Industry news

Marshall Space Flight Center Information Technology Services, a department of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), has signed a five-year IT outsourcing contract with CIBER.

Under the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Information Technology Services contract, CIBER will provide over 60 personnel, generating revenues exceeding $26 million.

In delivering this contract CIBER will join Dynetics, an engineering, scientific and IT solutions provider, who is the prime contractor on this $355 million contract.

BMO Capital Markets has signed a long-term BPO contract with BancTec to manage its invoices and cheques.

As part of the contract BMO Capital Market will direct invoices to BancTec's facilities, where they are scanned, processed and archived for backup.

Additionally, paper cheques will be converted to electronic images to enable clients to manage late payments or missing customer account details more efficiently.

Steve Rogers, managing director and head of U.S. Global Treasury Management, at BMO Capital Markets said: "This strategic relationship with BancTec allows us to provide our clients full treasury management services and meet their working capital and cash flow needs".

BMO’s investment and corporate banking arm, BMO Financial Group, will continue its retail remittance processing services with BancTec.

Telecoms and sourcing projects are often not as efficient as they could be, according to a survey from Forrester Consulting.

The survey found staff shortcuts, short-sighted strategy, and lack of planning, multisourcing and resources to be the main pitfalls for the loss.

According to the survey, “the public sector could potentially save up to 20 per cent on each contract,“ if they were to change the way they approached outsourcing.

“As organisations plan their IT projects for 2010, CIOs need to change the way they approach, plan and source their telecoms in a disciplined and methodical way –dedicating the right skills and adequate time to projects. With attention to detail and best practice, the results will follow,” said Harry McDermott, CEO at telecommunications and network sourcing specialists Hudson & Yorke.

Wipro Technologies is in negotiations with employee representatives as the firm plans up to 85 job cuts across Finland.

Indian IT services exporter, Wipro currently provides the telecom segment with IT services including global firms such as Ericsson and Nokia.

In the past year, the industry sector has been proved somewhat challenging, although the company during its recent third quarter results has said that there has been some demand returning.

“After carefully considering all possible options, the company has decided to enter into a negotiation process with the employees given the challenging industry situation within telecom R&D,” said Wipro Technologies.

The company has however said, that operations in locations of Helsinki, Tampere, Turku and Seinajoki are all expected to continue with virtually no interrupted.

Large global enterprises are losing £12 billion annually through failures in the sourcing and management of their telecom services.

The losses occur because 80 percent of all telecoms sourcing projects are inefficient, according to a joint study from Forrester Consulting and Hudson & Yorke.

Further findings from the report included:

o While CIOs are spending up to 20 per cent of IT budgets on telecom services, they are committing under one fifth of team time to managing their telecom strategy, sourcing and governance, resulting in financial loss

o While nearly three quarters of respondents (74 per cent) had considered their total cost of ownership in detail, only half that number felt they had thoroughly defined their telecoms sourcing strategy,

o At the end of a major sourcing project, one in five of respondents felt they were not satisfied that they had met the objectives set out in the original business case

Harry McDermott, CEO at Hudson & Yorke, comments, “CIOs are increasingly expected by their CEOs and CFOs to deliver more services and improved quality at less cost. There is clearly a significant discrepancy between what large organisations hope to achieve with a major telecoms sourcing project, and the reality of what is currently being delivered with limited experience and resources.”

The independent study surveyed 81 multinational corporations from 12 countries across a variety of industries.

TeleTech is providing 42 of its service delivery centers and 5,000 employees from around the globe for a telethon to aid the victims of the Haiti disaster.

The outsourcing service provider is participating with a coalition of global media, entertainers and businesses who will be supporting the "Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief" telethon.

"Hope for Haiti Now" will air on Friday, January 22, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT. The company is offering 42 of its existing service delivery centers located in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Philippines, South Africa, and Costa Rica to for the cause.

Kenneth Tuchman, TeleTech's chairman and chief executive officer, commented: "I'm proud and honored to announce that TeleTech will play a role in this important fundraising event. It is highly rewarding to be able to repurpose our global infrastructure, technology, and human capital to aid others during a crisis and I am overwhelmed by our employees' consistent drive to help others in a time of crisis and their generosity to give of their time and resources."

There is something uniquely bonding in the experience of complaining about the cashier’s glum face at our local supermarket or the perverse grin on the bus drivers face as he watches you race to catch the bus, and promptly closes the door in your sweaty breathless face. Customer service - it is something we as customers feel very strongly about and quite rightly too. Is it too much to ask that you get a chirpy smile with your weekly shop or that bus drivers actually want you to catch the bus? It came as no surprise then, that when a report was released this week suggesting UK customers were not 100 per cent satisfied with the services offered by their credit card provider, it caught the sourcingfocus.com news team’s attention.

The report revealed that a huge two million UK customers were disatisfied with the customer service offered by companies such as American Express which had fallen in customer satisfaction charts. Halifax, Lloyds TSB and Natwest came bottom of the league tables, with only 64 per cent, 63 per cent and 62 per cent of shoppers respectively being satisfied. Why can’t they get it right? It seems all we ever hear about is retail banks and their downfalls (Not to mention their botched outsourcing deals).

The major UK banks may not have used outsourcing wisely in the past but their relatives across the pond seem to be utilising its advantages. US Universities are showing increased interest in outsourcing. A survey revealed that IT decision makers are facing challenges that include the need to effectively balance the provision of resources for their constituencies against their focus on strategic initiatives.

Apparently half of the survey respondents said they already outsource some IT services with the most common being those considered non-strategic, such as student email, laptop distribution, printer support and project management. Nearly all respondents said they thought outsourcing would be good for their institutions.

Sounds like good news for ITO, however, news released by Wipro would suggest otherwise. The technology giant disclosed planes to cut 85 jobs in Finland. It seems that the industry is still experiencing the aftershocks of the recent economic downturn. At the same time TPI claimed in its fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 data that the global outsourcing market has had its best performance in the last six quarters. Hopefully we will not be hearing about any further job losses, then.

To summarise this week, UK banks are still crap and outsourcing both on the up and the down at the same time. I think that says it all.

IBM has paired up with IT and management consultancy firm the National Interest Security Company in a bid to expand the organisation’s capabilities.

IBM hope the acquisition will expand the company’s capabilities with federal, state and local government entities, particularly in the fast-growing areas of defense, healthcare, energy, logistics and security.

Andrew Maner, chief executive officer of NISC said: “NISC’s high-end, differentiated approach combined with IBM’s Analytics Center will help federal agencies improve current mission effectiveness and create new capabilities.”

The NISC is based in Virginia, America and specialises in the defense, healthcare, energy, logistics and security sectors.

TPI and Information Services Group have today released fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 data indicating the global outsourcing market has had its best performance in the last six quarters.

The 4Q09 Global TPI Index, measuring commercial outsourcing contracts was valued at greater than $25 million, showing the market's total contract value at $24.7 billion, an increase of 47 per cent successively and 8 per cent year-over-year.

The main outsourcing sector driving the market forward is recognised as IT outsourcing (ITO), surging in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

"As we anticipated, 2009 marked a low point in outsourcing because of the recession in the general economy," whilst "the global market bottomed in the first half of the year it now shows signs of recovering slowly and steadily, with the outlook for building on its second-half momentum positive,” said Mark Mayo, partner and president, Global Operations, TPI.

A major US intelligence agency has awarded a cyber security contract to CSC, the US outsourcing giant.

Under the $27 million contract CSC will work to secure the agency against cyber attack.

The outsourcer will provide vulnerability analysis to identify potential computer and network threats and penetration testing to evaluate overall network security.

The ‘task order’ is for an initial one year but may be extended up to five depending on performance. The contract was awarded in Q4 last year