TNT continues outsourcing push

International logistics company TNT has signed a five-year business process outsourcing (BPO) contract with Accenture in its latest move to direct focus towards its business offering.

The BPO deal will enable TNT to consolidate and standardise back-office operations, which are currently split across different locations.

This is part of TNT’s Global Business Services project, which aims to cut up to €150m in annual costs by 2018. This, in turn, is part of a larger project known as Outlook, which involves growing its small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customer base. TNT’s IT is being updated to better serve these companies. The transition will take place in stages between 2015 and the end of 2017.

“Accenture’s BPO services will allow TNT to focus on what we do best: delivering our customers’ express parcels and pallets, while enhancing our cost-efficiency and flexibility,” said TNT CFO Maarten de Vries.

Outsourcing is a major component of TNT’s transformation. In March 2015 it outsourced its IT infrastructure to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in a six-year deal that will see it move to the cloud. HP is consolidating and virtualising TNT’s IT infrastructure, with some functions moving to its Helion private cloud environment.

In the same month, TNT signed a five-year contract with Indian IT services firm Infosys for application development services, as part of the Outlook project.

Infosys will simplify its applications and adopt cloud-based digital technologies. These technologies will help TNT improve its engagement with customers. The Indian service provider will use its collaboration technologies and its global presence to deliver a 24-hour service across multiple TNT locations.