Entries categorized as ‘Outsourcing’
United Internet AG, Montabaur, today reached a general agreement with Teleperformance SA, Paris, with regard to the sale of the United Internet Group subsidiary twenty4help AG, Montabaur, to Teleperformance.
twenty4help is the current European leading company in technical support & help desk with a consolidated turnover of more than 100 Millions €. The company operates in many European countries, such as Germany, the Netherlands, UK, Sweden, Spain, Poland and Czech Republic and offers technical support in 22 languages.
With the sale of the company, which no longer belonged to the Group’s core business, United Internet has completed the final step toward becoming a pure Internet Service Provider (ISP). The Group’s Outsourcing segment, of which twenty4help accounted for around 90%, will no longer be separately disclosed in future. The remaining Outsourcing brand InterNetX will be integrated into the Product segment. In future, therefore, United Internet will focus entirely on its Product segment (with the brands GMX, WEB.DE, 1&1, Fasthosts and InterNetX) and Online Marketing segment (with AdLINK, affilinet and Sedo).
In the course of the transaction, the value of twenty4help AG was determined to be around EUR 85 million. The final purchase price is based on the audited and certified consolidated financial statements of twenty4help AG for the fiscal year 2006. Teleperformance will pay the full purchase price in cash.
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Categories: Aquisitions · Globalization · Outsourcing
Categories: Daily Links · Outsourcing
Categories: Daily Links · Outsourcing
DLD07, Munich, Germany on January 21st - 23rd, 2007
I will meet a lot of friends there and interesting new people, share ideas and network, get some fresh inspiration and some sparring for my own concepts for three days …
If you see me there, don’t hesitate to approach me! You are also welcome to share a drink (or two) with me, exchange business cards and have a nice talk … So let the good times roll, laissez les bon temps rouler!
Categories: Events · Outsourcing · Personal
Satyam: Deal or no deal? Still a lot of questions …
… and the rumors still persist.
Categories: Aquisitions · Daily Links · Outsourcing
Categories: Daily Links · Outsourcing
Atos Origin signed a contract with EPZ, a Dutch nuclear and coal-fired power station. EPZ outsources its ‘Generic IT Service’ to Atos Origin who has been given the assignment to reduce the service costs and increase the quality of services provided to internal customers. The contract runs for three years with an option for two extensions by one year. Both parties have agreed not to disclose the contract value.
EPZ supplies energy through a nuclear power station and a coal-fired power station powered by coal and biomass, and provides a total of six percent of electrical energy output in the Netherlands. Until recently EPZ used the services of several suppliers for its Generic IT Service. This service encompasses the IT infrastructure, the help-desk, workplace services and the application management. EPZ decided to transfer its entire end-to-end service to one supplier in the aim of reducing costs and also offering a higher quality of services to the (internal) customers.
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Categories: Contract Wins · Outsourcing
Accenture has signed a 10-year, US$100 million business processing outsourcing (BPO) agreement with AIG Europe S.A. to provide an IT platform and insurance support services to AIG Entrepreneur, an AIG unit specializing in Property and Casualty insurance for small and medium enterprises. The agreement which aims to maximize operational efficiencies and enhance services will be implemented in several European countries starting initially with France.
Services will be provided to AIG Europe by Accenture Insurance Services – an Accenture business that offers insurance BPO services to life, annuity, pensions and P&C insurers globally – through Accenture’s service centre in Bucharest, Romania. The underwriting, policy and claims services will be supported by an IT platform using Accenture’s proprietary insurance solution software. The implementation is expected to be completed in less than six months.
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Categories: BPO · Contract Wins · Offshoring · Outsourcing
ECCO Sko A/S, the global shoemaker, and IBM announced a 5-year services agreement for IBM to support the company’s existing SAP R/3 environment and the implementation of a new ERP business solution with several new modules that will enable the company to continue its aggressive growth and global expansion strategy. The contract has the potential value of more than $12M.
As a leading brand manufacturer, ECCO has tanneries, shoe factories, selling companies and more than 500 own or franchise shops in 60 countries. The shoemaker has decided to implement a more flexible and modern version of SAP with several new modules including customer relationship management, supply chain management and supplier relationship management. IBM Global Business Services consultants will implement and manage the new modules, while also supporting ECCO’s current SAP installation.
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Categories: Contract Wins · Outsourcing
Categories: Daily Links · Outsourcing
Luis Folch Rodriguez of Dresdner Bank AG in Frankfurt, Germany, asked me per mail a couple of days ago, why I’m talking here so much about sourcing projects in large international companies. What about the small and medium businesses (SMB)?. Good point. Take into account that in Germany talking about SMB’s we are talking roughly of enterprizes in the range of small sized business with 100-1,000 clients (PC’s, workstations) and medium sized with 1,000-8,000 clients maybe. This is of course dependent from your specific point of view.
First of all, outsourcing is a mass and commodity business in my opinion which operates with narrow margines. This means you have to generate a lot of business to make your money. Since aquisition, contracting and transition of work is the most expensive, unforeseeable and most risky part of this business, the large service providers tend to target large international potential customers. The strategy behind this is, the chances you can generate high revenue stream of one single contract is higher than with a single contract with a SMB. So large providers are concentrating themselves on large customers. And really professionally none on SMB.
In return large customers tend to demand for high-customized services. They want to get rid of the responsibility of their (legacy) systems and people. This is OK if one single customer can generate the needed critical mass in business.
But this won’t obsiously work for the typical SMB market. This attitude simply won’t pay off. It would be way to expensive and the revenue stream would be insufficiant per contract. The strategy: You have to generate the critical mass via generating a mass market for SMB. Let’s have a look. How do we specifically focus and master the SMB market:
- by perfect tuning on the needs of the goal market (by size and/or industry)
- by consistent standardisation of our service products and technologies
- by merciless streamlining, rationalization and automation of our seemless service and support processes (consolidated central system monitoring & management and customer care services)
- by an intelligent and complete logistics chain for material, spare parts and consumption goods
- by an extremely fine-grained and exact controlling of finances and quality
- by a well-balanced globalization of sourcing
- by a world-wide expansion of the business model
- by a perfectly trained staff and personnel
- by intelligent instrumentalization of web-based applications
- by additionally creating new marketing and sales channels for this concept
Each single item in this list can in return be outsourced to diverse highly specialized subcontractors, too. At this moment there is not one single (global) service provider capable of this. This would be quite a challenge. You need a new type of IT service provider for this. The business modell would be a sort of McDonalds for the IT industry.
The existing IT service providers are far from beeing effective or efficient. Not even for large customers.
This is something I would be really very interested in. Any inquiries? Let’s work this out!
Categories: Discussions · Outsourcing · Reference · Standardization
Categories: Daily Links · Outsourcing
Accenture — in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) — conducted research with more than 200 Indian business leaders to explore the next phase of technology-led growth in India. In particular, the study (PDF) looks at the opportunities arising from increased access to information and communications technology (ICT) in low-income communities.
Background
A powerful combination of factors means that there has never been a better time for India to pursue growth opportunities based on information and communications technology (ICT):
- Exploiting the “demographic dividend”: ICT-based solutions have the potential to address many of India’s structural challenges, including education, health, employment and productivity.
- The convergence of stakeholder interests: There is increased acceptance among leaders from business, government and civil society that ICT can play a crucial role in enabling social and economic growth.
- Business investment is real: Indian firms see ICT as a major driver of the country’s current and future economic growth. Businesses expect to expand operations to more locations, but require adequate access to ICT.
- The new digital landscape: Innovations in technologies are dramatically expanding the possibilities of ICT-enabled growth in India.
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Categories: Globalization · Outsourcing · Studies
ACS announced that it is expanding its global capabilities with the construction of a new, 65,000 square-foot office and call center facility in Montego Bay, Jamaica. ACS is also hiring 600 additional employees to staff the new location.
Currently, ACS employs 1,300 people and is one of the largest information communication and technology services providers in Jamaica. The new positions will include call center agents, finance and accounting specialists, human resources benefits processors, and data processors.
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Categories: Globalization · Outsourcing
ACS announced that it has been awarded an expansion to its multi-million dollar contract with Symetra Financial, a leading life insurance and financial services company. The expanded agreement will add desk-side support services to ACS’ existing five-year contract, which commenced in 2004.
ACS provides complete information technology (IT) infrastructure services for Symetra’s affiliated companies, as well as cross-functional and business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions. These include data center services, distributed computing, data network services, voice communications, service desk, mail, and image processing services. Under the terms of the expanded agreement, ACS will now provide desk-side support services for Symetra’s headquarters facility in Bellevue, Washington.
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Categories: Contract Wins · Outsourcing
