J Sainsbury plc
In November 2000, Sainsbury's announced
the outsourcing of its entire IT department to Accenture
in a seven-year deal valued at around £1.7 billion.
Many months in the making, the deal is central to the
firm's long-term recovery strategy, and is believed to be amongst
the biggest such deals forged in Europe last year.
"This is a very ambitious programme to replatform all our systems
as well as operate and maintain all
of our IT assets", says John Adshead,
Sainsbury's group board director for IT and human resources.
"We are doing it in such a way that it reduces our costs and
provides us with a real competitive advantage
in the marketplace within a two to three-year period."
Negotiating the contract was a considerable task, involving a multi-disciplinary
team from within the
business supported by external advisors. Charteris was
a key member of the team, providing advice and
experience of organising and negotiating complex outsourcing arrangements.
"Outsourcing firms are very professional people," says Adshead,
"who bring a lot to the party, but who
expect to work with a well-informed, professionally advised,
determined and
competent client. It was important to us to have top quality
advice, and Charteris
provided that from people who have done this sort of thing
many times before, and
who have a strong ethos of adding value in everything
they do."