Tata Consultancy Services awarded £60-million contract by UK's public sector water utility Scottish Water

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd today said that it had signed an eight year contract worth an worth an estimated £60 million with Scottish Water,the UK's only public sector water utility, for providing end-to-end IT application services. It said the UK utiltiy expected to save  £8 million in operation expenditure alone during the contract period.

Scottish Water serves 5.5 million customers in Scotland with water and waste water services. Since being establishments in 2002, it has been working to transform the water industry in Scotland by improving efficiency and carrying out intense customer-centric programmes.

The focus for its IT management team has been to support the business' vision of delivering the best performance and value for money to its customers. The Scottish Water IT programmer 2007 was a competitive tender process involving 136 companies, of which TCS has been selected as the only partner for application management and support, and strategic enterprise information, business intelligence and integration services. This includes the operational management of these services and the development of bespoke applications, integration and business intelligence reporting.

IDC's Jennifer Thomson, research manager, European Services, said "This contract is a major strategic initiative for Scottish water."

"During the tender process, we were looking for world class partners who would bring to the table strong expertise and innovation credentials, as we felt this would enable us to accelerate our business aims through true utility domain expertise-led IT support," says David Brown, general manager, IT, Scottish Water. "The most important factor for us is the ability to bring and share ideas and be a true partner. TCS really impressed us with their strength and depth of expertise and even more so with their transparency and collaborative spirit.Scottish Water has made a massive commitment to the people of Scotland to supply the highest quality water utilities. Working with TCS will enable us to deliver on this promise and move the business to the next level."

TCS has also been selected as one of five It companies for developing a framework for enterprise package implementations. Under the terms of this contract, TCS will consolidate Scottish Water's existing applications and transform information management to enhance the delivery of IT services to the business.

Thomson adds, "TCS being chosen as the lead provider for the core IT applications consolidation and enterprise information management reflects the Company's growing recognition for its technical capabilities, as well as its expanding expertise specific to the water industry. This deal is also important in showing TCS as collaborative with other providers."

A S Lakshminarayanan, VP and head, TCS UK & Ireland, said that TCS had won all the pieces of work that it had bid for.