Norton Rose to land two IT deals for TUI” />Barlow Lyde & Gilbert (BLG) has closed its first two multimillion-pound outsourcing deals for new client TUI after it was chosen ahead of regular advisers Allen & Overy and Norton Rose.
Head of commercial and technology Kit Burden led the BLG team advising Europe’s largest travel group – best known for the Thomson travel company – on two offshore outsourcing deals with leading Indian software services companies Sonata and Wipro.
Karen Goh, in-house legal counsel at TUI, said: “Through outsourcing some of the IT functions, TUI wishes to obtain greater flexibility of service using high-quality processes in a cost-effective way. Through the expertise and experience of BLG, we’ve entered into agreements with both Wipro and Sonata, which we feel are mutually beneficial to both parties.”
Goh joined TUI from Masons in 2001 as an in-house IT specialist when the company reorganised its central legal function. Her work has involved an in-depth analysis of the benefits of outsourcing and offshoring over the last year. With the travel industry becoming increasingly competitive, the key driver for these deals was cost. TUI expects to save between 20 and 30 per cent on its IT costs.
The first project involved the outsourcing of various application development and support functions to an overseas development centre at Sonata. The second relates to the outsourcing of TUI’s entire desktop support function of some 10,000 computers to Wipro.
