Enterprise IT vendor IBM has bagged an outsourcing deal — valued at €46 million – from Oriflame, a cosmetics company to support its IT and financial operational services.
As part of the technology outsourcing deal, IBM will focus on customer focus, productivity and automation to its technology and internal processes to support the continued digital business transformation of Oriflame in the IT and finance areas.
The seven-year IT contract with IBM is expected to provide annual savings of approximately €3 million for Oriflame. Oriflame will be reinvesting the savings in Oriflame’s IT development.
Oriflame believes that IBM’s expertise in analytics, cognitive systems and cloud-based services is a good fit with Oriflame’s growth strategy.
Oriflame, which has already made investment in online area, will also gain from its move for digital business transformation.
IBM will introduce cognitive tools, based on its technology Watson, for spend analytics, payment terms optimization and cash forecasting to provide insights to allow reduced costs. Cloud-based enabling tools aim to improve consistency, accuracy and efficiency.
“IBM’s innovation in cognitive analysis for IT and financial transactional services will provide us with valuable business insights. Oriflame will continue to manage the IT portfolio and develop its core systems,” said Gabriel Bennet, chief financial officer of Oriflame.
The new partnership will cover the entire Oriflame group, beginning in September 2016 and fully implemented by the end of 2017.
Oriflame’s beauty products are marketed through approximately 3 million independent Oriflame Consultants, generating annual sales of around €1.2 billion.
“We have implemented IBM Design Thinking techniques to help build solutions which deliver a better user experience. We’re very confident that this will bring a customer-oriented focus to the delivery of IT and financial services for Oriflame,” said Anita Karlsson-Dion, VP Client Services, IBM Global Business Process Services.
