Barclays
has confirmed it will sign a multimillion-pound deal to outsource
its application development division to consulting giant Accenture
in the first quarter of next year.
The details of the
contract, first revealed in Computer Weekly in October, are still
to be ironed out but it is expected to be worth up to £75m a year.
The deal would be one of the largest outsourcing contracts in the
banking industry.
The application
development division of Barclays’ IT department, called Build
Services, employs 2,000 people and is tasked with helping the bank
to harness new technology.
Banking union
Unifi, which represents two-thirds of Barclays’ 9,000 IT staff,
believes around 1,000 jobs will be outsourced to Accenture, with
some jobs moving to India. A Barclays spokeswoman said no numbers
had been confirmed yet, but added that there would be no compulsory
redundancies.
Unifi is in
discussions with Barclays to ensure that the bank’s HR Framework
Agreement, which includes assurances about redundancy and jobs
moving offshore, will extend into the contracts being offered by
Accenture under the terms of the deal.
Earlier this year,
Barclays handed over the management of its 42,000 desktops to IT
services giant EDS in a seven-year deal valued at £214m.
Toby Broome, chief
operating officer for IT and operations at Barclays, said, "Our
approach is for selective outsourcing. We do not dogmatically
outsource."
A growing number
of companies are choosing to outsource their IT systems to a range
of specialist suppliers rather than relying on a single
supplier.
"With the size of
outsourcing deals now, no single supplier can do everything," said
Anthony Miller, research director at analyst firm Ovum Holway. "The
trend towards multi-[supplier] outsourcing is inevitable."
To minimise the
cost of managing separate outsourcing deals, Miller said users
should nominate a prime contractor to take responsibility for
delivering the service and liaise with other suppliers involved in
the deal.