Vangent targets UK public sector

Vangent is not yet a ‘household’ name in the UK public sector or healthcare software and IT services market. Indeed, even veterans of the UK SITS market might struggle to place the US-headquartered business process services firm despite the fact that it’s been active in the UK market since 2003 and has a number of successful contracts in the UK public sector. But Vangent is determined to raise its profile in the UK and is aggressively targeting new business opportunities, particularly in local government and healthcare. In both markets it’s on the lookout for potential SITS partners.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Vangent, it is a publicly listed, $762m (FY10) company that derives a good 90% of its revenue from the US government. The group’s International revenues were just $50m in FY10 - we estimate the UK business accounted for around £25m of that. FY11 UK revenue should be boosted by a recent short-term contract with a UK government agency, which should help it reach £50m in the UK this year.

We’ve known Vangent since the days when it was Pearson Government Solutions, part of the same family as the FT and Edexcel. It gained its independence from Pearson and re-branded as Vangent in 2007 when it was acquired by Veritas Capital, but its core proposition remains broadly the same. It focuses on providing end-to-end business process services with a strong information management and front of office requirement. In the US, its track record with government and healthcare clients is hard to argue with. Key US contracts include running the ‘1-800-Medicare’ beneficiary contact centre used by 47m people; operating the Department for Education’s Financial Student Aid Programme and most recently conducting half of the 2010 US Census.

Vangent’s UK business is less high profile. Customers we are allowed to name include Southwark Council, with whom it signed a flagship £100m+ BPO deal in 2004 and BECTA, with whom it worked on the Home Access Programme. Vangent’s future ambitions include using its US experience to take a share of the UK healthcare market. The most logical place for it to start would be with centrally run projects requiring front office BPO and/or data reporting and analysis. As with its central and local government work, we suspect Vangent will find that building a business in UK healthcare is a slow business. But it’s encouraging that it’s already bidding on a couple of large upcoming contracts, including the GP Payment Calculation Service procurement being run by Connecting for Health where it is shortlisted alongside Accenture, Capgemini and TCS.

For a more in depth view of Vangent in the UK, subscribers to TechMarketView’s Foundation Service can read our latest CompanyViews note, Vangent: Bringing US experience to the UK, which is already available to download. If you’d like more information on becoming a subscriber please contact Deborah Seth.

Posted by Tola Sargeant at '06:00' - Tagged: publicsector   localgovernment   health