HART of Outsourcing

Despite negative attention, outsourcing works

Martyn Hart — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 10:04:13 GMT

“Don’t let the actions of a few determine the way you feel about an entire group. Remember, not all German’s were Nazis,” said Erin Gruwell, an American high school teacher so unorthodox and inspirational that ABC News commissioned a documentary...

NAO: Twenty five years of outsourcing

Martyn Hart — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:18:24 GMT

The National Outsourcing Association is 25 years old this year - a quarter of a century advocating excellence in outsourcing. That’s a long time. But however long you perceive the length of time you’ve been in the game, unless you...

Recognising excellence in outsourcing through the NOA Awards

Martyn Hart — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:49:39 GMT

Beneath the glamour and glitz of nearly every awards ceremony lies the same commitment to recognising excellence. The NOA Awards (NOAA), now entering its ninth year, continues to identify the quality of work and effort that members of the...

Innovation and transformation: do it for the right reasons

Martyn Hart — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:01:48 GMT

While cost-cutting is the core goal for most outsourcing ventures, suppliers are always keen to make sure that innovation is also a priority of the contract. However, while it is all well and good to outsource a process and agree...

Offshoring - SMEs not feeling the full benefit

Martyn Hart — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:57:09 GMT

Speaking about offshoring with a few of our SME members recently, they were telling me that for smaller companies, offshoring manufacturing isn’t quite as attractive as it used to be. It’s not just rising travel costs and international political turbulence proving...

George Osborne's budget - not mindful of the skills gap

Martyn Hart — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:48:58 GMT

"We shouldn't be shy about identifying our successful industries and reinforcing them," said George Osbourne in today’s budget, as he outlined his plans to give British businesses "the self-confidence to: invest, expand, hire, innovate and be the best." Whilst we...

Work like Sherlock with business analytics

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:39:12 GMT

“You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles,” said Sherlock Holmes. And maybe surprisingly, the Victorian sleuth is a lucid commentator on a major outsourcing trend for 2012: Business Analytics. Analytics is a singular topic at...

Stand up and fight, or stand and deliver

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:54:42 GMT

There’s much ado about cyber-crime at the moment. Last week’s report by McAfee and the Security & Defence Agenda, Cyber Security: The Vexed Question, considered the opinions of 330 policymakers and cyber security experts in government, business and academia worldwide....

Innovation is often a bricolage

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:13:05 GMT

Necessity is the mother of invention. And when the City of London decided it had a litter problem, it turned to some rather inventive outsourcers to solve it. There are many definitions of innovation outsourcing. The NOA innovation Steering Committee,...

Cop shop outsourcing loophole must go

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:33:50 GMT

It seems quite simply absurd that the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) does not have jurisdiction over outsourced workers that guard detainees in police stations. These people are working within police stations, working alongside policemen, doing police-like work. The notion...

Kickstarting the Economy

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:51:57 GMT

Unemployment stands at 2.57 million, and it would seem that the government has no clear plan on how to get people back to work. An austerity plan is one thing, but getting folk back to work is vital. Employment wise,...

Silicon Roundabout gets Googled

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:44:28 GMT

The sun’s out, I’m just back from an excellent relaxing holiday, and there’s some great news for the UK IT sector. Happy days! I was positively delighted to hear that Google have taken out a building at the so-called 'Silicon...

Let the private sector guide the schools ICT curriculum

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:27:30 GMT

Exam results are out again and, for the IT sector, make for disturbing reading. It’s not the actual results that are the real problem - it’s the worryingly low number of runners and riders. This summer, a paltry 4,002 people...

Schools and the Private Sector: A Marriage of Mutual Convenience

Martyn Hart — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:29:58 GMT

Under the Coalition government, more academies will be opened than in the first 8 years of the programme. More than 1200 schools have now applied to become academies - publicly funded independent schools, free from local authority and national government...

Why Santander & New Call Telecom came back to Blighty

Martyn Hart — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:55:39 GMT

As India teeters on the brink of double-digit inflation, Santander and New Call Telecom announce that they are bringing operations back to the UK. While this job creation is excellent news for the people of Burnley, Liverpool, Leicester and Glasgow,...

Lloyds TSB's route back to the black

Martyn Hart — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:04:24 GMT

As he unveiled his strategic review, Lloyds TSB chief executive António Horta-Osório said “This bank is losing money. We have to get this bank supporting the UK economy, we have to get this bank profitable and we have to repay...

The perils of client ambiguity

Martyn Hart — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:12:38 GMT

I was told that in his engaging, thought-provoking presentation at the EOA conference last week, Carlos Flores Ramirez, Vice-President & Country Manager at NIIT Technologies Limited, said that a large percentage of IT outsourcing contracts do not deliver the success...

Is offshoring the answer?

Martyn Hart — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:32:21 GMT

In the last week, we’ve seen outsourcing hitting the headlines again, as the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union refused to rule out strike action over Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) plans to offshore 200 jobs to India. The jobs in question are...

Can you cope with multi-sourcing?

Martyn Hart — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:30:36 GMT

I have already used these pages to spell out the advantages and disadvantages of multi-sourcing in light of changes to the way contracts were being sourced, following the decline in ‘mega-deals’ and the government’s £100 million contract cap. It seems...

Why suppliers should not be outsourcing scapegoats

Martyn Hart — Wed, 25 May 2011 18:03:27 GMT

Of all the rumour and, in some cases, intrigue surrounding outsourcing in the public sector, one of the most interesting has been the recent saga surrounding the provision of services for the NHS, which has come under fire from no...

Is the government biting its nose off to spite its face?

Martyn Hart — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:06:01 GMT

It’s been a tough week for those of us with a vested interest in the outsourcing industry - and not just because of the difficulty of returning to work after the recent spate of Bank Holidays. Instead, those who had...

Outsourcing: changing the face of business

Martyn Hart — Fri, 06 May 2011 08:58:25 GMT

I was extremely interested to see research published this week which suggested that Britain’s outsourcing industry is now almost as big as the financial services sector. The study, released by Oxford Economics on Tuesday, highlighted the fact that the outsourcing...

Cloud computing - is there a silver lining?

Martyn Hart — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:56:06 GMT

I’m often asked what the future of outsourcing is, and, as difficult as it can be to accurately predict what’s going to happen without using a crystal ball, it’s certainly worth considering the value that cloud computing is able to...

Outsourcing training takes a slice of the pie

Martyn Hart — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:58:49 GMT

There is no doubt that we have seen a huge increase in outsourcing deals in recent years, especially since the Government Spending Review was announced, as more businesses look to outsourcing to achieve success on a shoestring. But how much...

Government ICT policy: throwing the baby out with the bath water?

Martyn Hart — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:44:59 GMT

As I suggested in last week’s blog, it seems as though the wind of change is blowing hard through public sector procurement processes at the moment - and large suppliers of outsourcing are feeling the full force of the gale....