Britannia outsources IT services to HP India

Wednesday, 13 June 2007, 19:30 IST
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Bangalore: Britannia Industries Ltd, India's leading FMCG firm in food business, has selected Hewlett-Packard India (HP) to manage its entire IT requirements, including infrastructure solutions, consulting and outsourced services. The three-year contract makes the 22 billion Britannia the first FMCG firm in the subcontinent to outsource its IT operations for business transformation and accelerated growth in a competitive environment. Both the partners have declined to disclose the value of the deal, citing a confidentiality clause in the contract. "HP will implement a comprehensive IT outsourcing and transformation project to drive our business with cutting-edge technologies and serve our customers efficiently and cost-effectively," Britannia Managing Director Vinita Bali told reporters here Wednesday. The partnership envisages that HP would implement tailormade solutions and align IT with Britannia's growth strategy, spawning its back office and front office operations, production plants at multiple locations, supply chain management, sales and marketing divisions and customer relationship. Though HP has been one of the IT vendors to Britannia, providing customised solutions spanning hardware, software and services over the last five-six years, it has been selected to build the latter's IT ecosystem to enhance productivity and make its products/brands more competitive. "In line with the steady growth of the FMCG industry, the objective is to build an agile and adaptive IT infrastructure that will enable us to stay ahead of competition and increase profitability. HP's domain expertise in handling IT services in overseas food business will benefit our operations across the supply chain," Bali pointed out. HP India Managing Director Balu Doraisamy said the Britannia contract would enable the Indian subsidiary of the $97 billion global IT major extend its service offerings to a new vertical (food business) and leverage its worldwide expertise to make the differentiation. "The deal is an affirmation of our growing presence in the Indian IT services market across verticals. In view of the rapid changes in technologies, growing competition and expansion of their operations within the country or overseas, Indian enterprises are fast realising the value and cost benefits of outsourcing their IT requirements spanning infrastructure, products and services," Doraisamy noted. Though HP continues to be a dominant player in the IT products segment with market leadership in desktops, notebooks and printers, its software and services and IT infrastructure divisions have been competing with its global peers and leading Indian IT vendors for a greater pie of the outsourcing business in the enterprise and SMB (small and medium business) segments. "Our services division generate about 20 percent of the total revenue in our India operations, with a client base of 15 in verticals such as healthcare, telecom, banking and finance, government, manufacturing (automobile) and retail," Doraisamy added.
Source: IANS