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By Andy McCue, 7 August 2003 16:14

NEWS Thames Water has signed a business process outsourcing (BPO) deal with Xansa to offshore to India its metered billing exceptions and customer correspondence operations. The project will result in no job losses at the water utility and is in the first phase of a two-stage rollout. It has already delivered cost and efficiency savings, according to both companies. The BPO service will handle over 700,000 transactions a year and in one month it has already handled predicted volumes and cleared a backlog of an extra 17 per cent of transactions, which has freed up Thames Water resources. Xansa, which has been one of Thames Water's main IT suppliers for over 15 years, has introduced document capture and imaging for increased security and speed. Over 100 detailed procedures were appraised and documented to create the foundation of an improvement plan. Linda Maslen, customer services director at Thames Water, said in a statement: "The phenomenal success of phase one exceeding expectations enables Thames Water to achieve greater benefits ahead of target and importantly means that Xansa is now applying its expertise directly on behalf of our customers.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Phil Codling, analyst at Ovum Holway, said: "This is a significant development for Xansa. The company is an enthusiastic exponent of offshore delivery in many areas of its services but here we have one of its flagship customers taking a full back-office process offshore. This appears to be a first not just for Thames Water but for the whole utility sector." A recent report by analyst house Gartner predicts offshore BPO will reach $1.8bn globally in 2003, a 38 per cent increase from the 2002 total of $1.3bn.