Industry news

Outsourcing firm Mphasis is opening a centre in Colombo which will offer legal, finance and accounting services.

The centre will be operational from next year. The office will recruit 600 employees in the first year and expand to 2,000 within three years. The company is investing $2.5m in the first stage of operations.

The global business process outsourcing (BPO) industry has been hit by a global slump, with much of its green pastures in Europe and North America drying up due to inward looking policies forced upon the private sector by governments to save local jobs.

USAID Jordan Economic Development Program (SABEQ) partnered with DHL Express Jordan to promote the outsourcing sector and position the country regionally and globally.

The programme's mission is to support sectors and activities in alignment with King Abdullah's vision for a knowledge-based economy, by inserting Jordanian enterprises into global value chains, promoting investment, and improving the enabling environment to generate value added jobs, exports, foreign direct investment, and sector revenues as a powerful engine of economic growth.

The outsourcing campaign that has been running for the past couple of years is defined as a true Public Private Partnership. Partners include the Development Zones Commission (DZC), King Hussein Bin Talal Development area, Jordan Investment Board (JIB), the Information Technology Association of Jordan (Int@j), and the USAID Jordan Economic Development Program (SABEQ),as well as a number of rising private sector outsourcing companies.

The USAID Jordan Economic Development Program (SABEQ) is a five year broad economic development initiative implemented by Deloitte Consulting LLP and a sizeable team of international and Jordanian partner firms.

DHL Express sponsorship of this activity highlights the partnership that supports the outsourcing activities and promotes the sector globally.

Capgemini was awarded the IT Outsourcing Project of the Year award during the inaugural European Outsourcing Association (EOA) Awards.

The recognition was based on Capgemini’s work with the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO) which is part of the Welsh Assembly Government.

The award highlighted how the Capgemini focus at WEFO is primarily on collaborative working to maximise WEFO business performance for the Welsh economy.

The WEFO Programme and Project Information Management System (PPIMS ) / WEFO Online system, an IT application designed, built and managed by Capgemini UK allows for the £3.9bn to be processed and paid out as structural funding in Wales.

The efficiency of PPIMS/ WEFO Online is critical to the stabilisation and growth of the Welsh economy and the overall reputation of the Welsh Assembly Government.

The WEFO project was notable for achieving success in improved customer services, efficiency savings and compatible for EU audit requirements.

The move to outsource strategic and operational activities is slower than expected according to The 2010 Indirect Procurement Study (IPS) published by global management consulting firm AT Kearney, and previously conducted in 2007.

The 2007 survey reported that executives expected significant growth in outsourcing strategic, tactical and operational activities by 2010, but the expectations have failed to materialise.

According to the results, outsourcing of strategic activities was projected to grow from 1% in 2007 to 12% in 2010; the actual figure is 5%.

Similarly, tactical activities were expected to reach 23% this year (up from 6% in 2007), however, the figure remained unchanged.

As for operational activity, it was predicted this would increase by 30 points from 10% in 2007; actual figures in 2010 is 14%.

“The figures definitely represent a change in direction from three years ago, however this is likely due to a multitude of factors.

“The global recession has impacted funding for new technology, procurement’s visibility in the organisation, the sense of urgency to control this type of spend, and risk aversion,” noted Jan Fokke van Den Bosch, vice president at AT Kearney Procurement and Analytics Solutions.

However, findings show that despite the shortfall of 2007 projections and actual 2010 figures, executives managing indirect procurement have gained substantial influence within their organisations, mostly owed to the financial crisis and recession.

This is positive and indicates that there is room for indirect procurement outsourcing to develop. While today IT and logistics are the categories in which procurement is most active– 68% and 66% of all related spend respectively – looking ahead, the most significant growth is expected in overhead and support with facilities and logistics narrowly behind.

“As with all outsourcing a decision to restructure using external service providers must be based on a valid and balanced business case.

“Factors which favour the development of indirect procurement outsourcing include: a) proven effectiveness and efficiency in a multinational environment b) increased maturity in the strategic level of the indirect procurement organisation and therefore improved management of outsourced operational and tactical activities and c) higher availability of knowledge and skills at providers’ side,” says van Den Bosch.

The survey was conducted among 94 multinational companies across the Americas, Europe and Asia.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has awarded a Serco Group-led consortium a contract to provide and operate a new prison at Belmarsh West, London. The contract has a value to Serco of approximately £415m, and will run for 26 and a half years.

Serco will operate Belmarsh West, a local prison, under a Design, Construct, Manage and Finance contract.

The prison, which will be built to Category B standards by Serco's construction partner Skanska, will accommodate 900 adult male prisoners.

Construction works will begin immediately, with completion expected in the first half of 2012. Equity and debt finance has been secured from third parties.

This is the first prison contract to be awarded in the UK to an alliance of the private and voluntary sectors.

The prison is designed to be highly efficient and, as a local prison with a high remand population, Serco's focus will be to minimise the dislocation that short-term imprisonment can cause.

In conjunction with other providers Serco will also support the effective delivery of prison healthcare and other services, to ensure a safe, secure and decent environment for those in our care.

Serco had previously announced its selection, in June 2009, as the preferred bidder to provide and operate two new prisons at Belmarsh West, London and Maghull, Liverpool. It is intended that the contract to provide and operate the prison at Maghull will be signed later this year.

Barts and The London Trust have awarded provider of digital dictation, speech recognition services Dictate IT. The three-year contract will see the institution outsource 7 million lines per annum.

The public sector's precarious economic position means NHS trusts are acutely aware of any contract that has the potential to add value and ease budgetary pressure. “Outsourced transcription contracts in the NHS are an excellent way for trusts to redistribute funds, and collapse work flow time frames, allowing patients faster access to their medical documentation,” says Mark Miller, managing director at Dictate IT.

He continues, “Trusts will not ever cut clinicians or front line care when they can maximise back office efficiencies. Once examples of best practice are developed by trusts the size of Barts and are seen to work well, we indeed expect an increased level of interest from the sector.”

Barts and The London NHS Trust is one of the biggest and busiest NHS trusts in the UK. It is aiming to eventually outsource around 90% of its annual transcription processes. The 1,400-bed trust awarded the contract based on a ‘fee per line’ model. Barts will only pay for dictation that has been transcribed, and will benefit from installation training and Superuser training as part of the contract.

The system has been tailored to integrate seamlessly with the trust’s current electronic patient record system and will simplify the digital storage of transcribed reports.

Besides fully integrating with the Trust's document management system, a key feature of the Dictate IT offering is the advanced functionality that allows consultants to review and approve documents quickly and simply via a web-based interface.

The award falls under a 2009 Framework Agreement to supply digital dictation, outsourced transcription and speech recognition to 200 NHS Trusts (including Acute Care Trusts, Ambulance Trusts, Mental Health Trusts and Primary Care Trusts).

Asset manager Skandia, with £34bn platform assets under management, has awarded the Milestone Group a funds’ processing contract.

Milestone’s pControl Funds Processing solution will enable Skandia to further enhance its high levels of service to customers and financial advisers.

Milestone technology, will allow Skandia to simplify and consolidate multiple technologies supporting core business functions across the group.

The move to an integrated financial application platform will also provide a scalable and extensible architecture with full transparency and market leading process.

Skandia will initially utilise the technology to undertake a number of key functions, including fee and rebate management, income distribution and reconciliations.

pControl can then be used to fully automate cash allocation and rebalancing across any fund structure, manage unitised dealing, box management, unit linked pricing and detailed price movement analysis.

Spanish utilities company Endesa, part of pan-European utility company ENEL, has selected Ericsson to operate its entire corporate telecommunication network.

The four-year managed services agreement sees Ericsson as the sole services provider for Endesa's corporate telecommunication network.

The agreement will allow Endesa to improve network efficiency and increase focus on its core business.

Ericsson will take full responsibility of the daily operation of all services associated with the telecom network; network operations in the network operations center, maintenance, installation services, engineering and construction management.

Capgemini and Henley Business School partner up

The Informatics Research Centre (IRC) within Henley Business School (HBS) at the University of Reading has partnered with Capgemini UK plc to introduce a unique MSc programme entitled Business Technology Consulting.

The course, set to start in October 2010, is designed to provide graduates with a practical knowledge and deeper understanding of business and its use of technology, rather than the more traditional MSc programmes, which tend to concentrate mainly on the technologies themselves.

Alongside IRC’s teaching portfolio, the full-time 12 month course will be based on a system currently employed by Capgemini to develop skilled business technology consultants.

The graduates, limited to just 20 individuals, will be given access to the latest knowledge in business technologies, consulting frameworks, case study examples as well as real life project based assignments managed and coordinated by a network of mentors. The course will also include a week long module at the Capgemini University in Paris.

As well as postgraduates, the broad and in-depth nature of the MSc programme also caters for commercially experienced professionals keen to develop a business context to the use and potential benefits of technologies.

The course follows on from Capgemini’s ongoing relationship with Warwick Business School (WBS), where it has helped provide a similar programme of learning. The course offers a full cycle of learning, with a mixture of lectures, discussion, workshops and presentations with WBS staff and Capgemini’s Outsourcing board members.

Norwegian energy company Statoil has awarded Accenture a five-year business process outsourcing (BPO) contract, to manage the company’s accounts payables processes.

The agreement is designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Statoil’s accounts payable function by reengineering processes and increasing automation supported through Accenture’s Global Delivery Network using centres in Norway, the Czech Republic and India.

The delivery of the outsourced services is scheduled to begin in September 2010.

Accenture has worked with Statoil since the late 1970’s, in the areas of management consulting and technology services