual cure for a bad deal.”

Cornwall Council has signed a contract with Capgemini UK plc for a new business system that is intended to save £20m over the next five years by streamlining internal services such as finance, purchasing and human resources. Capgemini UK plc is part of the Capgemini Group, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, and is a leading supplier of IT systems to UK local authorities, UK central government departments and UK police forces.

The Capgemini Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, based on Oracle software, will replace the largely paper-based processes that Cornwall Council inherited from the old county and district councils with a single integrated online system that will cut duplication, bureaucracy and costs. At the same time the Council will introduce new and more efficient industry standard business processes to further streamline its operations.

The award of the £7 million fixed-price contract follows a rigorous competitive procurement process. The contract will be delivered over the next 15 months and includes implementing hundreds of industry-leading best practice business processes. The costs of ERP will be offset by the anticipated £20m in savings that are intended to be generated over the next five years and the potential to generate income by taking on finance and human resources services for other public sector organisations.

Michael Crich, Cornwall Council’s Corporate Director, Resources, said: “The ERP system and new business processes will make an enormous difference to the way we work. At present we have staff across the organisation processing the same types of paperwork in different ways using the various systems that belonged to the old councils. Because many processes are manual, there can be double or even triple handling.

“Things are overly complex and time consuming. The old systems weren’t designed for an organisation the size of Cornwall Council, are very out of date and were scheduled for replacement several years ago.

“The ERP system will modernise our processes, bringing us in line with other large councils across the country and make us much more efficient. It will also help us to make considerable savings that will reduce the overall running costs of the Council, leaving more money for frontline services.”

Council Leader Alec Robertson said: “As a council we have an ambition to create a Big Cornwall where public sector agencies work together to deliver efficiencies over and above those required by Government. The ERP system will mean that in the longer term we could run finance and human resources services for other public sector partners in Cornwall or even public sector organisations further afield. There is scope to join up services locally and to bring income into the area, both of which would greatly benefit Cornwall.”

Barrie Graham, Business Development Director at Capgemini UK, said: "ERP systems are the backbone of businesses and organisations in all industry sectors, including local government. They are used to run office processes like finance, purchasing, payroll and human resources and to provide performance management information. Of the 150 largest councils in the UK, 130 are already using the market leading ERP solutions from Oracle or SAP, and we are naturally delighted to be entrusted with the vital task of bringing ERP efficiencies to Cornwall."

Capita Software Services announces it has secured three new Capita Support contracts with:

•Family Mosaic, one of London and Essex's largest providers of housing support and care

•Worcestershire County Council

•Luton Borough Council

Through Capita Support, the software solution for local authorities and housing providers, organisations will now be able to guarantee that their clients are assessed according to their level of need and matched to the relevant services. This will ensure the most vulnerable of clients have faster access to the tools that will help them improve their lives. Customer services will also be enhanced as the referral process will become more streamlined. The system will hold all of the clients' details and help avoid unnecessary duplication for example, whenever they are required to complete a new form they won't have to provide all the historical information a second time round.

Capita Support, a fully hosted and customisable solution, was chosen by all three organisations because of its ability to increase transparency and improve productivity and efficiency through its enhanced referral and support planning process.

In addition, the organisations' officers will also benefit greatly as any paper based forms previously used will be mapped into the Capita Support system. This will ensure all information required is at their fingertips anywhere, anytime and allows them to provide a truly professional service to their customers. As a provider, Family Mosaic is implementing Capita Support as the case management system for its Care and Supported Housing department.

John Tilsley, head of business systems at Family Mosaic, commented: "We decided to purchase Capita Support because it provides us with the flexibility required to meet our organisational needs. Family Mosaic are passionate about only using 'world class suppliers' and the purchase of the product also matches our strategy of removing in-house developed solutions with a move towards 'software as a service'. We believe Capita will enable us to deliver this important project in a tight timescale to budget with the professionalism we expect from our selected service providers."

Capita's seven year contract with Luton Borough Council will see them implement a single point of access to manage their referrals and vacancies and contract management which will help manage all Supporting People related contracts within the borough including monitoring, renewals and quality assessments. Worcestershire County Council has also signed a contract for the Capita Support gateway system as their single point of access tool.

Roger Birkinshaw, director at Capita Housing, said: "We pride ourselves on providing housing solutions which encourage collaborative working, enabling all third parties such as statutory and non statutory agencies to access the same system to share information. This creates a truly efficient working environment which translates into truly flexible and first class customer service. The housing sector is currently working hard to stave the effects of the recent recession and we believe that our software, we can help them in some way."

All Capita Support solutions aim to help housing providers deliver services under the Supporting People funded initiative, which is the government programme to improve the quality and effectiveness of support services at a local level. The personal budget allocated to service users to pay for provisions such as meals on wheels can also be managed and monitored by Capita Support.