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University of Cambridge spin-out Neutreeno has raised $3m in seed funding in a round led by Regeneration.VC, with participation from Remarkable Ventures Climate Fund (RVC), Closed Loop Partners, Prequel Ventures, Scania Invest and Beacon Venture Capital.
Neutreeno’s tech uses proprietary process networks, material and energy flow analysis, and advanced “uncertainty models” to generate emissions data that enables enterprises to map their product lines faster—according to the company, providing insights based on as few as 10 data points per supplier whilst tracking 1,000s of products.
The company intends to use the funds to expand its operations and R&D. It currently boasts customers across Europe, North America and Asia, across multiple industries (SMEs and FTSE 250 / S&P 500 companies).
ESG Reporting remains the most common use case area in the UK and worldwide, according to the activities tracked by the Sustainability Technology Activity Index. However, it’s not always straightforward for companies to get a handle on the emissions generated across their manufacturing and supply chain (in order to account for their Scope 3 emissions). There’s often missing data, inconsistently recorded data, hard to get at data… and so any tools that are able to provide accurate (and fast) modelling of contributions can go a long way towards improving the confidence in reported carbon impact (and improve the effectiveness of targeted reduction plans too).
SustainabilityViews subscribers can download the Sustainability Technology Activity Index now. If you are not yet a subscriber, or are unsure if your company has a subscription, please contact Belinda Tewson to find out how you can access the research.
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 09:16
Tags: analytics supply chain carbon emissions
Data and analytics provider, BMLL Technologies has secured a strategic investment of $21m as the financial markets specialist looks to drive further growth. BMLL’s latest funding round was led by market maker, Optiver, and was supported by a number of existing investors including FactSet, Nasdaq Ventures and IQ Capital’s Growth Fund.
Founded in 2014, BMLL was originally conceived within the machine learning department of Cambridge University. The company provides historical data and analytics for global markets, with a focus on equities, futures, and options. BMLL's platform enables users to optimise trading strategies by applying statistical techniques to large data sets in order to interpret market behaviour. The latest cash injection follows a period of healthy growth which has seen BMLL successfully grow its client base and global footprint with the company recently opening a new US-office. BMLL has also expanded its coverage with the addition of more than 40 equities and futures datasets. The provider now covers 98% of the MSCI All Country World Index.
The financial markets sector is one of the most well-established areas of application for AI in all its forms. The technology plays an important role within trading and investment management by enabling more efficient and data-driven decision-making processes. Many investment firms use complex algorithms to analyse vast amounts of data, including financial news, market trends, and historical trading patterns, to identify profitable opportunities and to execute automatic trades. These trading strategies can react to market changes far faster than human traders and make decisions based on complex patterns.
Optiver, founded in Amsterdam in 1986 is a leading liquidity provider, with around 2,000 employees globally. The company is an existing user of BMLL’s services, and the vendor’s datasets are key to a number of Optiver’s core processes, including algorithm development, execution analysis, surveillance, market validation and market structure insights. Following its investment, Optiver will be represented on BMLL’s board of investors going forward.
Posted by: Jon C Davies at 09:01
Tags: funding financialmarkets financial+services
Oxford-based start-up FIDO AI has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding in a round led by CRH Ventures, with participation from existing investors SKion Water GmbH, Emerald Technology Ventures and others.
FIDO provides water data insights, designed to help corporates and utilities combat water scarcity. For the former, FIDO Plus helps companies create a “water stewardship plan”, where they can verifiably replenish local water supplies at scale in community projects with ESG reporting underpinned by water benefit accounting methods. The latter can use FIDO Direct as a non-intrusive leak detection solution, again with the ability to validate water savings.
It's a timely reminder that the environmental “E” in ESG isn’t just about carbon. Water and other natural resources also come into play – something that hyperscalers have long been keen to publicise when they embark upon an initiative that reduces water usage in their datacentres, for instance.
FIDO intends to use the funds to fuel growth in its existing markets, and also branch out into building, equipment and infrastructure delivery markets too.
Nature Monitoring & Management was second most common case area (behind ESG Reporting) in our recent Sustainability Technology Activity Index – cited in 16% of activities worldwide in Q1 2024 (and 19% of UK activities), demonstrating the ongoing commitment to biodiversity and ecosystem preservation.
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 08:45
Tags: insight water
Improving operational efficiency and productivity in supply chains remains one of the most important levers open to organisations looking to pursue profitable growth. Yet supply chains continue to struggle under pressure from issues such as hiring and retention, demand fluctuations, supply lead times, and inflation. To help firms deal with some of these issues Ameba, is a UK-based supply chain software firm that has raised €6.4m in a seed funding round led by Hedosophia with participation from Visionaries Club, and Anamcara.
Ameba’s offer to clients is to help address supply chain complexity, from production through to delivery with a product that can help with real time status tracking. Ameba updates and alerts delivery time, cost or quantity changes of components, products and POs from production to final delivery – based on any supplier feedback across all main channels in all major languages. Improving data management is key allowing users to capture and query data within the platform regardless of how its captured. The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts.
Readers interested in understanding more about the potential of AI deployment in supply chain should read our recently published AI in Supply Chain report.
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 08:44
Tags: funding AI supply chain
Posted by: HotViews Editor at 07:00
I had the pleasure of again spending some time last week with Cognizant at their UK Analyst & Advisor Summit event in London.
The firm has been having a tougher time of it for the last eighteen months or so, albeit the company’s latest set of quarterly results both saw an acceleration in sequential revenue growth and pointed to an improving outlook for the remainder of the year. Although reporting that both the strong trading headwinds in this country persist and client purse strings around discretionary expenditure here remain tightly drawn, UK Head, Rohit Gupta had positive news to report. There have been notable recent successes on the large deal front here and the firm’s expansion in the UK Public Sector also continues apace.
Much of the focus of the summit was, unsurprisingly, on the fruits of Cognizant’s GenAI investments with a spotlight on the three pillars of the firm’s platform strategy. The event benefitted greatly from the impressive cadre of blue-chip clients who spoke of the work they have been and are doing with Cognizant to advance their AI agendas. There was an update too on the prospective impact on the UK business of Cognizant’s recent $1.3bn acquisition of ER&D services heavyweight Belcan, as well as a presentation on the firm’s efforts to secure a much bigger share of the UK Business Process Services market.
TechMarketView subscribers, including UKHotViews Premium subscribers, can read more about what we learned at the Cognizant event in an expanded UKHotViewsExtra article here.
If you aren't a subscriber – or aren't sure if your organisation has a corporate subscription – please contact Belinda Tewson to find out more.
Posted by: Duncan Aitchison at 06:47
Tags: strategy Cognizant UK
EY UK and Ireland has appointed Anna Anthony as its next managing partner effective from 1st January 2025. The first women to head the region, Anthony replaces Hywel Ball, who will continue as UK chair until a separate selection process for this post is completed early next year.
Anna Anthony became a partner at EY over 16 years ago and has been leading the firm’s UK financial services vertical since 2021. In her current role, she is responsible for over £1bn of revenue, 250 partners and 5,000 employees.
Anthony takes up the reins at a more challenging time for the Big 4 players. Both Deloitte and PwC have recently reported significant slow downs in their rates of annual growth and there is an expectation that that the market for their services will remain unsettled in the months ahead. It will be interesting to see how EY’s FY24 (the twelve months ended 30th June) played out when the results are published in a few weeks’ time.
Posted by: Duncan Aitchison at 11:35
Tags: appointment big+4
OpenAI has raised $6.6bn from investors in a new funding round which could value the company at $157bn, the largest venture capital round of all time, topping the $6bn raised earlier this year by Elon Musk's xAI (See - xAI raises $6bn in Series B funding)
The funding has attracted returning venture capital investors including Thrive Capital and Khosla Ventures, as well as OpenAI's biggest corporate backer Microsoft and new participation from Nvidia. Thrive Capital, which committed about $1.2bn has also negotiated the option to invest another $1bn next year at the same valuation if OpenAI hits a revenue goal. The valuation on OpenAI is a really staggering amount for a business that is expected to generate $3.6bn in revenue this year, however the AI firm forecasts a major revenue jump next year to $11.6bn, as it continues to cement itself as one of the major LLM suppliers alongside Anthropic (backed by Amazon) and Google.
OpenAI is also in the midst of a restructuring which has seen longtime Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati, leave the business last week. The company also recently announced plans to shift to a for-profit business model, which will provide equity for CEO Sam Altman and remove a cap on returns for investors. The AI supplier is increasingly focused on targeting organisations seeking to build their own AI applications off the back of its LLMs. On that note, the company has unveiled new tools that will make it easier for developers to build applications (See - OpenAI and Microsoft launch new AI features).
But building such LLMs is an expensive proposition as many companies are finding out, with OpenAI posting mounting losses of over $5bn this year. Character.AI has reported that it plans to focus on improving its consumer products rather than building AI models, after several of its founders were poached by Google in a $2.7bn deal and as it finds competing with the hyperscalers (and their LLM proxy’s) increasingly difficult. Inflection faced a similar problem after its co-founder Mustafa Suleyman joined Microsoft, also pivoting to focused on enterprise offerings and its AI studio business.
Much like with the Cloud market, we continue to see consolidation amongst LLM suppliers, largely centred on the hyperscalers and the suppliers they back, as smaller providers drop out of the race or pivot to other focus areas. The opportunities for tech start-ups now lie in transforming LLMs into tangible value for organisations, which has seen an exponential rise in tailored industry and task specific AI solutions, often built to be AI model agnostic.
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:57
Accenture has announced a significant ramping-up of its collaboration with the AI chip giant through the launch of a new Accenture NVIDIA Business Group. The move will see the services provider train 30,000 of its staff on Agentic AI systems in areas such as process reinvention, AI-powered simulation and sovereign AI. At the core of the initiative is Accenture’s AI Refinery™️, which both leverages the full NVIDIA AI stack (NVIDIA AI Foundry, NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NVIDIA Omniverse etc) and will be available on all public and private cloud platforms
As part of its Center for Advanced AI, Accenture also plans to extend its network of Accenture AI Refinery Engineering Hubs by adding facilities in London, Malaga, Singapore, and Tokyo to existing capabilities in California and Bangalore. These entities will focus on the selection, fine-tuning and large-scale inferencing of foundation models.
Accenture, which we recently identified as being in the leading pack of services suppliers in terms of AI market readiness (see here), has a lot riding on the demand impact of the latest disruptive technological wave. Since unveiling its three-year, $3bn Data & AI practice investment programme fifteen months ago, the firm has announced a series of enhanced GenAI-centric alliance plays with the likes of AWS, Adobe, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and ServiceNow. It is not surprising that Accenture is now targeting its efforts on Agentic AI systems which are being hailed as the next big thing for generative AI.
How big and how quickly this bet pays off remains to be seen. Accentures FY24 results posted last week reported that, despite recording a 14% yoy increase new bookings for the period of which $3bn were for GenAI-related services, the firm is not anticipating an imminent step change in its growth outlook (see here). As noted in our latest Market Trends & Forecasts report, we estimate that GenAI driven demand will only account for around 10% of net new SITS expenditure over the next four years.
Posted by: Duncan Aitchison at 09:52
Tags: partnership genAI
DXC Technology has expanded its strategic collaboration with US banking and payments technology provider, Alogent in order to provide a Banking as a Service (BaaS) type proposition to its clients. The new proposition is designed to help drive reduced costs and efficiency for financial institutions by enhancing deposit automation and back-office processing.
Building on its presence in the UK banking market, the expanded collaboration between the US vendors combines Alogent's processing solutions with DXC's back-office outsourcing services capabilities. The partnership will endeavour to provide a seamless, end-to-end offering to help banks and other financial institutions to transform legacy processes. The proposition offers a modern solution for institutions without existing back-office capabilities, or those looking to avoid a significant additional technology investment.
BaaS describes the provision of elements of the banking value chain to other institutions (both within the financial services sector and beyond). The term encompasses products and services, and back-office processes. BaaS offers the opportunity to rapidly achieve operational efficiency by embracing products and services built on modern technology platforms. Banks can be both providers and consumers of BaaS and can avoid much of the traditional heavy lifting associated with core system replacement or a major system refresh (see: BaaS and Embedded Finance New Battlegrounds for Banking Supremacy).
As the traditional banking players have fallen further behind the curve, both in terms of their transformation efforts and the evolution of financial services provision, BaaS has come to the fore. For its part, DXC’s new proposition, targeted at banks and other financial institutions, is designed to deliver greater operational efficiency by streamlining and automating deposit processing whilst reducing costs by automating and outsourcing non-core banking functions.
Posted by: Jon C Davies at 09:50
The team at Kerv, the mid-market cloud and digital services provider, has been back at it again with the recent acquisition of Inciper. The transaction was funded by backers, Bridgepoint Development Capital and LDC, with facilities from Apera.
Terms were not disclosed, but we do know that Inciper will add revenues “in excess of £10m” and has a current organic growth rate of 20%.
Inciper is a consultancy focused around Microsoft Business Applications and Data Analytics with specialisms in Dynamics for Finance & Operations. This is a neat bolt-on for Kerv, meaning it will have expertise across the entire range of Microsoft Dynamics 365 business apps. Inciper has mid-market, enterprise, and large public sector organisations customers, such as the Welsh Government and M&S.
Kerv is organised into specialist technology practices, and Inciper will sit in Kerv Digital, which is the firm’s Microsoft-aligned Digital Transformation practice. Inciper founders, Mark Roberts and Dave Sanderson, will continue to lead the firm's team of experts. Kerv’s approach is to preserve deep sector and technology expertise within its practices, which then work together on complex customer programmes.
This is Kerv’s first acquisition since Bridgepoint Development Capital became a majority shareholder, alongside existing investor, LDC. Congratulations to Alastair, Mike, Rufus, and team.
Posted by: Kate Hanaghan at 09:45
Tags: acquisition
Tech-focused suppliers to the UK Public Sector will be eagerly seeking any sign that the new Labour Government is serious about its commitment to invest in Digital, Data & Technology (DDaT). The first post-General Election announcement to provide that reassurance was the coming together of the Government Digital Service, Chief Digital & Data Office (CDDO) and iAI under the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT).
With the market environment currently proving tough (see Public Sector Software and IT Services Suppliers, Trends and Forecasts 2024-27 | TechMarketView), the latest announcement by DSIT of a new panel of technology experts, advocates, and academics coming together to shape the government's new 'digital centre' will have provided a glimmer of hope.
The aim of the panel is to create a 10-year vision for the so-called ‘digital centre’ that will “drive innovation, transform services, improve lives, and unlock the full potential of digital and data”.
The panel of 12 is co-chaired by Martha Lane Fox, a familiar face as an advisor in the world of Government tech; she was appointed in 2009 as the UK’s Digital Champion to improve computer literacy and internet access across the UK (a role she held until 2013). She highlights on her LinkedIn profile that the panel will need all levels of political and civil service leadership engaged. That will be one of the biggest challenges.
On the panel with her (and co-Chair, Paul Wilmott) sit a raft of impressive names (see image) including Poppy Gustafsson, technology entrepreneur and founder of Darktrace, and Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, a prominent advocate for digital inclusion and skills.
However, while the creation of the panel is a welcome sign of intent, its makeup leaves a concern that it will result in a lot of talk but little action. It is described as a panel of “technology experts, advocates, and academics”. The issue is that, while all have mightily impressive CVs, as is common with a lot of advisory boards, there is little in the way of recent experience of technology implementation (or being at the coalface). The trouble is that people actually “doing stuff” are too busy doing stuff to give their time up for this type of initiative. The hope is that the panel will turn to practitioners to take additional guidance.
In the meantime, with ‘data’ (from its quality to its sharing to its governance) being one of the biggest hurdles to more complex digital transformation, the one appointment that fills me with the most optimism is that of Jeni Tennison, Founder and Executive Director of Connected by Data, who in her career was also CEO of the Open Data Institute and worked to with companies and governments to build an open, trustworthy, data ecosystem. Exactly what is needed.
Posted by: Georgina O'Toole at 09:28
Tags: strategy policy digital public+sector
Starling Bank, the neobank challenger founded and run by Anne Boden until 2023, has been fined £29m by the Financial Conduct Authority for its “shockingly lax” financial controls. The fine follows an inspection of Starling’s AML controls and sanctions screening systems which the regulator described as being "wide open to criminals". Starling’s failings were apparently compounded by the bank’s failure to comply with FCA requirements it had previously agreed to, which had been put in place to lower the risk of it facilitating financial crime.
According to the FCA, Starling's processes to prevent, detect and manage financial crime were not fit for purpose, in light of the bank’s rapid growth. The regulator found that the bank had repeatedly breached a requirement not to open accounts for “high-risk” customers. To put this into context, between September 2021 and November 2023 Starling opened more than 54k accounts for 49k customers that had been identified as “high-risk”.
The problems at Starling were first flagged by the regulator in 2021 as part of a broad sweep of the bank’s financial crime controls. In 2023, Starling subsequently discovered that its automated sanctions screening system was ineffective, having only screened customers against a small proportion of the full list of those individuals subject to financial sanctions. An internal review by Starling identified systemic failures in its approach to financial sanctions and the bank has since reported multiple potential breaches of sanctions.
Starling has enjoyed rapid growth since its launch in 2017 with its customer base having reach around 3.6m customers by the end of 2023. The bank’s fine would have been much higher at £41m had it not co-operated fully with the regulator’s investigation. Following the announcement by the FCA, Starling put out a statement saying that it fully accepted the findings of the investigation and has now completed a detailed re-screening of transactions as well as an in-depth review of its customer accounts.
Of course, Starling is not the first challenger bank to fall foul of regulators, with rapid growth sometimes meaning leading to internal failings. In 2022, UK rival Metro Bank was fined £10m by regulators for publishing misleading financial information, whilst German neobank N26 was, like Starling, also fined for having inadequate AML controls. In addition to any financial penalty, these failures cause reputational damage that can impact business prospects. For these reasons, AI technology is increasingly being used to screen customers, monitor transactions and identify criminal activity such as fraud, money laundering, or identity theft (see: AI in Financial Services).
Posted by: Jon C Davies at 08:58
Tags: banking AML
The latest episode in TechMarketView's series of Totally Sust podcasts sees SustainabilityViews’ lead analyst, Craig Wentworth, interview Stig Martin Fiskå (Global Head of Cognizant Ocean) and Nigel Watson (Chief Information Officer at Northumbrian Water) about their work on using AI to track waterborne pollutants.
The "River Deep Mountain AI" project (a winner in Ofwat’s fourth Water Breakthrough Challenge – see Cognizant and Northumbrian Water to improve river water quality with AI) is leveraging AI and machine learning techniques to develop open source, scalable, digital models that track river health trends and the pollution patterns associated with storm overflows, agriculture and road run-offs.
An edited (16-minute) version of the podcast is available to stream for free now on SoundCloud and Spotify (or you can click on the widget below).
Subscribers to our SustainabilityViews research stream, however, can stream or downoad the full 33-minute version of the episode. If you are not yet a subscriber, or are unsure if your company has a subscription, please contact Belinda Tewson to find out how you can access the research.
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 08:31
Tags: innovation geospatial pollution rivers
I caught up recently with Simon Furber (pictured), my ex-Capita colleague and newish CEO of Roc Technologies, the Greenham Common-based IT and managed services provider, to hear about their plans for growth via a differentiated offer.
Furber is an experienced tech CEO and CFO with 30 odd years’ experience in senior roles behind him, including with the likes of Capita IT Services, Call Centre Technology, Harmony Fire and Cloud Direct, before taking over the reins at Roc early this year.
For those of you less familiar with the business, Roc Technologies is an IT and managed services provider with a focus on secure and complex networking, particularly in the Defence, Nuclear, Higher Education, and wider Public Sector markets. It's most recent set of published accounts show EBITDA of c.£5m on revenues of c.£50m. Delivering this Roc has a team of about 270 full time staff augmented by up to 90 contractors. Unusually, something like 60% of the staff and almost all the contractors are vetted and/or have security clearance.
Strategically, Roc is aiming to compete with the larger global players/usual suspects with a proposition that maintains customer intimacy and capitalises on the firm’s speed and agility. The focus will remain on secure environments and complex networking where its strong governance and methodology capabilities act as differentiators.
Four ‘big bets’
Roc has currently got four ‘big bets’ in play regarding focus areas. The first is in Microsoft Services where its consulting team specialises in cost optimisation for Microsoft cloud charges and where it has invested in solution design for modern workplace, infrastructure, security, data, and in AI.
The second focus area is the Secure/Complex Networking with an emphasis on complex campus networks, particularly in higher education and distributed secure sites. Here, there is expertise on customer endpoints and SD-WAN as well as offering services to track and realise carbon reduction gains during network refreshes.
Cybersecurity is another big area of focus with significant investment in helping clients expand their Network Operations Centre (NOC) to a Security Operations Centre (SOC) and in building shared cybersecurity services.
The final area of focus is on specialist software, such as in IP for digitising quantity surveying and assurance, or the potential for efficiency gains in payment processes, all for large infrastructure projects.
The focus in these four key areas has resulted in a significant acceleration in Microsoft services as the firm’s chosen hyperscaler, alongside continued investment in secure networking and cybersecurity. Other recent developments have seen ROC start to explore opportunities in Operational Technology (OT) security, particularly in manufacturing environments, and seen the firm navigate the merger of HPE (Aruba) and Juniper (see HPE bets big with $14bn Juniper acquisition), as Roc has strong partnerships with both.
TechMarketView subscribers, including UKHotViews Premium subscribers, can read more about our views on Roc Technologies in an expanded UKHotViewsExtra article here.
If you aren't a subscriber – or aren't sure if your organisation has a corporate subscription – please contact Belinda Tewson to find out more
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 08:26
Tags: defence cyber nuclear secureaccess higher+education IT+services
Posted by: HotViews Editor at 09:55
There is no slowing down in the pace of GenAI development and innovation, with two of the big hitters, OpenAI and Microsoft, releasing new features yesterday, albeit with different target audiences in mind.
Whilst AI model supplier OpenAI kicked off the current GenAI hype with ChatGPT, its business model is increasingly focused on targeting organisations seeking to build their own AI applications off the back of it’s LLMs. On that note, the company has unveiled new tools that will make it easier for developers to build applications, including; a real-time tool to create AI voice applications using a single set of instructions; a fine-tuning tool for models after training that would allow developers to improve the responses generated by models using images and text (which can also leverage human feedback); a tool that would allow smaller models to learn from larger ones and a "Prompt Caching" feature that cuts some development costs by half by reusing pieces of the text AI has previously processed.
Microsoft on the other hand is firmly targeting consumers with the release of new features for its Copilot chatbot. A real limitation of the Copilot experience has been that it hasn’t understood what you’re doing or what you’re looking at. Microsoft is tackling this problem through a new feature called Copilot Vision, which can analyse the images in a webpage and answer questions about them. Copilot Voice is another new feature that will enable the chatbot to understand spoken questions and read its responses out aloud, whilst Copilot Daily will, every morning, generate a summary of the news and weather forecast and remind the user about upcoming events. Another interesting new capability called 'Think Deeper' allows Copilot to generate more thorough responses to user questions. Using the latest reasoning models, it can help with anything from solving tough math problems to weighing up the costs of managing home projects.
We are heading ever closer towards general purpose AI assistants, with creating an ‘AI companion for everyone’ one of the goals for new Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who the company poached from Inflection AI back in March (See here).
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:43
Pinewood Technologies Group plc has delivered a strong H1 (six months ended 31 July 2024), with statutory revenue up 46% to £16.1m (H1 FY23: £11.0m) and gross profit up 48.0% to £14.5m (H1 FY23: £9.8m). The company, which was formerly called Pendragon, transitioned into a pure-play SaaS business following the sale of its motor and leasing divisions to Lithia earlier this year (see Pinewood Technologies reports maiden results).
As part of this deal, the companies formed a strategic partnership that will see Pinewood's software platform adopted across Lithia's automotive retail network in the US and UK. During the period, much of Pinewood's focus has been on rolling out its automotive dealer management software to Lithia's UK dealerships. This has helped drive a 3.6% increase in user numbers, taking the figure to c.34,300.
It has also started the discovery phase of its North American strategy, including identifying key system functionality and integration requirements and exploring roll-out strategies. Its partnership with Lithia, which includes both companies investing £10m in a North American joint venture, will form a key part of this strategy.
Pinewood has recently invested $4.2m in Seez, a company that provides AI-driven chatbots, e-commerce and customer experience products for automotive retailers. This partnership is intended to bolster Pinewood's product offering as it seeks to expand in the US. Pinewood has also increased its investment in developing its platform for markets in Europe and Asia Pacific.
It has been a good start for Pinewood; it is progressing well and appears to be in a strong position for further expansion.
Posted by: Dale Peters at 09:37
Tags: results saas software retail H1 automotive
Cognizant’s advance into the UK Public Sector market has taken a significant step forward in the shape of a deal worth up to £185m at H M Revenue & Customs (HMRC) won through a competitive tendering process. The three-year call-off contract, which also contains two optional twelve-month extensions, will see the IT services heavyweight provide specialist technical and DevSecOps support to the department’s Valuations Office Agency (VOA) transformation programme.
The VOA comprises the public sector's property experts and advisers who provide the valuations required for the administration of Council Taxes and Non-Domestic Rates. Some of the Agency’s systems and applications are nearly 30 years old, out-of-support and end-of-life. These are being progressively replaced by cloud applications running on Microsoft Azure, using both the Dynamics product suite and the software company’s geospatial toolkit. Cognizant has been retained to assist with both the build and run aspects of the change initiative.
Cognizant has made significant inroads into the UK Public Sector in recent times. TMV estimates that, from an almost standing start five years ago, the firm now generates annual revenue of c.£150m from this vertical. The company has been working with HMRC since 2020, most notably on a range of Child Benefit Pega-stack based applications (see here). This latest award is not only the Cognizant’s biggest win to date in the UK Public Sector, but also lifts the firm into the upper tier of IT services suppliers to central government. We understand that news of another large contract success in this arena by the company is imminent. Watch this space...
Posted by: Duncan Aitchison at 09:24
Tags: hmrc central+government IT+services public sector contract award
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