Gloucester City Council has announced a new contract which aims to outsource many of its services to outsourced centre Civica, which is expected to save the council a huge £220,000 a year.

Civica already worked with Gloucester City Council to supply its IT services and equipment

The new seven year contract which Gloucester City Council has agreed with Civica will create a new delivery centre for revenue and benefits processing, something which is very time consuming and difficult to conduct in house, not to mention expensive. Outsourcing will both save time and money for the City council who will be able to focus their efforts on other core areas of business.

Gloucester City Council commented, “It’s very pleasing to be setting up a service centre with the potential to increase its contribution to the local economy and local jobs as time goes on.”

This new service sees the old stigma of outsourced centres completely negated. The old stigma used to be that jobs were being rewarded to those people working abroad because outsourced centres would be based abroad. However, in more recent times outsourced centres are being built locally which provides thousands of local jobs and services nearby.

Civica has commented that the new contract will sustain local employment in Gloucester.

This means that a high level of service will be maintained but the council will manage to save £220,000 a year in the process.

Many other companies are also deciding to outsource as a way of saving money, whether it is a large sum such as £220,000 like Gloucester City Council or a smaller £10,000, like one manned businesses. The money saved is truly helpful in the midst of the recession where savings and cutbacks are essential for company growth and success. The money can be ploughed into other business aims like marketing, advertising, training or hiring new staff.

It can be very difficult to decide which areas of your business to outsource, as this depends on each unique company and their requirements. However, it can be anything from IT to HR to telephone answering. Paperwork is very time consuming and therefore many companies decide to outsource virtual PA services so that this administration can be conducted on their behalf, in high quality and to a high standard so that staff within the business can focus on other areas of the company.