Virgin outsources techies, pulls plug on Trowbridge call centre
80 tech jobs cut immediately - sources
Posted in Management, 4th May 2011 16:21 GMT
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Virgin Media has announced a major overhaul of its IT operations on the same day it revealed plans to shutter a call centre in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, which has almost 500 staff members.
The winding up of the call centre is part of Virgin's plan to shift its Mobile operation into the Virgin Media operation, which will mean a single billing system for the comms giant.
Virgin says that 450 people will be affected by the move, which will run over 18 months, but that they will all be offered the chance to relocate or redeploy to other roles in the UK.
This will mean 350 Wiltshire-based staff most likely facing a move to Manchester – and while they may have a job, they may not want to up sticks to the UK's rain capital. The other 100 will be offered jobs elsewhere in the Virgin empire.
However, one source told the Reg that Virgin has also kicked off a major shake-up of its tech operations, including a major outsourcing programme to Accenture.
The source said 174 people will be affected immediately, including 90 redundancies, details of which will be announced by close of play tomorrow.
As part of the process, IT staff will be centralised at Virgin Media's Hook base. However, the process will see IT services largely taken over by Accenture, the source said, with the outsourcing giant taking over validation, testing and a range of other roles.
A Virgin spokesman confirmed the outsourcing deal with Accenture, and that 80 roles were "at risk" but added, but that "affected staff would still be eligible for redeployment opportunities". ®
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COMMENTS
If only there was some sort of technology...
... which allowed these guys to carry on working remotely, say some kind 'inter-net' provided by a network service provider that allowed the staff to work in one area whilst supporting technology in another area.
'Relocation options' are an accountants way of saying - fuck off, we don't need you, but its not our fault you are now unemployed since you chose not to move your entire life and family to the arse-end of nowhere to work for a company who just fucked over all of your colleagues.
Cost cutting & efficiency
Funny how the department of bean counters never gets outsourced...
Worth it?
Has this type of IT outsourcing ever been profitable? Every instance I've heard of or actually been involved in becomes a huge cluster%!$k resulting in lost customers, doubling the time of new projects and the inevitable reversal in 3 to 5 year's time.
What is does do is make the CEO look good as he temporarily reduces costs and collects his bonus.
Can any readers tell me of a win/win IT outsourcing example?
typical
VM prove they are no different than any other firm - screw the IT bods.
Re: Worth it?
"Can any readers tell me of a win/win IT outsourcing example?"
You answered you're own question.
"What is does do is make the CEO look good as he temporarily reduces costs and collects his bonus."
Most, if not all of them are win/win, in terms of the CEO who got his bonus then moved on with extra brownie point on his CV which demonstrate how good he is at cost cutting and so dazzles the next victim^W company
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