The HART of outsourcing Weblog

TCS offers ‘free’ outsourcing

I’ve been reading articles in the media this week suggesting that TCS is set to offer ‘free’ outsourcing contracts. However, on closer inspection this is clearly not the case. Some service providers are taking on board the cost of ‘transitional change’ from end users to make signing a contract with them more appealing.   It’s also been [...]
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Shell strikes it big with outsourcing deal

Details of Shell’s bumper $4bn outsourcing deal have emerged this week – and it has certainly given food for thought to the outsourcing industry. Following months of speculation, the networking and telecoms component is going to AT&T for $1.6 billion; the hosting and storage deal has been clinched by Deutsche Telekom enterprise subsidiary T-Systems for [...]
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Telecoms companies outsourcing to telecoms companies!

It has recently been reported that Virgin Media and rival broadcaster BSkyB have resumed high-level talks in an attempt to resolve the dispute that led to Virgin removing Sky channels from its pay-TV platform. However, a resolution to the dispute looks some way off and the fight for the home TV market looks set to [...]
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Britain Has No Choice But to Rely on Outsourcing

News in the Financial Times today has shown that the Indian trade minister, Kamal Nath, and others in New Delhi are unsurprisingly unhappy about new UK legislation making it harder for India and other developing countries to export IT systems to the UK. India exports about $40bn of software and business processing exports each year. I [...]
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An outsourcing to the masses

Consumers consistently complain about their telephone banking or digital TV provider support being offshored. But they’re given this service so companies can charge them less. It’s amazing that consumers haven’t utilised the same process for personal gain. Just because businesses offshore to reduce costs doesn’t mean individuals can’t.Why hire an expensive accountant to look after [...]
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Cultural empathy crucial in outsourcing contracts

Major outsourcing news this week is that a British Islamic insurance company is outsourcing its IT to Capita in an £87m deal. British Islamic Insurance Holdings (BIIH) provides insurance compatible with the Muslim faith. Capita will provide front and back office services and an IT platform from which to launch and sell BIIH “Takaful” insurance [...]
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Outsourcing Meeting Cost but not Strategic Objectives

According to IT services consultancy Deloitte’s “Why settle for less” report, outsourcing is failing to meet strategic objectives. The report states that although outsourcing suppliers are meeting cost objectives, many of the companies interviewed expressed disappointment with outsourcers’ overall ability to provide continuous process and technology developments. Firms contracting outsourcing suppliers should be under no illusion [...]
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KPO, the next outsourcing trend

The NOA predicts that knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) will be the biggest trend in outsourcing this year. What’s amazing though is the number of companies out there currently using KPO that are clueless as to what it is. With so many companies operating blindly, it’s clear to see that a simple explanation is needed to [...]
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Shell offshoring under examination

Shell recently announced plans to offshore over 3000 of its IT jobs, before announcing British record profits last week. The trade unions were up in arms because redundancy packages offered to IT staff - £50,000 – were dwarfed in comparison to the £200,000 offered to Shell’s offshore oil rig workers (and then dwarfed further when they [...]
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How will the credit crunch affect outsourcing?

The general ‘common sense’ consensus is that the credit crunch will have a positive effect on the outsourcing industry. Downturn in economy plus possible recession means C-suite execs view technology and outsourcing as solutions to the need to slash overheads and minimise any negative impact on the bottom line. This is true, of course, but one [...]
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