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Working with Suppliers - How Not to Do It: The Serco Way

Jim Riley

1st November 2010

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I hate bullies. I’m sure you do too. So a proverbial “finger in the air” to outsourcing giant Serco for their proposed treatment of many small businesses in the UK after they found out that their public sector contracts were to become less profitable as a result of the coalition spending cuts. The Guardian reports on the fallout from a Serco communication with their suppliers.

Serco have moved quickly to retract the implied threat to their suppliers with a statement which includes the following:

“As a company that values our relationships with all our supply chain partners, large and small, we deeply regret this action and apologise unreservedly to them for the concern that this has caused. We are now communicating this to our supply chain partners and retracting the letters.”

But their action has come a little late to prevent a sharp fall in the Serco share price…

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Jim Riley

Jim co-founded tutor2u alongside his twin brother Geoff! Jim is a well-known Business writer and presenter as well as being one of the UK's leading educational technology entrepreneurs.