Bootswill use up to six suppliers
competing tosupply its IT products and servicesover the next year.
The pharmaceutical retail company previously used two
outsourcers.
Speaking at Gartner's Outsourcing and IT Services Summit 2008,
Steve Brown, programme delivery director at Boots, said it decided
to look for more outsourcing suppliers in 2005. This was because it
was dissatisfied with the service it received.
The original outsourcing contract worked well when there was a
lot of investment in systems.
But the relationship soured when the work changed to
operational support, he said.
"We wanted more cost reduction but this was seen as the service
provider's loss of revenue so engaging them was hard and our
relationship suffered very badly."
Boots upgraded its IT in 2002 after 15 years' underinvestment.
It signed a £710m, 10-year contract with IBM global services to
overhaul its IT infrastructure and its central application
development.
It also signed a £54m, 7-year contract with Xansa for
support operations.
Phil Morris, managing director at
Equaterra, said outsourcing contracts need to change when the
services provided change from being geared to major IT change to
being operational services.
"I would not be surprised if a service provider lost interest
when the discretionary spend ends," Phil Morris said.
"Multi-sourcing does not particularly overcome this problem but
brings in best of breed outsourcers that want to do operational
tasks rather than big change programmes," he added.
Boots said it will not use more than six outsourcers. The
company is keeping its business system management team and service
management in-house, including helpdesk and project management.