Unisys Australia has bucked a current trend by outsourcing its procurement service to New Zealand.
In a closed tender, which also involved the large Australian supplier Harris Technologies, Axon won the contract to provide to Unisys Australia the procurement service it sold last year to Unisys New Zealand.
The U-Online service will go live in Australia in mid-October.
U-Online New Zealand manager Lucy Cobb says there will be links for transtasman customers.
“Our New Zealand customers were asking for the service. We’ll look after them either in Australia or New Zealand, depending on their primary base,” she says. “The service will be identical.”
She says it was not cost-effective for Unisys to build its own procurement service. “That’s their [Axon] core business. It’s unique in terms of management between us and them. I can make the best decisions for the customers, and they get the best value-add service.”
U Online is available only to Unisys customers.
The service includes not only product but software licensing advice and a help desk. Users receive a single statement.
Axon won the New Zealand business in a tender in May 2003. Cobb says there was significant investment made in the first year to develop it into a full-blown service.