Sainsbury's has scrapped its 10-year outsourcing deal
with Accenture.
The supermarket chain will take up to a year to bring its
systems back in-house. Accenture's contract with Sainsbury's was
valued at £1.7bn over seven years when it was signed in 2000. The
deal was subsequently extended by three years.
Sainsbury's said, “Accenture has been instrumental in improving
the IT capability of Sainsbury’s business and delivered
considerable improvements in system stability and operational cost
reductions through the re-platforming of the vast majority of
Sainsbury’s IT systems.”
Sainsbury's will in-source the IT services that have been
provided by Accenture rather than find a different supplier.
The retailer’s decision follows the publication of an operational
review of its IT systems that recommended key systems be brought
back in-house.
Ovum’s senior analyst, Douglas Hayward, said Sainsbury’s
decision “is a warning that business benefits don’t necessarily
follow from IT infrastructure renewal unless the business itself is
well run and the two sides are properly connected. New IT
infrastructure can’t compensate for poor business management. In
that sense, Sainsbury's shows us the limits of transformational
outsourcing.”