Whitbread has set up a shared services centre for its IT
operations to help it achieve cost savings of £25m across the
business over the next two years.
Whitbread-owned brands include Premier Travel Inn, Costa Coffee,
David Lloyd Leisure and Pizza Hut. The shared services operation
covers all of its head-office functions.
Some of the cost savings in the IT function are being achieved
by reducing the headcount.
Ben Wishart, Whitbread's group IT director, said, "We lost about
20 IT roles: some contractors, some natural wastage and some
redundancies." The company's IT team now numbers about 100, he
added.
The shared services centre for IT has been divided into three
areas. One team of IT staff manages the systems and applications
used by the company's outlets. Any system that runs in a coffee
shop, hotel, leisure centre or restaurant is supported by this
team.
A small group within this team is dedicated to the Costa Coffee
and David Lloyd Leisure brands because of specific systems used by
the businesses.
A second team runs the Oracle-based systems that support
Whitbread's business, such as human resources and finance. This
group also manages the company's IT infrastructure.
The third arm of the shared services centre has been set up to
manage customer data.
Wishart said, "We work with [loyalty card company] Nectar in
some of our brands, but not all of them. We are going to consider
what is the right way to move forwards in terms of capturing
information across the brands at Whitbread."
The company plans to establish a strategy to manage its customer
information in the first half of 2006, he added.
Whitbread has outsourcing contracts with Computer Sciences
Corporation and Fujitsu. Under its contract with CSC, which runs
until 2010, Whitbread's legacy systems are being replaced with
Oracle 11i applications.
By moving almost all of its IT operations to the shared services
centre, Whitbread expects to save money on its outsourcing
arrangements.
Wishart said, "We are making the suppliers more accountable,
enabling us to save costs. This is being done by creating good
visibility about how the service is delivered and managed."