A deal to outsource the management of Royal Mail's
online platforms to IT services group Sapient has helped to reduce
losses to £611m this year, the organisation said this
week.
Agreed last year, the contract, part of a three-year recovery
plan aimed at slashing its £1bn business losses, has saved millions
of pounds, according to Royal Mail.
The news came as postal workers voted against taking strike
action, opening the way for further restructuring to bring the
business back into operational profit.
To ensure the success of the contract, part of Sapient's fee is
linked to achieving specific business objectives, said Paul
Kelsall, head of technical development for e-business at Royal
Mail.
"The service level agreements cover three main areas:
responsiveness to problems; accuracy of software releases: and -
the biggest - the time taken to fix problems," he said. "If Sapient
fails, it will lose a lot of money. So far we have saved a
significant amount and got a better service, so it has been good
value."
The platform is being managed by Sapient staff, based in India
and the UK. Royal Mail sought the advice of companies that had gone
through similar outsourcing contracts before signing the Sapient
deal.
"We took best practice from banks and retailers that we know,
which we can do because we are not competitors," said Kelsall.
"We made sure Sapient had a team in both India and the UK,
because the advice from one of the big banks was that you need
people who understand local issues."
Under the first stage of the contract, Sapient integrated three
separate sites - for Royal Mail, Post Office and Parcelforce
Worldwide - on to a single platform, using its application
management services.
With the integration complete, Sapient's ongoing remit is to
provide maintenance and management, Kelsall said.
"Sapient is hitting all its targets. It responds to calls in
less than 25 minutes, releases rarely miss their target dates and
fixing problems, which used to take months, now takes a matter of
days," he said.
No Royal Mail staff moved to Sapient as part of the outsourcing
deal.