Our managed services platform is a mixture of processes and technology but as far as I am aware it doesn’t have an NI number yet…….Why is this important? Well to a large extent it explains one of the core philosophies of the structure of our contracts, and one of the main tenets of our service delivery.
In an uncertain world our clients tell us they value the certainty that our contracts bring. Designed to be flexible yet reassuring all our contracts include a pricing structure that is fixed around the services you have chosen, so whatever happens to inflation, National Insurance or pension provision you will be paying the same price for the duration of the contract. In these challenging times we take the risk of increased costs not you.

When comparing the value of the services provided by Twin Systems against providing all or some of our services in house, it is right and professional that the first consideration is the quality of our services. The framework around this is always and let’s not be coy, the framework is the cost of the service. In recent times though a new element has crept up on us and often our prospective clients do not take this into account over the potential lifetime of a contract which could be initially three years and often more. These are the escalating costs of directly employing staff to perform functions that are not unique to your business. Four areas which will have an immediate effect are:

1. Pressure for pay rises
Inflation is ‘said’ to be running at 4.2% or 5% at official figures, it really is only a matter of time before your internal back room staff are asking for an inflation adjusting pay rise. This is made all the harder to refute if as with many support functions there is often a small team with a tightly pooled knowledge set, limited opportunities for progression and hence a real business case for an increment.

2. Compulsory provision of pensions
The National Insurance Savings Trust legislation will require from 2012 over a period of four every employer to contribute 3% of an employee’s salary to a pension fund. Effectively increasing the cost of your payroll by 3%

3. Changes in NI
NI increased by 1% for employers in April 2010 and who knows where it will move to next?

4. The Agency Workers Regulations (AWR)
These come into force in October 2011 and in a nutshell destroy at a stroke the flexibility that many companies have enjoyed through using agency workers. Time off, benefits and conditions are now so closely aligned with a full time employee that the two effectively are the same form of employment. Whilst the actual application of this legislation is still a little grey, I think we all know ultimately it will result in an increase in costs for directly employed workers in any guise.

The above four areas make for a compelling case for considering the advantages that a fixed fee, value driven service partnership can bring with Twin Systems. Our contracts are flexible and fixed in price for the duration of the contract. Delivering real value and savings from the outset and going on to deliver more as the cost of directly employing people increases.

Contact us on 0845 3131483 or help@twinsystems.com to find out more about how we could be working together.

Tags: Digitial vision, Executive leadership, Fixed fee services, IT Managed services, IT outsourcing, IT Support, managed service provider, Managed services, twin systems plc