News Analysis
Charities and outsourcing: bridging the final frontier
by Patrick Nash, Chief Executive, Connect Assist
With donations to charities falling – the 2010 Charity Market Monitor reports that voluntary income to the UK’s top 500 charities has dropped by £64 million - the time has come for charities to re-look at the method and effectiveness of their service delivery.
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Managing Outsource Providers
by Gordon Easden, practice head, FusionExperience.
We held our second interactive webinar in November and the insights gained were fascinating. Although the webinar targeted the asset management sector, the issues raised were sector agnostic.
Outsourced service provision is central to the operation of almost all asset management firms. The basic rationale for outsourcing across all industries is that the benefits of scale outweigh the additional management costs of acquiring services from suppliers. Firms outsource all manner of services that would previously have been undertaken in-house from facilities services like office cleaning, through logistics, to call centres.
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Spending cuts to rely on will and luck
by David Milliken
The toughest public spending cuts in living memory will be achieved only with a mix of unprecedented political will and a dollop of economic good luck.
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Of outsourcing and pensions…
by Francinia Protti-Alvarez
A couple of days ago, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) renewed its pay and pensions outsourcing contract with Logica, a £10m deal.Similarly, reports suggest that UK-based Diligenta, the insurance and pension outsourcing unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has been approached by two prospective clients for outsourcing contracts worth more than £100 million each.
Meanwhile, Boots announced its decision to outsource part of its pension scheme, a trend that according to some experts has been increasingly prevalent during the last 12 months.
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Cloud Services find silver lining
by Francinia Protti-Alvarez
Earlier this year, advisory firm Gartner released figures which projected that 2010 would see global cloud services revenue reaching $68.3bn; a 16.6% increase from the $58.6bn recorded in 2009.
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State of mind: a bipolar affair
by Francinia Protti-Alvarez
In the midst of the budget adjustments, the re-shaping of the NHS model, talks on immigration and the PM’s visit to India it has been an interesting few weeks for the outsourcing community.
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Growth or recession? That is the question
by Francinia Protti-Alvarez
Figures: we are inundated by them. Constantly bombarded with interpretations and statistics, sometimes it can be hard to make sense of it all.
For example, figures from the US point to a very plausible double dip recession, whereas the messages from the UK have been mixed, to say the least.
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Exam results keep rising but pupils taking relevant subjects continue dropping
by Francinia Protti-Alvarez
Hot on the heels of the recently announced A-level results, this week’s release of GCSE results indicated a rise in the pass rate – for the 23rd year in a row.
But if students are getting smarter, why is it that options/subjects such as languages and ICT have seen a drop in the number of pupils taking them?
In today’s multicultural/multilingual world, technology filters into all aspects of life; so does it make sense to opt of the subjects which could very well determine (or at least significantly influence) future job prospects? By Francinia Protti-Alvarez
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Suppliers: going, going, gone?
by Francinia Protti-Alvarez
Recent media reports have been insisting that a number of suppliers have been ‘going bust’ this year. But how accurate is this?
Yesterday’s online editions of The Guardian, The Telegraph and the FT – amongst others - reported a 47% increase in the number of public sector suppliers affected by the degraded economic environment.
The figures derive from research attributed to accountancy firm Wilkins Kennedy, which claims that H1 2010 saw an increase to 168 insolvent companies, up from 114 in the same period last year.
However, it would be interesting to put that 47% increase into context. By Francinia Protti-Alvarez
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Failing out of the future?
by Francinia Protti-Alvarez
A-level results are out - rising to another record high of 97.6% while an unprecedented 27% of entries achieved an A.
I don’t want to burst the celebratory bubble but…
Notwithstanding how indicative the rise in A-marks is of the quality of the graduating classes or how students will be able to afford university if indeed they get a place, what worries IT firms is the low marks received on technology related subjects.
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