According to OJEU, the Department of Health (DoH) has established a framework agreement for the provision of health-related managed contact centre services and awarded contracts to four players: Capita Customer Management, Vangent, MM Teleperformance, and 118 (Trading as Conduit UK). The potential value of the framework is stated at £500 million. However, the very nature of the contract means that how much business is won will depend entirely on circumstance.
Essentially, the framework suppliers will be called upon to provide flexible, on-demand, contact centre services on behalf of health and social services organisations in the event of a flu pandemic (including services for the National Flu Pandemic Service) or other national health emergency. The framework also includes “any other health related emergency circumstances that require contact centre services support”.
The award is interesting from a number of perspectives. Firstly, it adds to the list of UK Government frameworks and it is telling that the Department of Health felt that none of the existing frameworks would meet its requirements. For example, the Cloudstore (see Approaching the G-Cloud: Leading UK supplier propositions) includes a cloud-based contact centre offering from BT (BT Cloud Contact Centre Service). Indeed, it is a surprise not to see BT on this new framework, particularly considering its healthcare footprint. Then there is the recently awarded PSN services framework – see 29 suppliers listed on PSN services framework – which also covers the provision of contact centre services. Of the DoH framework suppliers, only Capita is listed on the PSN services framework as well. To us, this highlights that however hard UK Government tries to encourage “commoditised” solutions, government organisations continue to identify ‘special cases’ that require more targeted procurements.
Secondly, the list of selected suppliers makes for interesting reading. Capita has significant experience in the provision of customer contact centres, particularly in local government. It has made numerous acquisitions to boost its capabilities in this area, including that of Ventura in 2011 (see Capita gains 8,000 with Ventura deal). Capita also has a SaaS solution – “Customer Once in the Cloud” listed on the Cloudstore so has been promoting its ability to offer flexible on demand solutions. Vangent, meanwhile, has been trying to make bigger waves in the UK public sector market for some time (see Vangent targets UK public sector) and this is its second big healthcare win this year (see Vangent beats Accenture to NHS deal). It focuses on providing end-to-end business process services with a strong information management and front of office requirement and has a strong track record in the US. The other two players are global customer contact centre providers, both of which are now US-owned (see Conduit UK and Teleperformance). We would venture that DOH wanted significant global scale in order to ensure it can always rely on the level of capacity required in the event of an emergency.