Whitbread offshores finance and accounts

Hospitality company Whitbread has offshored its finance and accounting processes to India through a multimillion, five-year deal to Steria.

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This is the first time the company - which operates the Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Costa Coffee, Premier Inn, Table Table and Taybarns brands - has outsourced a business process offshore, although it has gone abroad for IT development projects before. It already has a relationship with Steria subsidiary Xansa, to which it outsourced its IT function in 1994.

According to Whitbread procurement director Andrew Brothers, the move was a result of a review of the business begun in 2005.

He said: "The decision came from an ongoing review of efficiency in the business. It will allow us to focus on what we are good at and get people focused on the front end of the business."

Whitbread has committed itself to a massive expansion of the business. In April the company said it would increase the Premier Inn business by 50 per cent to 55,000 rooms and double Costa to 2,000 in the next five years.

However, although Brothers would not go into detail on the numbers, he confirmed the offshoring move would reduce headcount in the affected departments.

The offshore operation which will be run primarily in Chennai, with a service desk in Noida, India, will go live by March 2009.