Industry news

Talent Management

"The best minute you spend is the one you invest in people." Ken Blanchard

Time and time again through surveys, questionnaires and online response forums, the response to what makes a positive outsourcing agreement always results in the same answer. The people.

Organisations are realising that the key to effective business partnerships is very often the individual relationships that exist and the amount of time that is put into managing them.

Every week news stories highlight successful outsourcing partnerships and lessons regarding talent management can be learnt from each of them. 3M extending its IT outsourcing relationship with Cognizant is one of them, along with other manufacturers who have recently renewed or extended their outsourcing deals, such as General Motors with HP, Ford with CSC and Dell with the US Department of Homeland Security this year.

Ferenc Szelenyi, Vice President EMEA Public Sector Services, Dell, said: “To make talent management work, it needs to be comprehensive, throughout an organisation. Therefore, the starting point must be to ensure the organisation has the right technology and processes in place, and in one place. This will mean the HR team, together with the management team, can focus on managing the company's talent, rather than on managing each separate transactional process.”

The NOA Talent Management in Outsourcing seminar was held with the aim of sharing best practice, incorporating views from the industry and highlighting how to gain a competitive edge through human development opportunities.

Yvonne Williams, Representative for Individual Professional Development, NOA, opened the seminar and said: “Development and skills mapping are not always laid out clearly within an organisation and there can often be overlapping or duplication. Understanding where problems can lie in the outsourcing process and devising solutions using the right people for the job is crucial to its success.”

Training and professional development are key in outsourcing. Trained and skilled staff need to be retained and development plans need to be frequently looked at within the context of the bigger picture and changes in the industry. These changes can include the increase in vertical expertise, emphasis on relationship management with offshore and nearshore providers as well as the implementation of evolving technology in the industry.

Logica was on hand at the seminar to present a case study of how professional training can be used to best effect. Logica employs 39,000 people across 26 countries and has developed numerous successful global “You Develop, We Grow” activities focusing on talent management and professional training.

Helen Sussex, UK Skills Development and Training Manager, Logica, said: “Specific people skills are the ones which are mostly missing from outsourcing partnerships. Outsourcing should not be seen as a simple delivery of services. Client management and investment in staff is essential. The benefits of a comprehensive talent and development programmes are numerous. The value based approach is emerging increasingly in outsourcing and suppliers are no longer simply required to fulfil their SLA.”

As the outsourcing industry is maturing, it is important that it is recognised as a profession in its own right. The UK is very often seen as an outsourcing centre of excellence, yet it often fails in promoting its own professionalism.

The NOA is embracing this challenge through qualifications, development workshops, various events and a fellowship. These all aim to further establish the outsourcing sector as a highly regarded profession by promoting the industry and producing white papers which can be distributed to the wider outsourcing community.

The NOA Pathway is a set of accredited qualifications designed to support the development of competency and provide professional recognition in the outsourcing industry. The programmes are flexible to allow the participants to shape the programme around their own agenda and are framework based but not prescriptive.

Chris Halward, Programmes Director, NOA, said: “To develop outsourcing as a profession, it seems sensible that a talent programme should reflect that outsourcing is part of everyday business now. Talented individuals who do not understand outsourcing will struggle unless they realise the process.

“This process can be demonstrated through knowledge of the NOA Lifecycle which provides a recognised flexible framework to guide companies and individuals through the outsourcing process.”

NOA also announced it will be awarding post nominals for the Diploma and Professional Certificate. The NOA believe that post nominals will enable individuals who have invested in their professional development to be more easily recognised and may go some way to solve the issue of self-promotion in the industry.

So while the outsourcing industry can only go from strength to strength with the increasing flexibility of models, cost effective use of new technology and prospective surge in public sector contracts - the amount of growth and recognition will ultimately depend on the management, recognition and development of one area. The people.

Microsoft’s departing software chief has urged the company to move on from its base of Windows and Office and look to global web devices.

Ray Ozzie made his mark with his ‘Internet Services Disruption’ memo which is seen by many as Microsoft’s manifesto for internet based cloud computing.

Ozzie has made the call for simplicity within Microsoft’s applications as many new smartphones are released in November.

Ozzie said: "Let's mark this 5-year milestone by once again fearlessly embracing that which is technologically inevitable.”

"The next five years will bring about yet another inflection point -- a transformation that will once again yield unprecedented opportunities for our company and our industry catalyzed by the huge and inevitable shift in apps and infrastructure that's truly now just begun."

Indian Outsourcer HCL has announced that it will target the UK public sector very “aggressively”.

Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL, said "public sector outsourcing contracts are inefficient. They have to be measured against global benchmarks and open to more people... You cannot take from citizens and give to companies that are hugely inefficient."

The government is currently cutting the amount if spends with some of its biggest suppliers which include Atos Origin, Accenture and Capgemini.

Nayer insisted the cost-cutting doesn't have to come at the expense of innovation: "It's not about cost arbitrage, it's not about moving jobs from the UK to India - it's about innovation... and innovation will come from the use of technology," he said.

Despite the public sector cost-cutting agenda, Nayar said any UK government work undertaken by HCL could be carried out onshore, rather than in lower-cost offshore locations such as India.

Nayer said "We will be happy to deliver 100 per cent of services from the UK.”

George Osborne has said that GDP figures show recovery is steady

George Osborne has said that the UK economic performance figures show the recovery is "steady" which is better than expected at this time.

Osborne said the "lion's share" of the recovery had come from the private sector.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests the economy grew at 0.8% between July and September - twice the rate expected by many analysts.

The chancellor said this would improve confidence, with Treasury sources adding it showed the risk of a "double-dip" recession was being overplayed.

But Labour said the speed of spending cuts could damage the recovery.

The latest gross domestic product (GDP) figure follows 1.2% growth in the second quarter of the year, and is double the 0.4% expected by analysts. But the data is only a first estimate, and may be revised.

Google and VMware have launched a series of collaborative java tools at the SpringOne 2GX conference. It is hoped that the tools will help and encourage developers to look at new innovative ways to build applications with the cloud environment.

Rod Johnson, vice-president at VMware, said: “Together Google and VMware enable enterprises to develop and deploy rich Spring Java applications across multiple clouds and devices.”

Google plans to incorporate mobile-influenced features in the longer term such as user interfaces, app cache and local databases.

Vic Gundotra, Google vice-president of developer platforms, said: “By making deployments of Spring Java applications on Google App Engine using Google Web Toolkit generally available, developers can deploy Java applications in production environments of their choice while leveraging rich web front-end across multiple devices.”

IBM has addressed security fears associated with cloud computing as research shows that security and privacy issues are still the top concerns.

An IBM global survey of 500 IT managers has shown that 77% of businesses believe that cloud computing requires a privacy trade-off. 50% were worried that cloud could also lead to a data breach, and 23% fear that cloud computing will weaken corporate security.

IBM has tried to address these concerns by announcing a new strategy roadmap and various security assessments. IBM also announced that it has several projects under way such as the Integrated Trusted Data Centre project to harden infrastructure by isolating more of its components.

Underlying security mechanisms can verify the integrity and correct configuration of on infrastructure components which can prevent low-level attacks such as identity imitation and spoofing.

Steve Robinson, general manager of IBM Security Solutions, said: “IBM understands the ‘one size fits all’ cloud security strategy will not work for most businesses. Our enterprise clients are looking for a trusted advisor to provide the right mix of security consulting services and offerings to match. By offering these new services and innovations, we aim to help clients create tailored solutions that will allow them to get the most out of their cloud environments.”

Chile is hoping that its success in rescuing the 33 trapped miners will translate into some successful outsourcing business for the nation.

Juan Carlos Munoz, CEO of Chile IT, said that even though there are a lot of countries looking to promote themselves as outsourcing destinations, Chile has shown the right values and engineering capability to succeed.

Munoz acknowledged that although the safety measures were not very good - the effort shown by the government confirmed to the world that “Chile really cares for its people.” The precision drilling also demonstrated that Chile’s “engineering capabilities are outstanding” said Munoz.

Chile has a population of 16 million and is expected to raise its IT spending from £2.3 billion this year to £3.4 billion in 2014. Technical outsourcing is about a £1 billion industry, with providers offering services in areas such as engineering, software development, network security and infrastructure.

Chile is hoping to promote its mature infrastructure and skilled workers along with the country’s resilience after its earthquake recovery and minor rescue.

Anand Ramesh, the research director of global sourcing at business consultancy Everest Group said: “It makes people more receptive to the message but I don’t think that the way Chile dealt with its earthquake and mining accident will necessarily tell people they should look at Chile as an outsourcing venue.”

Business Secretary Vince Cable said Britain’s government is listening to the complaints of business about its proposed immigration cap, which companies say is preventing them from bringing in staff they need.

“The message has been heard loud and clear,” Cable said in an interview at the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference in London. Cable said Prime Minister David Cameron had demonstrated that, when he told the conference yesterday that “as we control our borders and bring immigration to a manageable level, we will not impede you from attracting the best talent from around the world.”

Cable said last month that the temporary cap, in place until the government implements a permanent measure, was “very damaging” to the British economy. CBI Director-General Richard Lambert backed him, saying it was “causing some really big companies some significant pain.”

“Executives have to come and go. That has to be done in the framework of an overall cap on immigration,” Cable said. He refused to characterize it as a victory for his department. “It’s not winning or losing, it’s reconciling two different things.”

Companies provide “one-stop shop” for integrated storage solutions to help customers gain greater IT value and efficiency

Fujitsu and NetApp today announced they are extending their strong, long-standing global partnership to help customers maximise the value they get from their IT investments. IT leaders today are under increasing pressure to respond faster to the needs of the business. With this agreement, the two companies deliver one-stop shopping for integrated storage solutions that accelerate business results for their customers. The expanded global partnership and extended resale agreements continue a long track record of delivering customer success, allowing business customers to increase their IT efficiency and standardisation and satisfy all of their unified storage foundation needs with Fujitsu and NetApp.

As part of the extended partnership, the companies will offer a shared portfolio of products to meet the integrated storage needs of business customers. NetApp will resell the Fujitsu ETERNUS CS800 S2 Data Protection Appliance in 22 countries across EMEA. Fujitsu will expand its resale of NetApp’s unified storage systems to more markets worldwide. Maintenance and support services as well as managed services across the full shared portfolio will continue to be supplied by Fujitsu, the third-largest global IT services company.

“Fujitsu’s global partnership with NetApp creates a well-matched and comprehensive storage portfolio that benefits our customers first and foremost,” said Kazuhiro Igarashi, president of the Storage Systems Unit, Fujitsu Limited. “We’ve simplified how customers can buy integrated solutions as part of our comprehensive Dynamic Infrastructures portfolio, and helped them increase IT efficiency and flexibility. Fujitsu customers see the value we provide with NetApp, not the least due to Fujitsu’s global service expertise across the combined product range.”

Source: http://www.fujitsu.com/uk/news/pr/fs_20101026-b.html

HP today announced it has helped Bank of India, one of the five largest banks in India, realize increased revenue and profitability, significant cost savings and improved process efficiencies through a major transformation of its business.

In collaboration with HP, Bank of India has implemented a core banking solution that is integrated with a new centralized data center and an information management warehouse. This has enabled the bank to transform itself from a branch-centric organization to a truly customer-centric financial institution.

According to an independent study by research and information services firm Thoughtware Worldwide, HP has helped the bank realize a 234 percent return on investment, a 209 percent internal rate of return and $182 million in savings over a five-year period, with the bank reaching its breakeven point in less than two years.(1) During the same period, Bank of India also doubled its revenues, tripled its profits and expanded its branch network by 22 percent.

Today, Bank of India uses a flexible and scalable architecture to meet the needs of changing market dynamics and to differentiate itself from the competition. The HP solution has enabled Bank of India to aggressively compete with new private sector banks while providing state-of-the-art capabilities, channels and products.

“Bank of India wanted to achieve faster time to market for new products and services as well as efficiently allocate resources to free up talent trapped in branches with centralized operations,” said Andy Orent, director, Banking and Capital Markets, Financial Services Industry, HP. “HP used its technology and industry expertise to develop a scalable technology infrastructure that helps Bank of India deliver consistent service levels and an overall improved customer experience.”