Origin secures pharmaceutical outsourcing contract

NEWS Philips services subsidiary, Origin, has secured an outsourcing contract from European and Global pharmaceuticals giant, Akzo Nobel to take over its entire systems department. The company beat off competition from EDS, CSC and IBM to win the contract which is estimated to be at least E1bn. Origin will take on 700 Akzo staff, most of which will be in the Netherlands during the deal, which is expected to last for over seven years. During that time, Origin will manage Akzo's current applications, around two-thirds of which run on the company's SAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. Origin said that two of the reasons it won the contract was because of its existing contracts with other pharmaceuticals such as Shell and ICI, and due to its existing relationship with Akzo, albeit on a much smaller scale.