Industry news

Columbus IT has secured a major new win with the leading Agri-Nutrition provider, Origin Enterprises plc. Origin has chosen to invest in Columbus IT's industry solution based on a Microsoft Dynamics AX business platform that offers competitive advantages in a changing economy and rapidly growing market. In the coming months Columbus IT will supply and implement a comprehensive ERP solution to Origin, one of the leading suppliers of integrated agronomy services, crop nutrition and feed ingredients, to the UK, Polish and Irish

agricultural sectors.

“Origin's new solution is an important step towards achieving our goal of becoming the preferred IT supplier in this sector. The solution will be supplied and implemented by Columbus IT's UK & Ireland division, which was named the best performing AX partner and Columbus country by

Microsoft in 2009. The agreement with Origin cements the UK's position as top performer in the group,” says group managing director Claus E. Hansen, Columbus IT.

Based on Microsoft Dynamics AX, the IT solution includes project management, consultancy and software licences. The agreement, which provides Origin with a total IT solution adapted to the agronomy, fertiliser and feed ingredient industries, incorporates significant advantages that will help Origin achieve its strategic objectives over the coming years. Customers want to be challenged.The new IT solution helps to ensure Origin's ambitious growth strategy. Experience, credibility and process understanding were crucial when Origin's management were faced with the task of selecting a new IT supplier.

“It was the quality of the IT systems coupled with Columbus IT's in-depth expertise in process oriented manufacturing that tipped the scales in their favour. The match between Origin's growth ambitions and Columbus IT's working methods differentiates the group from other suppliers in the Dynamics market. Columbus IT helps us to migrate several different systems into one Microsoft-based platform where all the elements are in tune,” says CIO Derek Wilson, Origin, who adds: “We were looking for a simple platform that delivers real benefits and enables us to grow. We chose Columbus IT because we knew they could deliver a solution tailored to our business model and one which would enable us to continue to develop the quality and breadth of our services to our customers.”

For Columbus, the significant demand for vertical solutions together with several strategically important recent wins across the globe is a cause for optimism, which is why the company is now intensifying its collaboration with Microsoft. “Our collaboration with Microsoft is crucial to our global business strategy and we are therefore targeting our efforts to improve the partnership. With the support of Microsoft and our ongoing development of sector-specific solutions we

are able to drive sales and move towards achieving our established goal of dominating our key focus industries, namely retail and project- and process-oriented manufacturing companies in the agri/food sector,” says Corporate SVP Sales Henrik P. Salicath, Columbus IT. Origin's new solution is based on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and includes process optimisation of production and distribution. The system will be implemented in the course of 2010 and will be deployed to all businesses by 2012.

“We are confident that Columbus working alongside our own staff will ensure the implementation of a critical business application The new solution enables us to improve what we do and how we do it thus generating value for all our stakeholders, including our people, our customers and our partners,” says CIO Derek Wilson, Origin.

Source: Corporate SVP Sales Henrik P. Salicath, Columbus IT A/S

Swiss Post Solutions Limited is pleased to announce it has won a three-year contract to provide mailroom services to the Nationwide.

Swiss Post Solutions was selected by Nationwide and their support services company, Carillion plc. Carillion have been managing property services at Nationwide's key administration offices and data centres in Swindon, Northampton and Bournemouth since September 2008. The success of this partnership was recognised in 2009, when Carillion won Nationwide's Supplier of the Year Award.

Carillion and Swiss Post Solutions have an even longer relationship having delivered services for six high profile clients over a six year period. Swiss Post Solutions has a Preferred Supplier Agreement with Carillion, and both have a very strong and enviable reputation in serving the financial services sector. This is a significant contract win for Swiss Post Solutions. In the UK, Nationwide is proud to be the third largest mortgage and savings provider, serving its members in around 700 branches across the country and via its online and telephone banking service.

Under the terms of the contract Swiss Post Solutions will be responsible for mailroom operations at the head office in Swindon, and the sites in Northampton and Bournemouth, including the handling of all incoming and outgoing mail at these locations. Around 8,000,000 items of mail are handled annually across all three sites. The Company will also manage the goods-in services at Swindon and Northampton. Swiss Post Solutions' aim is to enable employees quicker, easier access to information which will achieve further service improvements for Nationwide's members, and will support the building society as a successful organisation in the financial services sector.

Swiss Post Solutions will also install their iTrak solution – a system for tracking inbound signature deliveries. The state-of-the-art technology creates a consistent audit trail for incoming mail and enables a document or package to be tracked from the moment it arrives in the building to when it reaches the intended recipient’s desk. Commenting on the award of the contract Chris Shott ,Head of Business Logistics, Nationwide, said:

'We were seeking a specialist mailroom company that had a good understanding of how the financial services sector works. We are pleased to be working with Swiss Post Solutions, and have every confidence that their bespoke, scaleable mailroom solutions will help improve our workflow, enabling our primary business to be supported by outstanding backroom functions.’

Nationwide were looking for a partner that would not just deliver cost reductions, but would offer best practice in its delivery of service and support. With 34 employees transferring across to Swiss Post Solutions, Nationwide wanted to be sure their former employees would be fully supported:

'Cost savings and service improvement were important criteria for us but the cultural fit and people skills had to be right too. We were impressed by Swiss Post Solutions' commitment to staff training and personal development,' continued Chris.

Swiss Post Solutions has a strong reputation in the financial services sector, providing mailroom services to the world's leading banks, insurers and professional advisers. The Company is Britain’s leading provider of outsourced mailroom services and a specialist in integrated document outsourcing services. Swiss Post Solutions has achieved a threefold increase in turnover since 2004 and profits have continued to increase above this rate. Due to its focus on building and maintaining customer relationships, Swiss Post Solutions has also seen a significant increase in the average contract duration and enjoys near-perfect retention rates. Jonathan King, CEO of Swiss Post Solutions Limited UK & Ireland, is extremely pleased to have been awarded the contract:

'We are delighted that Nationwide and Carillion have chosen Swiss Post Solutions to be their partner and we look forward to working with them both to streamline services and deliver increased efficiencies to Nationwide's operations. As a leading provider of mail and document outsourcing services to the financial services sector we look forward to a happy and mutually rewarding relationship.'

Source: Swiss Post Solutions

Traditionally, businesses seeking to expand their contact center capabilities without deploying additional costly premise-based technologies have had two options: enter into a hosted or managed services contract with a contact center outsourcer, or outsource their technological requirements to a service provider. Over the last decade, network, routing, and application improvements have helped introduce a new deployment paradigm that combines key elements of hosted contact center technology and home agents: the virtual contact center.

A virtual contact center is a group of contact center assets (agent and in-the-cloud technologies) that exist in different physical locations but function as a single, fully integrated, seamless contact center operation. Virtual contact centers combine home agents with hosted contact center technologies providing for the “customer service in the cloud” model.

Virtualization enables enterprises to re-engineer their network routing, queuing, and workforce management in their contact center operations, resulting in efficiency gains and cost reduction. The key advantage of virtual contact centers is that over time efficiency gains and cost reduction are amplified as enterprises are able to better predict shifting customer patterns and allocate resources quicker and manage campaigns more effectively.

Vast improvements in network performance, switching and routing, and workforce management technologies have created an ideal environment for virtual contact centers. But while the virtual contact center is the shiny object in today’s contact center realm, it will take time for deployments to ramp up and for enterprises to get comfortable with this deployment model. Most enterprises that have a virtual contact center deployment use it in conjunction with their existing bricks-and-mortar contact centers and branch locations.

Organizations interested in virtual contact centers have three primary concerns: quality assurance (agent monitoring and data protection); business continuity (dynamic inbound routing); and agent motivation (collaboration tools and performance-based incentives).

The contact center is a critical point for any enterprise concerned about business agility. A well-managed contact center should be a vital source of business intelligence, as well as an effective path to meeting customer needs. A virtual contact center should have a set of well-defined processes in place to ensure that agents are performing at the level of quality that enterprises expect. In addition, enterprises should make sure that information can travel upwards from the agent to the enterprise to extract business intelligence.

Contact center agents should be screened carefully before they are hired, and after hiring should have pre-determined limits on information access. Confidential customer data must be securely protected at all times. Innovative uses of interactive voice response (IVR) technology allow callers to provide and receive sensitive personal information (such as Social Security numbers) while restricting the contact center agent from hearing or accessing that data.

One of the major advantages of a virtual contact center is what it offers in terms of scalability and business continuity. Enterprises should expect that call routing patterns can instantly be adjusted to absorb an unexpected spike in call volume. If a given set of agents is suddenly unable to take calls, incoming calls should then be seamlessly routed to the next available skilled agent, and this shift should be invisible to the customer. Routing rules should be flexible and easily changed.

Maintaining high agent morale and team spirit is a challenge for widely dispersed home agents. Since agents in a virtual contact center do not share the same physical space, virtual contact centers must take extra measures to ensure morale remains high and agents are able to give each other the benefit of their experiences. Social networks have been used with success to help remote agents build a sense of community and ask work-related questions. Another strategy is to provide agents with structured performance-based incentives, which can include giving high-performing agents more access to coveted time slots. Associated with this strategy, agents are kept constantly aware of their performance relative to their peers via clearly defined metrics.

There has been a flurry of major acquisitions in the technology sector in recent weeks, both in the UK and on the other side of the Atlantic. HP gazumped Dell to land storage firm 3PAR, while also bagging security companies Fortify and most recently ArcSight.

Intel, meanwhile, agreed to buy security giant McAfee, and bought Infineon’s wireless solutions business. Not to be outdone, IBM acquired both marketing software firm Unica and document and data capture specialist Datacap last month.

In the UK technology sector, this year has already beaten 2009 for takeovers, clocking up £2.9bn in deals compared with last year’s £1.1bn, according to the Financial Times.

But why are companies so keen to spend millions, and sometimes billions, on acquisitions, and why now?

Desire to acquire

Deepak Jain, senior vice president and global head of technology infrastructure services at IT services firm Wipro believes that the best time to acquire is, counter-intuitively, when you don’t need to.

“We spoke to a large financial institution that deals with mergers and acquisitions, and its view was that you should always acquire when you don’t need to,” he said. “That’s the time when you’ll pay the right price. If you’re desperate and have to push the deal through today, you’ll pay more.”

Part of the reason for the sudden glut of acquisitions could be that some organisations are suddenly finding themselves flushed with cash, following last year’s often precautionary belt-tightening.

For some organisations, acquisition is a publicly stated part of their strategy. This is certainly the case with HP, which has spent more than £5bn growing its software business in this way. According to Ian May, vice president of HP software and solutions, the software business currently earns about half of that figure per year, and the aim is to double that over the next five years, partly through further acquisitions.

So why do large organisations such as HP pursue this strategy?

“You acquire companies for three reasons,” May said. “You either want the customer base, the clever people, or the technology – or a combination of those. At the moment, there are a lot of acquisitions because people want the technology.

“Acquiring a firm for its technology is often much more cost effective than developing it in-house where the time to market would be too great and you may have missed the opportunity,” he added.

May argued that when technology was more proprietary, firms would be acquired for their customer base, as it was the only way to break into a new market since replacing a system with something entirely new was often very difficult. Today, organisations are seeking to fill the gaps in their portfolios.

Wipro’s Jain said that acquiring a company for its people, and specifically their skills, is also a valid strategy.

“We acquired cMango a few years back for its expertise in BMC software. It was the skills and knowledge base of their staff that interested us. I can build skills [in my staff], but it could take one to two years. If you want to serve your customers’ needs today, the best way is to acquire.”

Building the empire

The recent acquisitions made by major vendors such as HP, IBM and Intel also suggest that these suppliers are keen to become one-stop shops for their customers, with storage and security high on the agenda.

Amichai Shulman is CTO at Imperva, a data security firm. He explained that large infrastructure providers such as HP and IBM have realised that security needs to be integrated into their offering.

“We’re seeing companies such as HP, IBM and Intel acquiring and adding more and more security solutions into their portfolio. They understand that security is part of what makes IT tick,” he said.

However, Jain explained that it is not always necessary to acquire in order to build up your organisation’s offering.

“Look at Cisco,” he said. “The company found it better to create a new model, one of coalition rather than acquisition. Now it can offer additional services to acquire a larger customer share.”

Whatever the reason or method behind the acquisition, one area where IT leaders agree is that it greatly aids time to market.

“We have always found that our acquisitions have given us an advantage,” said Jain. “If we had tried to build the business on our own, it would have taken longer.”

Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2270048/why-companies-getting#ixzz10j4HTAhY

Suffolk County Council's decision to slash its £1.1 billion budget by 30% by outsourcing almost all its services has caused controversy, with unions warning that the plan will put a number of jobs at risk.

The decision is seen as one that could open the door for other councils to use outsourcing, turning local authorities from providers of public services, to enabling councils that commission others to carry out services.

Dave Prentis, Unison general secretary, said: ??"This is not the way to run council services. There will be no democratic accountability. It is a disgrace that the council has not asked the public, or council workers, what they think.

"Leaving vital services like child protection, home care and support for young people to the vagaries of the market is very dangerous. Services will be sold off to the lowest bidder, starting a race to the bottom. People using local services, and those working to provide them, will pay the price. ??Unison will be working with the local community to challenge these damaging plans."

But Martyn Hart, chairman of the National Outsourcing Association (NOA), said: "There are a number of reasons why councils and other public-sector bodies would wish to outsource - and it's important to note that they are not all linked to cost savings. Outsourcing can help to provide new and different skills, increase the capacity of the workforce, and help to deliver outcomes quicker and more efficiently.

"Indeed, the actual cost savings made can depend on a number of different variables, such as exactly what is being outsourced, what state the services were in before the contracts start, as well as what the council's expectations are.

"Typically, cost savings in the public sector are usually made over a longer period of time, but given a stable set of services at a reasonable pricing level there is the possibility that suppliers can provide cost savings from day one. However, it's worth pointing out that if it's a slick process already, and the public sector organisation is looking to outsource, they may not save as much, they might even consider offering it as a shared service.

"My advice for other councils looking to adopt this model would be to conduct a thorough examination of your core competencies and your ability to perform all the tasks you have. If you find that you not good at a non-core task then outsourcing is an obvious choice.

"Public-sector organisations that are interested in how others have tackled outsourcing, shared services and even in-sourcing should contact the NOA to attend our public sector austerity seminar on Thursday 30 September."

Source: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/channel/news/article/1030879/Suffolk-County-Councils-plan-outsource-services-dangerous-says-unions/

Sitel will provide John Lewis with technical support for all electricals customers across the UK, from its contact centre in Exeter.

The deal will mean customers will get ‘added flexibility of solving technical queries from home’ as the high street giant looks to enhance its support service.

Sitel’s Exeter centre will field phone and email support enquires from John Lewis electrical and technology customers and will provide technical support and administration.


John Lewis will benefit from a bespoke CRM system created and managed by outsourcer to centralise all new customer purchasing and after-sales information. As a result, if a customer contacts the new technical support centre or visits a John Lewis shop, the customer experience should run smoothly with staff being able to access and update on progress with any product.

Lesley Ballantyne, director of operational development, retail operations at John Lewis said: “In searching for a contact centre provider, it was critical that we find a partner that could make the John Lewis brand come to life in an outsourced environment. It was our highest priority that there be no change to the perception of customer service or brand experience despite moving the operation off-site.

“We’re confident this partnership will give greater flexibility for our customers whilst retaining our high customer service standards.”

Sitel has experience working with other international blue chip firms in the electronics market. Tim Schuh, general manager, Northern EMEA at Sitel. “We feel strongly that we can not only deliver the best possible aftercare experience to John Lewis electricals customers, but we can do so in a way that is cost productive for the company.”

Source: http://www.callcentre.co.uk/ccf-news-content/full/john-lewis-to-outsource-customer-care-with-sitel;jsessionid=32CEED8F522EE06CA84F1FF015F2A647

A county council has agreed to slash its £1.1bn budget by 30% by outsourcing almost all its services. The decision by Suffolk County Council could be seen as model for other councils to follow.

Under the New Strategic Direction almost all council services will be offloaded to social enterprises or companies over the next few years. Unions have warned the plan puts a huge number of the council's 27,000 jobs at risk. The aim is to turn the authority from one which provides public services itself, to an enabling council which commissions other to carry out the services. It could eventually see the council's workforce slimmed down to just a few hundred people who would manage the contracts.

Council leader Jeremy Pembroke said: "This decision was made with consideration to the financial deficit in the public sector and the coalition government's priority to reduce the deficit and the size of the state.

"The coalition requires lesser government and a bigger society and Suffolk County Council has responded to this change.

"Now that full council has debated the issue and agreed with the future model for the county council, we can begin to talk with the people of Suffolk so they can be involved in the shaping of services for the future."

Local councils across the country are trying to find way to save billions as part of the coalition government's drive to cut the deficit. Some councils are considering sharing services.

The plan by the Conservative-controlled county would be the first time a local authority would ended up providing virtually no services directly itself and will be watched closely by other councils looking to make savings.

The union Unison had written to every councillor asking them to think about the impact that scaling back would have on people and the services they rely on.

Unison's Steve Warner said morale was low among members working for the council and they were very concerned about the future of services in the county, particularly those affecting the very young, older people and those with learning disabilities.

He said: "Those are the services that we are worried about. We're worried that the councillors will have less control over those services and that the people of Suffolk will find that those services are less accountable to them."

Some services could be outsourced later this year with others in three phases starting in April 2011.

In a new report (India and China: which will be the outsourcing powerhouse in the 21st century?), the independent technology analyst claims that even though the industry itself continues to grow, India’s share of the market is in decline and China is already providing substantial competition as the world’s outsourcing powerhouse in terms of footprint, awareness and capability.

“Both countries are often touted as the low cost delivery location of choice, with many non-domestic vendors investing millions of dollars to set up operations in multiple locations in both countries”, said Jens Butler, Principal Analyst. “Add to this China and India’s growing influence as global centers of political and economic power, and it appears to be a two horse race to the finish”.

However, according to Ovum, each market must be considered as a delivery location on an individual contractual demand basis rather than as a broad brushstroke, as each has socio-, political- and economic-competitive and comparative advantages.

Stability and governmental influence will play a key future role, with China’s five year plans and the associated federal infrastructure investment and India’s province-led support for its home-grown free-market organisations. And the focus on such investment and direction will need to continue, as there are a host of up-and-coming alternatives to these current “magnets” of the services delivery world (such as the Philippines, South Africa and Latin America). “These locations may not compete from a pure scale perspective, but they may well continue to extract market share from both, just as China as continues to take share from India”, concludes Butler, based in Sydney.

Napatech has taken its first steps into the Indian market with a Value Added Reseller (VAR) agreement with Rahi Systems. Rahi will become the first local Indian supplier of Napatech intelligent real-time network analysis adapters for OEM customers. Napatech will be exhibiting together with Rahi Systems at Interop Mumbai 2010 from the 28th to the 30th of September.

“We are excited about the opportunities we see developing in the Indian market”, said Erik Norup, President, Napatech Inc. “India is a well established IT market with world-class players who, we believe, can benefit from Napatech’s technology. Together with Rahi Systems, we can show how cost-effective, high-performance systems can be built for high-speed network monitoring and analysis.”

Rahi Systems, which is headquartered in California, with operations in India, will provide Napatech’s range of 1G and 10G Ethernet adapters to Indian OEM customers who require a system integration partner for development of high-performance network monitoring and analysis systems and for in-line security solutions. Rahi Systems has in-depth knowledge of Napatech technology, as well as expertise in building high-performance network appliances.

“We look forward to bringing Napatech’s products and technology to the Indian market, where there is a growing appreciation for the value of network monitoring and analysis appliances as a tool in planning, managing, securing and optimizing IP networks”, said Tarun Raisoni, Founder and CEO of Rahi Systems.

Visit Napatech and Rahi Systems at Interop Mumbai 2010 at stand #59.

The Black Book of Outsourcing’s 2010 survey* results are published this month and they’ll make unhappy reading for the big name global players.

The 2010 survey, which drew on feedback from more than 6,500 outsourcing customers’ with experience of more than 30,000 services, identifies a demand and respect for niche specialist providers.

Eamonn Kennedy, research director at Datamonitor, led the research programme between April and August 2010. He said: “Whilst feedback on the big names, such as IBM and HP, has been generally positive, the companies that have excelled and delighted in the services they provide have been smaller players.”

One possible reason for this is that the nature of large scale outsourcing is more complex and therefore more predisposed to a lower level of average satisfaction.

“Smaller outsourcing providers have been pushing their specialist knowledge and deep client understanding as their unique selling point for some time now, claiming that specialists provide a better service. While all outsourcers talk up their ability to specialise, this survey suggests that smaller players are best positioned to deliver on that promise”, adds Eamonn

This is reinforced by the global top 50 list of outsourcers published by Black Book of Outsourcing. Six of the top 10 providers are either specialist legal process or financial research outsourcers. American Discovery, which comes top of the list of global outsourced service providers by company satisfaction ratings, is a provider of legal process outsourcing (LPO) providing corporations and law firms with increased quality controls and cost efficiencies.

Eamonn concludes: “The high score for customer satisfaction amongst knowledge based outsourcing providers can be attributed to the focused nature of their work and the fact that they arguably work for clients with the strictest professional requirements”

*The 2010 Black Book of Outsourcing study, focused on customer satisfaction in the global IT and business process outsourcing industry, has concluded after three months in the field.