Capita hoovers up 1 in every 5 pounds of outsourced UK.gov IT spending Capita has increased its share of the public sector IT market by one quarter since 2012, despite overall government IT outsourcing spending remaining flat over that period. In 2014, Capita hoovered up £905m in public sector IT spending, up from £671m in 2012. At the same time, overall spend over the last three years across …
Capita are very good at cost control and revenue retention in outsourcing. Once you have them, the costs of transitioning to another supplier could in many cases not be recovered in lower costs, and, if you have their software products, you still can't get rid of them.
Few other suppliers will want to support any substantial quantity of Capita products either, because they'll need to charge margin on it, which Capita doesn't. Again the costs of transitioning can be greater than the potential savings.
"Even if you take a cynical view that they are the best of a bad bunch, they must be doing something right."
Correction:
1) Capita are pretty much the only alternative for most local government services.
2) While (Hy)Steria is catching up on skimming ICT contracts away from Capita they are unfortunately also inheriting Capita staff working those contracts, so the levels of competence are not really improving (Gloucestershire County Council already noticed that).
3) I have yet to come across any government contract that Capita 'have done right' and regrettfully have seen far too many truly awful results of last-second, sellotape fixes in order to get signed-off approval on Capita ICT contracts.
The government is screwing over regular contractors that don't work for these corporate behemoths with a huge increase in dividend tax, and massive cuts in travel & subsidence.
It's no surprise that this would help these giants out, as regular contractors are their greatest threat.
Thanks government, thanks a lot.
Capita have this knack of winning contract after contract, but don't actually have the staff or knowhow to properly deliver the services they promise at the cut me own throat prices.
Every year or so they have an internal restructure usually because the people who actually want to make things better have their hands and other dangly bits tied by the finance directors so then just move on to other companies. Rinse and repeat.
It's a shame because some of the people they have had in their ranks were rather good but ended up demoralised (and/or skint) and inevitably move out of the business.
Until Capita start looking after their staff properly this will not change and anyone outsourcing to them - beware. You get what you pay for.
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