GSK, HR, Outsourcing, ACS

GSK consolidates HR outsourcing contracts to ACS

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has decided to consolidate all its HR business process outsourcing (BPO) services under the one umbrella in a contract valued at $171m (€131m) signed with Affiliated Computer Services (ACS).

Under terms of the ten-year agreement, ACS will consolidate for GSK a number of services that are currently outsourced to a variety of providers or being delivered within GSK, therefore the news will not be welcomed by the undetermined number of other outsourcing firms who have lost their contracts with the UK-based drug giant.

Specific functions that ACS will now perform include payroll processing and benefits administration for GSK in the US, as well as employee and manager self-service portals and integrated online tools for several HR processes across US and UK businesses, said a statement released by ACS.

ACS first became an IT outsourcing partner to GSK in June 2003 when it began supporting GSK's legacy business systems. In 2004, ACS signed a subsequent agreement to custom build a new Registration and Medication Ordering System (RAMOS), supporting GSK's RAMOS clinical trials. Late in 2005 the firm also awarded a $100.5m contract to provide remote server management and monitoring services for more than 5,000 UNIX, Wintel, OS390 Mainframe, and Open VMS servers located at GSK data centers in the US and UK.

According to Equaterra research, both cost and process improvement were motivating factors for undertaking BPO with the pharmaceutical industry.

Of the 25 large pharmaceutical companies surveyed, 44 per cent of firms that had outsourced one or more business process areas planned to expand their outsourcing into new process areas, 39 per cent planned to expand outsourcing into new geographies or business units, while 22 per cent planned to expand in the existing process areas outsourced, and nobody planned to cut back their outsourcing, said the report.