Millions lost forever
Millions more down the drain by the DWP. It is no wonder that it tries to rip-off severely disabled and dying people when they waste such amounts of taxpayer's money.
The Department for Work and Pensions has ripped up its multi-million pound desktop support contract with Fujitsu before the company even started work. HP lost the contract, one of the UK's biggest, when it was handed to Fujitsu in January last year. But last Friday Fujitsu had its contract torn up and HP was asked to continue …
... If this had worked out it would have saved the DWP millions, sadly it looks like Fujitsu didn't have the ability to pull it off what they promised. Better to call it a day and cut your losses than to throw more and more money at a solution and partner that can't do what they promised...
The decision to take it off HP(nee EDS )was nonsensical in the first place. Desktop was " Blue " on the dashboard and DWP decided to risk it to send the message that they wouldn't be tied to HP.
Fujitsu failed to take it on 3 times but the blame must lie with the decision makers who should have realised Fujitsu's undercutting was too good to be true to start with,
Having worked with all three companies and having had some involvement in this deal all I can say is that it is not unexpected. Who is to blame? Well I cant say given I know a bit about it. What I will say is this....the deal was a good one for DWP and its clients. Fujitsu would have profited too (and yes they employ people in the UK, so our economy would have benefitted).
The inability of the customer and the suppliers - and yes - thats all of them - to work together and ignore pure self interest, is a significant contributor to the deal collapsing. DWP should also consider its federated organisation structure and ponder whether this was a contributor.
Disappointing for the tax payer, disappointing for the teams trying to get it to work. HP well you are lucky...for the moment, so dont go celebrating. Fujitsu, well all I can say is I told you so.
"The inability of the customer and the suppliers - and yes - thats all of them - to work together and ignore pure self interes"
What a load of nonsense as already stated by someone else,
[Fujitsu failed to take it on 3 times but the blame must lie with the decision makers who should have realised Fujitsu's undercutting was too good to be true to start with]
They did not have the staff or skills in place to take over from HP, they were still advertising roles in Warrington up until last week...
Large corps have account monitoring, this would have been on high alert and Fujitsu would have chucked every man and his dog to keep the contract alive, unless it just wasnt worth their time, expense etc Maybe Fujitsu jumped out on the basis the contract was not worth the cost, see NHS account for an example.
Be interesting to see how it plays out, could be in reality that HP dont make much margin on the account either and after looking under the stones it was a case of heading for the hills. Could be a smart move by Fujitsu rather than get lumped with a prestige account that bleeds the company dry.
Fujitsu taking the contract was never going to work out. DWP and all government organisations should take note and learn from their mistakes! The cheapest price usually means the worst service and in this case they got what I presume that they paid for, nothing.
We can only hope that, in the interests of the tax payer, that the key people from HP who were facing the dole queue and jumped ship haven't made it impossible for HP to provide an effective service until they are either awarded an extension or the contract goes back up for tender and a new supplier is identified to take on this critical role.