Telenor selects Accenture for shared services

Telenor today announced that it has selected Accenture to accelerate the implementation of a global shared services vision across companies within the Telenor Group.

Under the contract with Telenor, Accenture will look to provide relevant shared services in areas including finance & accounting, HR, IT and transactional procurement/purchases.

The aim of the agreement is to support Telenor global shared services in achieving world-class support services by working with a highly experienced management group. The 5-year contract with Accenture is worth $215 million and is designed to increase Telenor's efficiency and quality significantly across the relevant shared services.

Telenor actively seeks opportunities to drive quality and efficiency improvements across the business units in the group. Global Shared Services is a vehicle in this, and in order to build and scale-up world class support services across geographies and business units, Telenor determined it needed a collaborative partner.

"This partnership will enable us to establish shared services as an industrial vehicle and to grow and expand shared services into new global areas. To meet future business models, we will need new and innovative ways of operating, gain competencies from partnerships, and establish sustainable cost structures," said Hilde Tonne, EVP and head of Telenor Group Industrial Development.

Accenture will assist in implementation of industry standard practices, processes, tools, and approaches that meet Telenor's requirements and lead to continuous innovation and productivity improvements.
It will also augment the development and implementation of Telenor's service strategies and work towards eliminating complexity from the services and architecture. This will all help Telenor achieve its strategic goal of becoming the industry leader in customer centricity by increasing value creation through improving processes.

"We are working every day to provide the best support possible for Telenor and are confident that we can help Telenor achieve its vision for world-class shared services with standardized operations and efficiencies across its entire enterprise," said Bob Sell, group chief executive, Accenture Communications, Media & Technology operating group.

"The competitive process has shown that they possess the broad experience and capabilities that will enable Telenor Group to realize our strategic objectives," said Ingrid R Lorange, CEO, Telenor Global Shared Services.