Reaches a significant landmark in one of country’s first major IT outsourcing contracts
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that It has successfully completed ten years of partnership with Cadbury India Limited for providing IT Infrastructure to the country's leading confectioner. The deal, which was signed in September 1999, is the longest running strategic outsourcing contract for IBM in India, and amongst the earliest in the industry.
As part of this decade-long engagement, IBM has successfully setup and implemented a host of IT services including a disaster recovery solution, SAP migration and up-gradation, wireless LAN, enterprise-wide email systems and a video conferencing solution. IBM has also successfully helped Cadbury India rollout a global project to align its standard operating environment on end-user machines. Cadbury India, which owns popular brands like Cadbury Dairy Milk, 5 Star, Perk, Éclairs, Celebrations and Bournvita enjoys a value market share of over 70% in chocolates. It was looking for an IT partner in early 1999 as it saw IT as a strategic part of its business and hence chose IBM.
Commenting on the 10-year engagement, Anand Kripalu, President, Cadbury Asia and M.D. for India said, “When the partnership was inked in 1999, IT was managed in house. Since then IBM has been an effective Partner providing great service. Cadbury India’s I.T. model is well recognized in rest of Cadbury as an efficient solution provider.”
Shanker Annaswamy, Managing Director, IBM India Pvt. Ltd. said, “Cadbury India is one of the earliest accounts for IBM. By outsourcing its IT Infrastructure support to IBM as early as in 1999, Cadbury started a trend which was emulated by other well-known companies in India. Today IBM is seen as an extension of Cadbury India IT team. The partnership with Cadbury is a significant landmark in the industry and IBM is proud to be part of it.”
Rajesh Garg, Executive Director, Finance & I.T. Cadbury Asia, who has a long history for leveraging outsourcing in Americas, Europe & Asia across functions ( I.T., F&A , HR , Facilities Mgmt.) said, “We now have a very mature engagement that allows access to variety of technologies & skills and drives ‘Value creation’.”
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Sneha Hiranandani, V.P. I.T Cadbury Asia and India said, “Through this engagement, Cadbury I.T. is able to focus on its core skills and be cost competitive. The built-in flexibility in the contract with IBM helps us ramp up our IT requirements up or down according to our business cycle. The satisfaction levels are high and have been maintained at an average of 95%.”
About Cadbury
Cadbury is a leading global confectionery company with an outstanding portfolio of chocolate, gum and candy brands. It employs around 50,000 people and has direct operations in over 60 countries, selling our products in almost every country around the world.
In India, Cadbury began its operations in 1948 by importing chocolates. After 60 years of existence, it today has five company-owned manufacturing facilities at Thane, Induri and Malanpur , Bangalore and Baddi as well as 4 sales offices (New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai). The corporate office is in Mumbai. Cadbury is also actively engaged in growing cocoa in South India.
For more information visit: http://www.cadburyindia.com/ or http://www.cadbury.com/
About IBM
For more information, visit www.ibm.com/services
