Managed Services and Customer Outcome Outsourcing (text version)
For all intents and purposes Eaga was set up as a managed services business back in 1990, at that time we managed insulation schemes on behalf of Government, but intrinsically it was a business process outsource or a managed services contract which was let by Government to ourselves, so we have been doing it for some 20 years, we’ve done it in a different way to that which most companies would do it, but we have got a really strong pedigree within this space.
I wholly expect that the government programme of outsourcing and managed services is going to pick up. The public sector borrowing requirement is such that Government has to save money, what’s very important to us in managing those contracts on behalf of Government is that we absolutely know our responsibility to insulate Government from the risks associated with those contracts, but the big difference is that we put the customer at the heart of that experience and at the heart of the programme and then we build the contract and the delivery around the customer which at the end of the day is what we are there to deliver. Effectively we outsource the outcome that the customer wants. If I can bring that to life for you, we manage the Warm Front programme, the customer is not bothered about the boiler in their home, the customer wants to be warm, warmth is the outcome that we are delivering, not the boiler in the home.
With the Digital Switchover Scheme, the set top box in the home to enable communication and transmission through the television, is not what the customer wants, the customer wants to see the picture, the customer wants to be able to access that information through the communication medium being the television, the outcome is the information they receive through the television.
So I think we will be different by managing the outcome experience and the outsourcing of outcomes as we go forward because more and more Government is looking for private sector to get involved with the public sector and to take ownership for the delivery of those outcomes.
Eaga has many selling points as a business. I think managing the wider range of complicated Government outsourcing programmes is something where Eaga will do very well. Put the community at the heart of the solution, to really take the outsourcing experience to the customer as well as managing the outcomes is really where we are and where we see the future opportunities.