Search through our UKHotViews and UKHotViewExtra articles plus complete research reports
The UK’s building society sector has been around for more than 200 years and is part of Britain’s financial services fabric. However, the sector is facing an existential threat to its long-term survival.
As the wider industry evolves rapidly and technology-led modernisation transforms service provision and operating models, the ability of building societies to embrace change is ultimately governed by the characteristics that define them.
Subscribers to FinancialServicesViews can discover more by downloading Transforming Britain’s Building Societies “Keeping the Dream Alive”.
The report discusses the challenges facing the sector and explores the vendor landscape and the technology options available to societies as they look to mitigate the risks associated with change.
If you are not currently a subscriber and would like access to Transforming Britain’s Building Societies “Keeping the Dream Alive” please contact Deb Seth to learn more.
Posted by Jon C Davies at '07:00' - Tagged: financialservices buildingsocieties nationwide
In his 2020 Spending Review announced yesterday, Chancellor Rishi Sunak presented some sobering figures on the economy. The effects will be felt by everyone. However, so far, the technology sector has been more resilient than most and the UK public sector SITS market has been particularly protected from the shock. This is highlighted by our updated 2020 growth forecast for the UK software and IT services sector (see Market Outlook Update: Trends & Forecasts 2020-2023).
In UKHotViewsExtra - Spending Review 2020: Driving forward the reform agenda - we look closely at Sunak’s announcements and consider how the funding decisions are likely to impact those tech suppliers targeting Whitehall and the wider public sector. Despite the bleak outlook, there is cause for some optimism; there are many reasons to assume that digital transformation will accelerate over the coming years.
TechMarketView subscribers – including those signed up for UKHotViews Premium – can read our analysis now. If you’re not sure how to access our research, please contact Deb Seth to find out more.
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '09:04' - Tagged: publicsector centralgovernment localgovernment defence education police health forecasts justice
Published today, TechMarketView’s Top 3 emerging BPS buying trends: 2021-23 report looks at how COVID-19 is changing end-user requirements in terms of what buyers need, and prioritise, from their business process service (BPS) providers.
The impact of the pandemic, and the realities of conducting business during lockdown has highlighted the vulnerability of analogue business models. Those businesses trying to deal with volume surges via traditional channels and manual processing have looked out of date. To counter this, we should ultimately see an acceleration of BPS transformation and, over the longer term, this will help to drive an increase in the volume and scope of new "digital" BPS projects.
The smartest operators will use 2020/21 as an opportunity to accelerate their own tech-enabled transformation ahead of the wider industry curve, towards a hybrid model that combines robotics and human delivery, all necessary to ensure the long-term relevance of the sector.
Given all that has happened over the last nine months or so, and the market context discussed above, we expect buyers to be emphasising different priorities and drivers over coming months and years. Having received a lot of comment and feedback from BPS end users we have picked out three major emerging buying trends that we expect to be increaseingly important.
TechSectorViews’ subscribers can download the research today here. If you are not yet a subscriber, or are unsure if your company has a subscription, please contact Deb Seth to find out how you can access the research.
Posted by Marc Hardwick at '07:49' - Tagged: bps newresearch EndUserInsights
Published today, TechMarketView’s UK Health Software & IT Services: Suppliers, Trends & Forecasts 2020-2023 report is the fifth of six deep-dive reports providing TechMarketView’s UK public sector SITS subsector analysis from a market and supplier perspective.
The report accompanies the UK Public Sector Software & IT Services: Suppliers, Trends & Forecasts 2020-2023 report, which provides a sector overview, and follows similar reports on Central Government, Local Government, Defence and Education. Before the end of the year we will also be publishing our report covering the Police market.
Within UK Health Software & IT Services: Suppliers, Trends & Forecasts 2020-2023, you will find TechMarketView’s Top 10 Health SITS rankings for 2019. You will also find our analysis of suppliers that are 'On the Rise' and challenging for a Top 10 position. We also look at 'Ones to Watch'; suppliers that are worthy of mention due to some interesting moves and/or an increasingly significant footprint.
Despite some of the Top 10 suppliers to the health subsector experiencing declining revenues, the overall market continued to grow strongly in 2019. As a result of the pandemic, growth is expected to be even stronger in 2020. New digital services have been introduced across the NHS at a speed that would have been unthinkable previously. Nightingale hospitals were up and running with working tech in a matter of days; there has been a rapid uptake of remote and paperless solutions; and significant investment in technology to support test, track and trace efforts.
In this report we forecast how the market will perform between now and 2023, and using our proprietary Digital Evolution Model (DEM), we also provide a view of the market by the ‘New’—digital, cloud, platform and cyber security-led offerings, and ‘Heritage’—offerings focused on traditional systems and processes.
PublicSectorViews’ subscribers can download the research today. If you are not yet a subscriber, or are unsure if your company has a subscription, please contact Deb Seth to find out how you can access the research.
Posted by Dale Peters at '16:36' - Tagged: publicsector nhs health ranking market+trends
This year, in light of the unprecedented impact of COVID-19, TechMarketView provided two distinct sets of projections in our UK SITS Market Trends and Forecasts 2020-2023 report published in July. Underpinning our estimates were two different scenarios that encapsulated the potential demand outcomes having considered the likely effects of the coronavirus on the end-user community, the technology industry and the wider economic and social environment.
Four months down the line there still remain unanswered questions regarding the arc of the pandemic, its future impacts and its legacies. We do, however, have a much clearer picture of how the advent of the C-19 era has affected and is affecting the UK SITS provider community.
Click to download Market Update Trends and Forecasts 2020-2023 for a better-informed view of how the recent unprecedented events are likely to shape the UK’s appetite for SITS services over the coming years.
Extending for the first time our vertical industry focuses beyond the Public Sector and the Financial Services arenas, this report also contains forecasts and trend analyses for the other major private sector segments. These comprise Manufacturing, Telecommunications, Media & Technology, Energy & Utilities, Retail & Wholesale and Travel & Transportation.
If you are an existing Foundation Services subscriber you’ll know you can access the report by clicking the link above. If you’d like to discuss an extension to your existing subscription or would like details of how to subscribe to TechMarketView, please email Deb Seth.
Posted by Duncan Aitchison at '07:43' - Tagged: publicsector media transport manufacturing financialservices energy retail utilities travel telecommunications MarketForecasts market+trends
Much of the UK might still be ‘locked down’, but there has been no slowdown in activity in the UK tech sector as evidenced by the volume of our news-driven analysis. So far in November – there is still almost a week to go - our analyst team has published nearly 200 UKHotViews articles and a string of more in-depth UKHotViewsExtra analysis pieces, including:
· The Building of the Access Group
· Kimble: reflecting on its (first)10 years
· SCC’s Oworx brand is clever cloud pivot
· Salvino steers DXC into calmer waters
· Atos launches Atos OneCloud
· Capita’s new Scaling Partner – Level and its financial wellbeing platform
· Share performance in October 2020.
If you’ve missed any of these and you’re a TechMarketView subscription client or UKHotViews Premium subscriber, you can just click the links above to read the articles in full (don’t forget to log in!).
Did you know that if you’re an entrepreneur or tech professional you can sign up to a UKHotViews Premium subscription for just £395+VAT per annum? Specifically designed for individuals – not companies – it provides access to all TechMarketView UKHotViews and UKHotViewsExtra articles (like those listed above), plus our IndustryViews research reports, which cover stock market performance, M&A activity, divestments, valuations and VC funding trends. You also qualify for 50% off the cost of an individual report from any of our other research streams, plus discounted TMV event tickets.
Subscribe now and get a free copy of our Business Continuity Planning: Lessons Learned from COVID report in our Autumn offer.
To sign up, or for more details, visit our website.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '17:26'
Back in 2010 The Access Group was a £25m provider of ERP software to the UK mid-market with EBITDA of £4m that was trotting along nicely but struggling to stand out. Ten years, a PE-backed MBO plus three PE investment rounds, and over 40 acquisitions later, it has expanded and balances a dual horizontal and vertical focus.
Its most recent full year results show 39% revenue growth to £264m with £92m EBITDA and while the nine acquisitions of FY20 added £33m, organic growth was still a creditable 9% with organic recurring revenue of 18%. With this background it is worth unpacking the Access Group proposition and where it now sits in the enterprise software market.
It has been successful to date, delivering profitable growth despite its rampant M&A programme. And R&D investment, such as the Workspace cloud platform, integrates and moves the portfolio forward. But can it continue? COVID-19 has not had a visible impact on numbers despite Access’ exposure to hard hit verticals like Hospitality and Recruitment, although we believe performance was marginally off internal targets. It is continuing to expand – including creating a major new People division and establishing Access ANZ to spearhead its move into Asia Pac. In The Building of The Access Group in UKHotViews Extra, we take a deep dive into the company and its secret sauce.
TechMarketView subscribers, including those who take the UKHotViews Premium service can access the research. If you would like information on how to access our research please drop Deb Seth an email.
Posted by Angela Eager at '08:57' - Tagged: erp cloud software
10 years ago when Kimble sprang into life, it launched into a different world to the one we’re experiencing today but the essence of its proposition has only become more relevant.
As the service economy has expanded - even more so as a consequence of COVID-19 fallout - Kimble has benefitted. From a closely bounded focus on Professional Services Automation (PSA) software primarily for professional services organisations needing to manage resources, projects and P&L, both Kimble and the PSA category have matured. As the company approached its 10th anniversary, we caught up with Sean Hoban and Mark Robinson who co-founded the company alongside CTO David Scott.
TechMarketView clients, including UKHotViews Premium subscribers, can read the full analysis of the evolution of Kimble, rising market demand for services and resource management, and growth lessons from this successful UK tech startup in Kimble: reflecting on its (first) 10 years.
Performance is just one measure of successful maturity but with Kimble rising from zero to £20m+ revenue in 10 years and about to reach positive EBITDA and cash positions, alongside rapid international growth, it’s clear its offerings are in demand.
For information on how to access UKHotViewsExtra, UKHotViews Premium and the rest of TechMarketView services, just ask Deb Seth.
Posted by Angela Eager at '07:08' - Tagged: software
As a privately-owned firm, SCC has always been able to invest in IT Services as it sees fit - for example, in data centre and cloud platform capability - without being under the same spotlight and scrutiny as publicly quoted firms. And, judging by the latest figures, it is an approach that pays off. In FY20 (the twelve months to end March 2020), SCC’s Services grew a sturdy 9% in the UK to £226.5m with annuity-based services accounting for £162m (also up 9%). Wins included Imperial Brands, RAC, Brakes Group, and Countrywide reflecting success across its whole portfolio of services and both its direct and indirect (i.e. via SI partners such as DXC, CGI, Tata, Leidos, Thales and IBM) approach. The approach is to cover all aspects of what the firm is terming “Distributed Cloud”: on-prem data centre services, private and public cloud. Its own cloud platforms, Sentinel (fully certified OFFICIAL/OFFICIAL SENSITIVE) and Cloud+, are both seeing “great demand”.
Earlier this year, SCC launched Oworx, which very much caught our eye. As a separate brand, Oworx is focused on helping organisations scale in the public cloud. And, while it is early days for the business, we believe its proposition (migration and managed services across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform – capability is fairly evenly spread) will be well received amongst its existing mid-market clients. Critical to note is that Oworx supports Public Cloud only and does not deliver services around SCC’s own private clouds or other service areas. Wider services opportunities are handled by SCC consultants as part of a single account/service delivery team supported by a common ticketing system, with Oworx feeding into that wider team. MORE...
Posted by Kate Hanaghan at '09:25' - Tagged: cloud PublicCloud
Since his appointment in September 2019, DXC Technology's CEO, Mike Salvino, has quickly stamped his mark on the company with a series of significant changes. After just over a year in the role, we take a look at the impact of some of the measures that Salvino has implemented and explore how these are helping to turn the company's fortunes around.
TechMarketView clients, including UKHotViewsPremium subscribers, can learn more about the changes at DXC Technology via UKHotViewsExtra - Salvino steers DXC into calmer waters.
If you are not yet a TechMarketView subscriber and would like access to these or any other of our resources, please contact Deb Seth.
Posted by Jon C Davies at '08:00' - Tagged: DXC
In a similar vein to Accenture’s recently announced Cloud First initiative, Atos has launched Atos OneCloud. In summary, the announcement sees Atos combining a range of services, supported by previous investments in a range of assets, under one roof within the organisation.
The aim is for clients to see a ‘one stop shop’, designed for maximum impact and efficiency, that will allow them to accelerate their journey to the cloud.
The announcement is backed up by a €2b investment over the next five years. In UKHotViewsExtra – Atos launched Atos OneCloud – we look at where the investment will be targeted, the benefits of the new organisational structure and go-to-market approach, and how and where Atos is achieving competitive differentiation.
TechMarketView subscribers – including those signed up to UKHotViews Premium – can read the analysis now. If you would like to find out how to access this and a range of other analysis from the TechMarketView analyst team, please get in touch with Deb Seth.
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '08:47' - Tagged: strategy cloud SI organisationalstructure
Following the COVID-induced fall in Q2, there was a modest 4% qoq increase in the number of venture capital investments in UK and Irish technology companies in Q3, although the total value of investments fell by 3% qoq. In Q3, a total of £1.85b was invested in 241 companies in the sector by 327 investors, according to the latest data from corporate finance firm, Ascendant.
So far in 2020, £6.2b (compared with £6.4b in the first three quarters of 2019) has been invested in 751 deals (802 in the same period in 2019).
The latest edition of IndustryViews Venture Capital has more detail, along with some 50 pages of succinct commentary on UK tech venture funding deals.
TechMarketView Foundation Service and UKHotViews Premium subscription clients can click here to download the report.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '08:08' - Tagged: funding startup
In October, IBM announced it would create a new company (NewCo) to be spun-off as an independent entity and listed on the stock exchange. It is a major move and part of a broader strategy to remodel the firm and position it away from low growth, heritage markets.
The challenges faced by the two entities as they split, and then get themselves into better shape to flourish, are notable. Considerations include operational and financial improvements, messaging/positioning, company culture and staff/skills, partner ecosystems, customer retention and additional M&A. The challenges are extensive, but radical – and ongoing – change is what is required to cement the position IBM has pitched as a $59bn “hybrid cloud platform and AI company”.
IBM CEO, Arvind Krishna, and his team will be under no illusion that the road ahead will be tough.
In IBM and NewCo: The hard work starts here, Kate Hanaghan looks at some the challenges IBM and NewCo face and some of the issues they will need to address, including in specific areas such as Software, Public Cloud and partnerships.
This research note is available only to subscribers of TechSectorViews. Download the report HERE or contact Deb Seth for subscription information.
Posted by Kate Hanaghan at '09:00' - Tagged: AI corporateactivity spin-offs hybridcloud
Published today, TechMarketView’s UK Education Software & IT Services: Suppliers, Trends & Forecasts 2020-2023 report is the fourth of six deep-dive reports providing TechMarketView’s UK public sector SITS subsector analysis from a market and supplier perspective.
The report accompanies the UK Public Sector Software & IT Services: Suppliers, Trends & Forecasts 2020-2023 report, which provides a sector overview, and follows similar reports on Central Government, Local Government and Defence. Over the next few weeks, it will be followed by reports covering the Health and Police markets.
Within UK Education Software & IT Services: Suppliers, Trends & Forecasts 2020-2023, you will find TechMarketView’s Top 10 Education SITS rankings for 2019. You will also find our analysis of suppliers that are 'On the Rise' and challenging for a Top 10 position. We also look at 'Ones to Watch'; suppliers that are worthy of mention due to some interesting moves and/or an increasingly significant footprint.
Although the size of the education SITS market declined in 2019 it performed better than expected, with most of the leading suppliers achieved a positive performance in the UK. The subsector has faced and continues to face significant COVID-19-related challenges, but this is helping to drive digital transformation.
Posted by Dale Peters at '09:21' - Tagged: education rankings suppliers university schools MarketForecasts market+trends
We been following the progress of Capita’s scale-up development unit Capita Scaling Partner (CSP) for the last couple of years (see here and work back) - Indeed, Capita and current scaling partner Dragonfly AI were brought together via our TechMarketView Innovation Partner Programme. With that in mind I caught up recently to discuss CSP's latest venture with team members Matt Bunn and Jess Bonner, as well as Stephen Holliday the CEO and founder of new CSP partner - Level.
Capita’s renewed sense of purpose
One of the most consistent themes of Capita CEO Jon Lewis’s tenure, has been a greater focus on employee wellbeing, providing the firm with a renewed sense of purpose that it is there “to do good” as well as make money. At the most tangible level this has manifested itself in two employees being placed on the PLC Board as Employee Non-Executive Directors. The company also took the decision to pay all of its UK employees, at least the independently verified real living wage – something that saw over 6,000 staff receive an immediate pay rise.
As regular readers will know, Capita’s Scaling Partner programme is an approach to identifying and nurturing digital disrupter businesses to ensure that Capita works successfully with disrupters that can add value to its existing client base. CSP’s latest partner is a financial wellbeing Fintech called Level. Established in 2018, Level is a B2B service that is designed to help organisations support their employees move from a debt to a savings culture.
Level has an interesting proposition serving a noble cause and I wanted to understand more about the service and how CSP would help the Fintech scale.
Why employee financial wellbeing is important
Financial wellbeing has become a serious issue in the UK with (according to the Money & Pensions Service) some 20 million of us struggling to manage our money properly on a day to day basis and with 11.5 million people possessing less than £100 in savings. Indeed, there are 9 million people in the UK who have had to borrow to buy food or pay their bills and with some 5.3m having needed debt advice. These are truly shocking numbers and reveal how we have become a society addicted to debt to fund everything from the basics to the latest consumer “must haves”. With so many with so little savings, it’s not hard to see how life’s financial emergencies – be it a broken boiler or unplanned car repairs, can cause many to resort to payday loans or similar high interest borrowing. Once in debt it can be very hard to escape.
Level is applying advances in financial technology, mobile and recent changes to regulation, notably Open Banking, to create a proposition designed to improve the UK’s financial wellbeing. Specifically, there are three key actions that they are looking to help everyone achieve: fixing historic problems of debt, developing good financial habits today and building savings for tomorrow. Read more here.......
TechMarketView subscribers, including those signed up to UKHotViewsPremium can read the article now. If you are not yet a subscriber, please contact Deb Seth to find out how to access this and much more.
Posted by Marc Hardwick at '13:46' - Tagged: Capita scaleup wellbeing
This is of course all something that COVID has made only worse, especially for those right across the country on furlough those being made redundant and the many more at risk or working reduced hours. It’s no wonder that mental health issues have escalated this year.
Financial wellbeing is without doubt inextricably linked to wider mental health issues – if you are worrying about money and debt you are much more likely to suffer deteriorating mental health and anxiety – awful for the employee but also bad for their employer.
Level is applying advances in financial technology, mobile and recent changes to regulation, notably Open Banking, to create a proposition designed to improve the UK’s financial wellbeing. Specifically, there are three key actions that they are looking to help everyone achieve: fixing historic problems of debt, developing good financial habits today and building savings for tomorrow.
One of the key enablers for Level’s service offering is Open Banking – a major regulatory change that finally puts the user in charge of their own financial data. For the uninitiated, Open Banking now means that all UK banks have to have an open application programming interface or API through which the user can permit a regulated third-party to access their data on their behalf. The API acts as a plug which, once connected, allows Level to then view a user’s financial data and reorganise it in a simple and more useful way.
In practice this allows Level to aggregate multiple bank accounts into a single view, giving the user a clear picture of what money is coming in and what is going out. Level can then categorise user’s expenditure - via a ‘left to spend’ algorithm that provides a real time view of an individual’s available funds after all the essential bills have been deducted. This is aimed at removing the reliance on inaccurate ‘mental accounting’ of what people perceive to be available for them to spend. Users can also see in one place how many direct debits they have and how much their bills are in total, every month.
Level then uses data-driven “nudges” and various alerts designed to help influence and inform “good” behaviour choices. For example, this might include an alert when a subscription has gone up in price or where they are likely overpaying for bills offering up an opportunity to switch supplier.
What is also different about Level’s service is that although it is designed for the end user and the employee, it is something that is supplied in partnership with an employer. This not only brings Fintech into the workplace but crucially enables employees to benefit from access to ‘salary-linked’ financial products, which are only available to them as a result of being in employment. Level is working to create a solution for employees that has a better price and user experience to anything that they could get on the open market, all done with aim of making employees better custodians of their own financial future and making their wages go further.
It’s also where Capita has been already able to add specific value with the service currently available to Capita’s 40,000+ UK staff. Indeed, Level has already adapted its tool based on Capita staff feedback and usage. Co-creating the tool with Capita has been one of the ways in which CSP will add value to the partnership.
The value of the salary link is that it enables employers (via Level) to offer employees products that are structurally better, in terms of price or user experience, than anything on the open market. This is because the salary link allows Level to offer services like early wage access which effectively swap an employee's credit risk for their employer, making the service many times cheaper. Payroll linked savings hugely reduce compliance, money flow and onboarding costs and make it much easier for Level to design a quick and user-friendly sign-up process for the user.
Poor employee financial wellbeing impacts productivity at work, but the employer has this powerful salary link which puts them in a unique position to address these issues for the benefit of both employer and employee.
Advances in modern financial technology offer a great opportunity to take the best tech, combine it with a salary link to create attractive products that employers can deliver to their staff to help them with their financial well-being. Open Banking will help accelerate the unbundling of banking services so that financial service providers or technology providers can take the best of these services (e.g. deposits, transactions, payments, regulation, fraud detection or foreign exchange) and adapt them into value added services by using the salary link to aid financial well-being.
Level is starting to do this initially with two principle products – ‘Early Wage Access’ and ‘Payroll Linked Savings’.
Level’s ‘Early Wage Access’ enables employees to advance a percentage of their earned but as yet unpaid salary. This is transaction is completely confidential from an employee line manager that is designed to reduce the volatility of the situation when someone gets hit with a one-off cost. So, if you have a broken boiler, instead of going into debt, you can access some of the money that you have already earned but have yet to be paid. It’s a quick transaction that costs a standard fee of £2, and with no credit checks and 100% acceptance rate, it is not a loan. The advance is then automatically reconciled by Level and the employer on payday.
To prevent overuse there are a number of safeguards built in that can be configured by the employer. Level itself recommends that no more than three advances or 30% of earned wages up to a max of £500 per month are allowed, with an automatic service to catch persistent use.
Level was developed with the goal of helping foster a savings culture – this is the ultimate aim of the business, to help employees develop a savings buffer and establish payroll linked savings as a social norm in the workplace. Here Level uses behavioural insight and nudges to encourage employees to save more with specific access to savings accounts that offer the high savings rates from FSCS (government deposit guarantee) banks. It’s also about offering would-be savers a seamless user experience so that it’s very low effort for the employee to sign up, open a new savings account and link it to payroll.
One of the most positive outcomes that we have seen from Covid-19 is a renewed and reinvigorated approach to social responsibility within the wider tech sector. This has manifested itself in so many different ways, ranging from employee health and wellbeing to altruistic behaviour in the marketplace. Indeed, health and wellbeing has never been taken so seriously within UK PLCs.
Finances play such a key role and with things like long term student debt, extortionate housing costs, easily available credit, as well as a lack of financial education and planning, it’s not surprising so many people find themselves in financial trouble. COVID has of course only made this worse for many.
Level’s proposition for employers is that not only is it in their interest to support their staff but that they are uniquely well placed to do so. Working with Capita is allowing Level to fine tune it’s proposition ahead of a wider roll out, potentially of course with some of Capita’s enormous client list, which includes many of the largest employers in the UK.
What I particularly like about Level’s proposition is that whilst it has a big objective to shift people from a debt to savings mindset, it’s trying to achieve this through helping people make small and manageable changes that should ultimately add up to making a significant difference.
For Capita it’s another tool in its armoury of HR and employee services, both for their own staff and that of their clients. But more than that, it’s another statement that employee wellbeing is something that the firm takes very seriously and is acting upon.
Crucial to making this proposition a success will be getting staff to engage regularly and conveniently with the tool to drive behaviour change. Offering availability over a range of devices is helpful but probably most important is integrating Level into people’s lives beyond the working environment, where it’s viewed as the most trusted source of financial advice and budgetary tools. Helping people better understand and take more control of their finances is without doubt a noble cause and something that may well help deliver better (financial) outcomes for both employees and their employers.
Posted by Marc Hardwick at '13:21' - Tagged: Capita scaleup wellbeing hrtech
