10th Apr 2006 14:00
Unilever PLC10 April 2006 UNILEVER AWARDS OUTSOURCING CONTRACT TO ACCENTURE Unilever today announced that it has awarded an outsourcing contract toAccenture to manage parts of its European IT operation. This follows theannouncement in December on outsourcing its financial transactional services toIBM. The outsourcing programme is part of the company's "One Unilever" initiatives toincrease leverage of its scale, improve its marketplace competitiveness, deliverfunctional excellence, and create a more competitive cost-structure allowing itto focus on its consumers and customers. Under the IT contract, Unilever will outsource to Accenture, the development,implementation and support of its European regional applications. The intentionis to start the programme from 1st July 2006. Unilever intends to minimise the impact of people by transferring staff toAccenture, early retirement, re-training through the Accenture Academy,exploring alternatives roles, natural attrition and through voluntaryprogrammes. Unilever has a great deal of experience of managing change issues and, as wellas dealing with people issues sensitively and professionally, it is committed toworking closely with the relevant employee representatives and works councils. Neil Cameron, Unilever's chief information officer, said: "This outsourcing dealrepresents a major strategic choice for Unilever. With a significant businesschange agenda ahead of us, we believe that partnering with a world classprovider such as Accenture gives us greater flexibility and more certainty ondelivery of the key enabling IT system platforms. "This deal allows us to create a simpler, more agile European IT function tobetter support Unilever's growth agenda." "This contract should help provide Unilever with a higher degree of certaintyaround the cost and timing necessary to create its new European business ITplatform, which is expected to drive improved business results includingincreased efficiencies, reduced costs and greater standardization," said JohnZealley, managing partner of Accenture's Consumer Goods & Services Practice inEurope. "Accenture's experience in delivering cross border IT programs should enable usto deliver consistently in Unilever's key markets, providing Unilever with theflexibility it needs to meet its goal of becoming ever more competitive andhigh-performing." Contacts: Tim Johns, Vice President, Global Media Relations Unilever, Tel: +44 20 7822 6805 Tanno Massar, Head of NV and Europe Media Relations Unilever, Tel: +31 10 217 4844 Trevor Gorin, Head of PLC and UK Media Relations Unilever, Tel: +44 20 7822 6010 Peter Thomas, Media and Analyst Relations Accenture, Tel: +44 20 7844 8645 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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