3.2 Building scale and capacity and growing our infrastructure

We have built up an extensive operational infrastructure and a depth of capabilities which enable us to fully support our clients, provide flexible operating models and share economies of scale.

Our continued growth and success depends on having the right resources in place both in terms of infrastructure and people. To sustain our high contract win and retention rates, we have to satisfy clients that we have the operational scale and capability to deliver our promises – whether on relatively simple contracts or large scale, multi-service partnerships.

We continuously assess the needs of each business unit to ensure that we have the necessary people, infrastructure and resources for current and future development. Each month we review comprehensive operational management information through the MOB review process which enables us to manage the business in a way that delivers our key financial targets.

Leveraging scale and resources

The substantial scale and broad capability we have created enable us to put forward increasingly compelling propositions to clients and win major integrated service transformations across the public and private sectors.

The addition of progressively larger contracts, with common processes and substantial numbers of transferring staff has accelerated the growth of our operations and resources. This in turn enables us to deliver more services and contracts through shared ICT platforms and operating structures, providing greater benefits to clients. They benefit not only from substantial cost efficiencies but also from greater access to specialist skills and flexible service delivery models.

Our business centres, where we are able to run a broad range of shared services to provide cost efficiencies to customers and a higher level of service quality, form a central part of our service delivery infrastructure. At the end of 2008 we had an infrastructure of 62 business centres onshore in the UK, nearshore in Ireland and the Channel Islands, and offshore in India.

As excellent reference sites, they are an asset to the sales process, allowing potential clients to see operations first hand and to speak with operational staff who have transferred to Capita from client organisations.

Capita India

Our offshore operations in India apply key skills and expertise to deliver quality, cost effective services to clients.

Since we established our operations in India in 2003 they have played an increasingly important role in our business. Capita India is an integrated part of the Group and operates like any other Capita business with the same values, technical infrastructure and operating model. It continues to develop strongly both in scale and scope of services.

Following the transfer of some of Prudential’s Indian operations to Capita as part of the Prudential contract in October 2008, we now have 3 sites in Mumbai and we have established a new site in Pune. These centres are specialist centres, delivering services to multiple clients or providing multiple services to a single client. We benefit from being able to attract and retain a highly skilled and professional workforce.

The sites share a combined management team to ensure they all benefit from their collective skills and we proactively recruit from the highly skilled graduate workforce that is available in these areas. Their skills, knowledge and excellent work ethic help us meet our objectives of delivering a first class service to our clients.

We had 3,000 employees working in our operations in India at the end of 2008 and expect to have 4,500 by the end of 2009.

Blended service delivery

Our infrastructure allows us to offer clients an onshore/offshore delivery model structured to meet their individual needs. By combining onshore and offshore resources we can deliver maximum service flexibility, quality and cost effectiveness, and our comprehensive security and quality assurance systems ensure consistent service quality across the entire infrastructure.

Business centre network