Industry news

The union representing city Water Department employees says the City Council will put jobs at risk and lose control over the city's water rates if it approves an agreement with a private company to run its water, wastewater and recycled water systems.

"Our members have mounted a campaign to speak in opposition to what they want to do," said Tom Ramsey, a supervising labor representative for the San Bernardino Public Employees Association.

The council at a 4 p.m. workshop today will consider selecting American Water to run its water services, and to authorize a council subcommittee to enter negotiations with the company.

Ramsey said he is concerned that any proposed contract with a private company would not necessarily protect what he estimates are about 25 department workers the union represents.

A final request for proposals from the Rialto Utility Authority earlier this year said the agency that takes over the department would be obligated to extend offers of employment to current personnel with a guaranteed term of 18 months.

It also said the offers would include competitive salary and benefits subject to the agency's standard terms of employment, and the agency wouldn't be required to hire or pay city personnel after the 18 months.

"There's no guarantee that those safeguards will be in the contract," Ramsey said.

The union has produced two fliers slamming the potential agreement as a move that would not only cut jobs and cause uncontrolled rate increases, but also a loss of quality customer service.

Councilman Ed Scott, who, with Councilman Joe Baca Jr., sits on the subcommittee overseeing the proposed transaction, said Monday he was disappointed with the union's officials, adding that he doesn't believe they have been acting in good faith on behalf of their employees.

"Folks are not going to lose their jobs. That's an absolute untruth," Scott said. "That doesn't mean they are going to have a job with the city of Rialto necessarily."

Scott said American Water has conducted similar transactions with other municipalities, and the company suggested that as the employees leave the public sector for the private, the deal could potentially mean better pay and benefits.

American Water also has mentioned that the transaction could result in an additional nine jobs, Scott said.

Scott and Ramsey disagree over the implication of American Water wanting the department's employees to fill out applications for the company.

"That's applying for a job. That's not (the company) taking them," Ramsey said.

Scott said the application process allows the company to conduct background checks on the employees.

He said that for those employees who do not want to work for the company, the city would consider allowing them to transfer to the maintenance division of Public Works, where several retirements are coming up at the end of this year.

Scott warned that if the city doesn't find ways to downsize its government, there will be future layoffs anyway.

Officials have expressed concern about what they say are the growing costs of maintaining the city's water and wastewater systems.

Sluggish tax revenues and retirement enhancements set to kick in next year are just some of the economic difficulties that are spurring the city's leaders to scrape up cash wherever they can.

Officials are aiming to get a big payoff at the outset of the agreement to fund an immediate overhaul of the water systems.

City Administrator Henry Garcia said the workshop will include a broad comparison between the department's finances and the potential deal with American Water.

"We're looking to gain a partner while still maintaining ownership of the asset," Garcia said. "We (retain) control in the setting and collection of the rates. We're looking to transfer the operation, maintenance and compliance risks to American Water."

Garcia said the city also would keep its water rights, and there would likely be an option for both sides to terminate the agreement.

Source:http://www.waterworld.com/index/display/news_display/1271617350.html

Infosys Technologies Ltd (NASDAQ: INFY) and Jive Software today announced a strategic relationship to include Jive Social Business Software for customer and employee engagement functionality within the recently launched Infosys iEngage™ digital consumer platform.

The Jive Social Business Software (SBS) integrates the most powerful aspects of collaboration, community, and social networking software. With over 15 million users, Jive has unmatched expertise in delivering the richest user experience for every type of online community: employee, public or both. Infosys brings to the partnership its comprehensive digital consumer platform, industry-specific focus, global reach, and the convenience of a single point of accountability with its Enterprise SaaS model. Five leading Global 500 companies have already adopted Infosys iEngage™ to power their digital initiatives.

Infosys will work closely with Jive in three areas; product roadmap, platform expertise, and best practice sharing. Collaborating on a common product roadmap ensures that clients may quickly adopt new features and capabilities to meet the growing digital demand. This partnership also enables the development of industry-specific applications which could be made available on Jive Apps Market. Infosys has established a dedicated team of Jive-proficient product experts in all aspects of Jive's technology to accelerate rapid client adoption. Further, the partnership enables the two companies to exchange and develop best practices so clients are provided with specific business solutions to meet changing business needs.

According to Pradeep Prabhu, Vice President and Head – Enterprise Saas, Infosys Technologies Ltd, "Our strategic relationship with Jive enables us to offer Infosys iEngage digital consumer platform as a unique and comprehensive solution for both customer and employee engagement. The platform enables companies to deepen relationships, accelerate innovation and grow revenues with convenience of a single point of accountability."

"We are thrilled to partner with Infosys and extend the advantages of social business to our mutual customers," said John McCracken, senior vice president of sales, Jive. "By partnering with an industry leader like Infosys, we continue to grow our worldwide presence and further expand our market leadership."

Source: http://www.infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/Pages/social-business-software.aspx?soc=rssmed

CSC (NYSE: CSC) today announced the ability for its customers to transform their business applications to a cloud-based computing infrastructure using Oracle hardware and software products. CSC Foundation Services for Oracle work together to assist clients in leveraging Oracle’s integrated stack from applications-to-disk; including storage, servers, virtualization software, databases, middleware, application and management software.

"Oracle provides the industry's most complete, open, integrated and secure enterprise grade infrastructure and platform products for customers and partners to build, deploy, and manage public and private clouds,” said Andy Bailey, senior vice president, Worldwide System Integrator Alliances, Oracle. “CSC’s Foundation Services, built on Oracle’s platform, provide customers with accelerated development and deployment of SaaS and cloud based business applications with increased agility and reduced IT costs."

CSC’s Foundation Services for Oracle are designed to guide clients on their journey to the cloud – from selecting and transforming applications to establishing their own private cloud environment – in a way that ensures their business goals are achieved. These services leverage CSC’s Business First Approach, which evaluates enterprise business processes and identifies the ideal workloads that will generate the greatest ROI from cloud services. A key feature of this offering is the development of a demonstrable reference architecture that provisions Oracle applications, middleware and infrastructure through virtual instances in minutes. This reference architecture and the accompanying services have been successfully used to guide customers in establishing their own private cloud environments.

“Enterprise workloads based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) require integration with the underlying middleware and infrastructure such as that provided by Oracle,” said Sreedhar Kajeepeta, vice president, CSC Global Technology Consulting. “CSC has developed a global practice and service offerings to enable our clients’ rapid adoption of cloud computing while extracting optimal value from the Oracle Platform Products.”

CSC Foundation Services for Oracle include:

• Plan & Design Services – Services to support decision-making around the application of cloud services in the customer’s business. These range from defining business process requirements to optimize business value to designing cloud architecture that ensures information security and compliance.

• Implementation and Integration Services – Services to help turn cloud strategy into a reality. These services cover launching chosen cloud technologies, configuring them to meet client-specific business needs, and setting them up for integrated management and reporting, even across multiple clouds. CSC enables private cloud solutions on the client’s premise or on CSC premises.

• Deliver and Manage Services – CSC manages private, public or hybrid cloud infrastructures and helps the client select and implement the right cloud to meet business requirements. This includes defining and refining all the details of standard service offerings, shared or dedicated services, prescriptive architectures, service level agreements, security requirements and any customized solutions.

“Foundation Services for Oracle is one example of CSC applying its experience and capabilities to application transformation and modernization,” said Siki Giunta, vice president, Cloud Computing and Software Services, CSC. “For every customer, no matter where they are on their cloud journey, CSC provides multi- platform application transformation to migrate ideal workloads to the cloud.”

For more information about CSC’s cloud services, please visit www.csc.com/cloud. For insights, resources and community interaction on cloud topics, visit www.trustedcloudservices.com.

About Oracle PartnerNetwork

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle's partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle’s growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success. To find out more visit http://www.oracle.com/partners.

About CSC

CSC is a global leader in providing technology-enabled solutions and services through three primary lines of business. These include Business Solutions and Services, the Managed Services Sector and the North American Public Sector. CSC’s advanced capabilities include system design and integration, information technology and business process outsourcing, applications software development, Web and application hosting, mission support and management consulting. Headquartered in Falls Church, Va., CSC has approximately 95,000 employees and reported revenue of $16.2 billion for the 12 months ended July 2, 2010.

Source:http://www.csc.com/newsroom/press_releases/54369-csc_announces_cloud_foundation_services_for_oracle?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+csc_global_press_releases+(CSC's+Global+Press+Releases)

University College London, one of the country's leading institutions, is to introduce the "living wage" for all staff - including cleaners working for contract companies.

University authorities announced the change of heart over pay after a meeting with campaigners on Tuesday.

Academics, students and community groups had protested at a refusal to pay cleaners £7.85 per hour.

There are now nine London universities promising to pay the living wage.

Living wage campaigners describe the decision as a "significant victory".

The Citizens UK community group and University of London Union have been calling on all London universities to pay the living wage of £7.85 per hour - which is claimed to be the lowest rate needed to live in the capital.

'Business sense'

This is higher than the national minimum wage, which will be £5.93 per hour from October.

UCL had initially rejected calls for contract staff, such as cleaners and catering staff, to receive this level of pay.

But the university came under sustained pressure from students, staff and Citizens UK.

Campaigners contrasted the difficulties of low-paid cleaners, who might have to work several jobs to keep their families, with the £404,742 annual pay package of UCL provost, Professor Malcolm Grant.

Academics at UCL had written to complain about the "grossly inequitable" difference in pay between the highest and lowest paid at the university.

Professor Grant has already announced that he would take a 10% pay cut, as well as a pay freeze.

The university has now agreed to introduce the living wage, including staff working for outsourcing companies, over the next two years

A spokesman for Citizens UK says that Professor Grant "has clearly heard the arguments of the campaign that a living wage is both the right thing to do, and makes good business sense".

UCL is the latest London university to sign up for this higher rate of pay - with commitments already made by Queen Mary, London School of Economics, Birkbeck, Goldsmiths, School of Oriental and African Studies, London Business School, Institute of Education and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

On Tuesday, the newly-elected Labour leader, Ed Miliband, promised his support for the living wage in a speech to his party conference.

London Mayor Boris Johnson has also backed the living wage campaign, arguing that people should be "better off in work than out of work".

Source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11427323

The Cooperative Financial Services (CFS) has announced a partnership with the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) for its supplier management development programme. The news follows the recent announcement by the NOA of their partnership with HML part of the Skipton Building Society.

The CFS programme, known as The Professional Certificate in Outsourcing Practice, has been designed to develop participants’ ability to apply best practice principles to the management of business relationships. Structured as a blend of workshops and distance learning, the course is accredited at undergraduate degree level by Middlesex University, and can be tailored to meet the individual needs of specific organisations.

The CFS Sourcing Forum has established the programme in order to develop the skills of colleagues who are involved in the management of suppliers of outsourced and shared services operations. The Certificate is awarded by the NOA, the UK’s only outsourcing trade association and the center of excellence in outsourcing.

“The course has been designed to explain the basic concepts of outsourcing and introduces the NOA Life-cycle framework for best practice in outsourcing,” said Steve Briggs, Head of Strategic Partnerships at the Co-operative Financial Services. "As outsourced business underpins our ability to deliver a high quality service to customers it is essential we have expertise in managing those relationships. The Professional Certificate is an important part of helping us achieve that."

Course participants have recently completed Gateway, the first of three modules that make up the Professional Certificate in Outsourcing Practice. Of the 12 course participants, nearly half have submitted work of a standard which should put them well onto the road to achieve a merit or distinction once they have completed the programme.

Martyn Hart, Chairman of the National Outsourcing Association (NOA), commented: “The NOA is delighted with the progress of the group and impressed by the level of commitment the 12 individuals have demonstrated. The programme is clearly helping them to develop their practice and to ensure that they are all able to manage supplier relationships to ensure optimum performance for CFS.”

The group will continue with module 2 of the Professional Certificate; which enables them to explore approaches to outsourcing in more detail. Module 2 will be completed before the end of 2010 with the NOA Professional Certificate itself awarded in early Spring 2011.

HP Enterprise Services today announced it has been awarded a $20 million contract by the State of Florida’s Agency for Workforce Innovation to develop, design, implement and maintain the Early Learning Information System (ELIS) for the enhancement of the state’s early learning programs.

ELIS is a consolidated information system that manages the early learning programs used by 300,000 Florida families whose children attend the Voluntary Prekindergarten Education and School Readiness programs.

Under this applications services contract, HP will develop and implement a centralized child care management system. To achieve this, HP will deliver applications development and modernization services to provide enhanced system functionality, such as improved attendance tracking, provider payment processing, case management, eligibility determination and reporting.

“The creation of Florida’s Early Learning Information System will result in significant improvements to the way we are able to manage the state’s early learning programs,” said Brittany Birken, director, Florida’s Office of Early Learning. “This system will provide real-time information that will improve the accessibility, affordability and the quality of early learning services for Florida’s children and families.”

The new system will enable data sharing capabilities between educators, parents, providers and state agencies. HP will implement online self-service customer portals to improve customer service and ELIS accessibility for parents and providers to gain access to child development resources, early education information and referral information.

In addition, the system will assist with the identification of fraud and overpayments as well as streamline administrative processes by serving as the single point of entry for eligibility data. In support of Florida’s caseworkers, ELIS will offer increased efficiency by creating automated, repeatable and predictable processes.

“We look forward to assisting Florida with development of ELIS to enable the state to gain operational efficiencies while providing quality, inclusive early learning opportunities for children from birth through age five,” said Dennis Stolkey, senior vice president, U.S. Public Sector, HP Enterprise Services. “HP is proud to extend our 19-year relationship with the State’s Agency for Workforce Innovation by delivering best-in-class technical, functional and management expertise.”

Source:http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100929a.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news

Capitalising on the uptake in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Inatech, the Oracle business solutions specialist, has created a new ECM team.

The ECM team of experienced consultants, who have many man years working with ECM solutions, will focus on core Oracle solutions including the Oracle UCM suite, Universal Content Management and the I/PM product set. This will enable customers, including commercial and Government organisations, to capture and manage documents that are integrated with Siebel and Oracle’s E-Business applications.

The team will be led by industry veteran Andrew Coyle, ECM Business Development Manager at Inatech, who has 20 years experience helping multinationals and Governments with information management strategies.

Andrew commented: “As information and document management is becoming increasingly important and complex for organisations to master, ECM is a vital strategic asset for any IT department. The time is right for clients to remove complexity, strip out duplication and utilise the opportunities promised by their technology and the intelligence presented by their collective data.”

Chris Baker, CEO at Inatech commented: “Today’s business environment is representing new challenges and opportunities for global enterprises. As such, it’s imperative to manage costs and ensure the business remains competitive and efficient.

“One of the key opportunities is savings within document and paper-based processes. Oracle’s processing and scanning technologies are essential for this and that’s why we have created a dedicated ECM team to enable our clients to gain maximum benefit.”

As part of Oracle E20 suite, the IPM product set automates paper intensive business processes by coupling capture and imaging technology with workflow. It’s fully integrated with Oracle E-Business Suite and provides a framework that allows organisations to take advantage of the high volume imaging and workflow capabilities from Oracle.

Source:http://www.inatech.com/practices/ecm.asp

Forecasts by independent technology analyst Ovum reveal that growth will slow to just 2% in 2011, down from 2.4% in 2010. Once inflation is taken into account then the market will actually shrink.

Jessica Hawkins, Ovum analyst, said: “The IT services market was severely affected by the global financial crisis with growth dropping to just 1.6% in 2009, but the sector’s woes are far from over. The slow recovery and drastic public sector cuts have crushed any hopes of a return to better days and 2011 will be extremely tough for the industry.”

Public sector IT spend has already been affected by the moratorium on £1 million+ IT projects and earlier this month the National Programme for IT was effectively scrapped. Hawkins said: “A reduction in IT spend will be accelerated further following the spending review on 20 October, which is expected to deliver cuts of anywhere between 25% and 40%. The public sector faces its toughest year for a decade and will only grow by 2% in 2011. Suppliers should only expect single digit growth for the next few years.”

Although in general the picture for IT services companies looks bleak in 2011, according to Hawkins, providers of business process outsourcing (BPO) stand to benefit significantly from the new age of austerity. She said: “We expect BPO to be largely resilient to this tough environment as public sector departments try to deal with the cuts. It will therefore remain the fastest-growing sector of the UK IT services market through to 2015, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5 per cent.”

Source: http://www.ovumkc.com/

The bill dubbed the “Creating American Jobs and End Offshoring Act” was voted on Tuesday with disastrous results for the supporters of the act. This legislation intended to create tax breaks for the companies that moved overseas operations back to the U.S., but took tax breaks away from the companies that continued, or started to rely on overseas production. There were yea’s and nay’s from both political parties, so this time, the Republicans didn’t filibuster. I somehow believe though, that if the Democrats had stuck together on this that it would have happened.

Democrat’s Reactions

All but four Democrats voted for the bill, The line crossers were Senators Ben Nelson (Neb,) Max Baucus (Mon,) Jon Tester (Mon,) and Mark Warner (Vi.) One independent joined the group, Senator Joe Lieberman (Conn.). While the loss was expected, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said “The bill we tried to pass today is based on simple common sense: to keep American jobs here in America, we should stop forcing taxpayers in Nevada and across the nation to pay for giveaways that reward companies for sending American jobs overseas.” Democrats knew of the party defections Monday, and hushed acknowledgment was evident.

Republican Thoughts

Republicans said that the bill would kill job creation by taxing the companies and that this was an election maneuver to gain votes. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said “Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the majority is showing how desperate they are with a bill that increases the tax burden on job creators and ship much-needed U.S. jobs overseas.” He also said that the measure was “irresponsible” and would not serve to aid in the economic recovery.

Payroll Tax Exemption, Yahoo

The bill had a payroll exemption provision for the companies that moved jobs back onto U.S. soil, and a tax deferral on income from subsidiaries was killed in it. Looking at the proposal in its entirety, I cannot see how these provisions would serve to do what the “No” voters say it would, but then, that’s just this American workers opinion.

Source:http://www.usmoneytalk.com/finance/unemployment-and-economics-outsourcing-bill-killed-in-the-senate-909/

Research published today by ContactBabel, the contact centre industry analysts, reveals that the past 2 years has seen a 440% increase in the number of complaints about the failures and shortcomings of UK banks. In real terms, this means a jump from almost 2.8m negative calls in 2008 to over 12.2m in 2010.

However, it is not the case that the performance or quality of banks' contact centre staff has declined: the proportion of complaints directed at the failings of the contact centre's staff has reduced from 21% to 14% in that same timescale, with the vast and growing majority of customer complaints being about the workings and processes of the bank itself (up from 79% in 2008 to 86% in 2010).

Generally, the recession has driven more consumers to display negativity, stress and intolerance of mistakes, as well as there being general under-investment by companies, which has worsened the problems with the business processes that cause many of these complaints. Negative feelings towards financial services institutions, and specific issues around bank charges and the fall-out of the credit crunch have created many very unhappy customers who are now far more prone to complain than had previously been the case.

"The UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers' Guide (8th edition - 2010)", is a major study of over 200 UK contact centre operations, looking at all areas of contact centre performance, investment, technology, HR and strategy. This year, it is available entirely free of charge from http://www.contactbabel.com.

The report's author, Steve Morrell, commented:

"It is no surprise the finance and banking sector comes out of this worst-off. In 2008, only 1.2% of calls made to banks were complaints - in 2010, that figure had increased by more than seven-fold to 8.5%. However, as the overall number of calls to banks' UK contact centres has diminished since 2008, due to an increase in self-service and offshore support, the actual number of complaints has not risen by quite as much, although a 440% increase is certainly cause for alarm.

"Across every business sector - not just the banks - the vast amount of complaints received by a contact centre are not about how the staff handle calls, but rather about a failure of processes elsewhere in the organisation. However, it's the contact centre that has to deal with the dirty work, and further failures within the complaints and resolutions procedure (or lack of it) can see customers calling into the contact centre again and again, becoming more irate each time, despite the real problem lying outside the contact centre.

"There is a real risk, especially within large contact centres and in those that operate offshore as well as in the UK, that a single agent does not have the capability or responsibility to deal with the customer’s issue. It may be that various internal departments (e.g. finance, billing, provisioning and technical support), need to work together to resolve the issue, but in many businesses, getting someone to take responsibility for sorting out the problem is a long and complex process in itself.

"This widespread and short-sighted failure of businesses to see the contact centre as part of a larger organic whole is the main reason that many people dislike using contact centres: too often, agents are simply not given the tools they need to solve the customer's problem."

Source: http://www.contactbabel.com/reports.cfm