Two SMEs– Route 101 and Nice – have won a massive £221 million contract to modernise one of Europe’s largest contact centre estates, for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). 

The two will deploy a “UK-sovereign Citizen Experience Platform (CXP), powered by NiCE’s CXone Mpower and hosted in a secure, UK-based cloud environment” to support some 40,000 call centre staff. 

The government department, which which pays out pensions and benefits worth £3.7 billion weekly, is ripe for improvement. In 2023-2024 its in-house call centres abandoned a shocking 5.3 million calls from those seeking help, the National Audit Office (NAO) found last year.

Route 101 and NICE beat 16 other companies to the contract. 

Russell Attwood, CEO of Bristol-headquartered Route 101, said: “Securing this contract as the primary partner to DWP marks a pivotal moment for Route 101. By combining our deep understanding of government needs with NiCE’s advanced technology, we are committed to setting a new standard, operational efficiency, and data sovereignty across the UK.”

The contract size is notably above what DWP had anticipated paying in an initial 2023 RFI that it had priced at approximately £160 million. 

But a closer look at the contract award shows that the base contract is for £168.8 million over five years, with approximately £52.3 million for forecast use of “Optional Services specified within the Contract and (ii) ad-hoc Contract Change (based on historic levels of change), excluding in each case forecast indexation (which may need to be applied in future.)”

DWP is working through a Service Modernisation Programme (SMP); an 11-year organisation-wide programme, running from 2022-23 to 2032-33.

The department has seven projects worth a combined £25.2 billion in investment listed in the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP); a list of HMG’s “most complex and strategically significant projects.”

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