EDS seals megadeal with Digital for MCS

Vendor signs massive #500 million agreement with services giant to outsource its worldwide maintenance business

Digital has handed over its worldwide maintenance business to EDS in a #500 million deal which will put the services giant in charge of the manufacturer?s customer administration.

Eight hundred Digital employees working for Multivendor Customer Services (MCS) will join the EDS payroll in the outsourcing megadeal. The Multivendor Customer Services business is worth about $4 billion a year. The contract will run for eight years.

Kevin Molloy, account director for EDS at Digital, said that the manufacturer had put in place Chinese Wall security procedures, which were intended to reassure Digital business units, some of which expressed concern about sensitive information being handled by a competitor.

Digital selected EDS after a nine-month search, during which it inspected eight reference sites operated by the outsourcer. The MCS deal is the fifth outsourcing deal signed between Digital and EDS.

There was speculation that the deal will save Digital millions of pounds, but the company refused to comment on how much of a saving it would make.

EDS won the MCS deal because there are ?very few companies who do this kind of outsourcing?, Molloy said. ?It is not IT or applications-led. We are taking over an internal function. We call this process management.?

The Digital MCS Customer Administration Group provides internal support for the MCS sales organisation. Its responsibilities include bought and sold ledger, customer order processing and fulfilment, pricing and sales quotation processes, and pre-sales and post-sales admininistration.

As a result of the outsourcing deal, EDS will relace three separate IS systems that Digital has in place for US, Europe and Asia Pacific rim.