The HART of outsourcing Weblog

Labour’s deathbed deal on NHS IT
And so the NHS IT saga continues. According to BBC reports, and the resulting media storm, Labour plans to push through what amounts to a ‘deathbed deal’ before the general election, committing a new government to many years more tussling with the fated National Programme for IT. The Tories had not long ago announced the [...]
read on ...



Supply, demand, skills and sourcing
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) survey released last week opens up an important debate for the outsourcing industry and industry in general. The research, conducted by KPMG, found a ‘continued increase in foreign workers filling ‘British’ jobs overseas as well as at home’. This reopens an age-old can of worms in terms of [...]
read on ...



Keeping people happy
A couple of bits of research hit the press this week that should worry those in the customer services game. Apparently over two-thirds of customers feel complaints made to call centres are not being taken seriously enough, while just one bad call centre experience would cause 68 per cent of people to go elsewhere. Ever since [...]
read on ...



A week for positivity
It is all happening exactly as we had foreseen. Research figures have abounded this week and thankfully confirmed a few more of our NOA member predictions. It’s always great to be proved right, and even more its better than we predicted, great for the industry. No sooner had we released our 2010 predictions, did Lancashire County [...]
read on ...



BSkyB wins-out in EDS sourcing dispute
BSkyB has won a substantial part of its £709 million lawsuit against EDS, over a failed £48 million customer services system implementation. The lawsuit, filed in 2007, alleged that EDS had fraudulently misrepresented itself in a sales pitch in 2000 for the system, leaving Sky complete the project itself at great expense. EDS complained that [...]
read on ...



Should public sector IT professionals hang their heads in shame?
This week the Independent Newspaper decided to reopen old wounds from public sector IT failures of the past. The paper, with the bit between its teeth, decided to mount an investigation into the biggest IT ‘bungles’ presided over by a labour government. The current bill stands at a staggering £26bn above initial estimated costs. Though most [...]
read on ...



What’s in store for 2010?
It’s the time of year again where Christmas-addled sourcing professionals come up with their predictions for the coming 12 months. As predicted, predictably, the sourcing industry’s would-be fortune tellers have been busy, with tens and twenties of forward thinking releases hitting the NOA’s newsdesks in the last week. Add our own member’s predictions to the [...]
read on ...



Stop the Indian interlopers?
‘They took our jobs!’ cry the detractors. Thousands of UK jobs are simply disappearing as big “Indian” (insert outsourcing location as applicable) outsourcers continue do our work at lower cost. They even start work five and a half hours before us – how can we possibly compete? It seems the battle lines are being drawn [...]
read on ...



Outsourcing Europe
The NOA attended the launch of the EOA’s Spanish chapter this week, EOA Espaňa.  Hosted in Madrid by Repsol, the Spanish oil company, the meeting marks a new chapter in the story of outsourcing Europe and globalisation as a whole. The NOA is proud to be a part of this ongoing narrative, having been around [...]
read on ...



The public sector recession is on its way
With the recession apparently coming to an end, 2010 promises to be a game of two halves for the UK.  The private sector will be heartened at the prospect of increased capital flows and customers finally loosening the purse strings. For the public sector on the other hand, things don’t look half as rosy. In fact, [...]
read on ...