
You appear to have repeated mispelled "Crapita" throughout this article.
Potential advertisers?
Unite claimed victory over Capita IT Services' (ITS) decision to tear apart its offshoring blueprint, but company insiders claim that much more pressure had been imposed on management from customers who objected to the move. The union threatened industrial action in August over Capita's move, first proposed in March, to put 1, …
"Both Capita ITS chief exec Mark Quartermaine and his number two Russ Hewitt – who were known to be steering the cost-cutting programme which included the offshoring plans – have left the firm in recent months."
Currently working with one of the other large out sourcing firms. An end user came in this morning because his mouse wasn't working; the connecting cable was damaged. It appears that we don't keep spare mice (it's "not allowed"); the end users have to order these through the help desk system which takes on average 10 - 20 days to be processed and delivered.
I used to get these in blocks of 10 at around 95p each, added to a purchase order when we started to get low on stock. The end user departments here are being charged £4.50 for each mouse. That doesn't include the admin costs; I've no idea what that would be, but it isn't going to be cheap. Add to that, the end user has to make do (i.e. nick someone else's) for up to 3 weeks.
Outsourcing; it really is not as efficient or as cost effective as most senior managers think.
Outsourcing works on paper but is based on a false premise. What most companies miss when working up the case for outsourcing is the amount of unrecorded support and "favours" that most companies with in house support work on. Your keeping a block of cheap mice is a prime example. Before we outsourced our facility work I could get a 1 amp fuse from Tech Support and replace the blown fuse in a desk socket (which was normally down to the cleaner and her hoover) in a couple of minutes. After outsourcing it cost us £160 per visit so we had to wait until a lot of the desk fuses had blown before making a call.
I always assumed it was due to the eejits upstairs thinking that they could play jiggery-pokery with the accounting and claim a cost saving because the outsource appeared somewhere else (eg P&L rather than Balance Sheet or some such).
Much along the lines of the Hospital Administrator in The Meaning Of Life...
"Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favourite. You see, we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account."
Missing the part where they (often as not) have to put in a whole load of infrastructure (one company I worked for had to set the Indians' damned Call Centre up for them, FFS!) and hand your business over on a plate.
Yep thats exactly how central government budgeting used to work. Contractor costs came from the capital budget, as "obviously" they were only employed for short term work, whereas all permanent civil servants came from the current budget. So areas would employ contractors to do BAU jobs (much more expensive way) so they could balance the cost between budgets.
A little later government became odsessed with reducing headcount. Initially contractors didn't come under headcount so they were used, then when that loophole was covered the departments would outsource complete functions to another company. That way they could happily state that the headcount had fallen yet again.
Who gives a toss what the Unions think, if they weren't insisting people got £34p/h to put on a windscreen wiper we'd still have a car industry and if they kept out of this we might stand a chance of retaining jobs rather than pricing ourselves out of the market. I suspect Crapita just did the maths and realised that the nonexsistant savings were outweighed by the vicious hate they would get from the customers.
Ahh yes, let's go back to the good old days where employers could pay you 20p per hour for 20 hours shifts and tell you to be grateful. The days when just looking at a manager wrong could see you thrown off the premises forfeiting any wages you had earned to that point. What a golden age that was until the unions came along and started with ridiculous demands like decent pay and working conditions, how dare they think they have a right to be treated well.
Did you learn nothing from Stephanie Flanders excellent Masters of Money broadcast last night on BBC2?
If you insist on paying the workers low wages, soon you will find that there is no one left to purchase the goods you are trying to sell, as those same workers who would buy your goods are too poor to afford what you are selling.
Karl Marx death spiral feedback loop aside, I thought the car manufacturing industry in the UK was not doing too badly at the moment.
You said "If you insist on paying the workers low wages, soon you will find that there is no one left to purchase the goods you are trying to sell, as those same workers who would buy your goods are too poor to afford what you are selling."
Whenever the conversation moves to economy/wages etc I bring up the same point - it's slow progress but people are starting to "get it".
This current wage freeze/below inflation rises will not help the economy, in fact it will slow down recovery as people will end up in the loop above.
"we'd still have a car industry "
We still do. I agree that the unions were a major cause of the demise of the state owned motor industry, but as a nation we still have a very successful motor industry, with world leading car designers and engineers, and some highly efficient factories turning out decent vehicles efficiently. And there's a Vauxhall factory as well.