News & Media

Nov 30, 2009

Steria, the European IT-enabled business services company, and HPI GmbH, one of the leading procurement services providers across Europe, today announced that they have signed a strategic partnership to offer outsourced Procurement Services. The partnership reinforces Steria's position in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market, placing the company amongst the leading procurement providers. 

By accomplishing this alliance with HPI, Steria will gain comprehensive procurement service and new industry skills and will be able to provide enhanced BPO services to its international clients. HPI will have access to Steria's new service delivery organisation in Germany and to Steria's industrialised integrated delivery model.

HPI provides excellent sourcing skills together with category management expertise for optimising direct and indirect costs. These are highly complementary to the Steria's existing Procurement and Purchase to Pay services. Together HPI and Steria can provide an end to end service portfolio on Procure to Pay encompassing Quote to Contract, Procurement and Payment cycles.

BPO is one of the most important business areas for Steria. Within this, the procurement sector being one of the fastest growing segments, this alliance will enable the company to expand its position in the European BPO market through in depth and complementary sourcing skills of HPI.

Juergen Sponnagel, Member of the Executive Committee and Head of BPO of Steria Group said: " For Steria's clients with international operations, our partnership with HPI will bring enhanced operational efficiencies in their procurement operations, saving them costs and time that they can reinvest within their core-business."

Steria is acknowledged as a European leader in BPO. Its portfolio of services reaches into the very heart of the business support activities that underpin its clients' organisations. These include Finance & Accounting, Procurement, Human Resources and processes tailored to individual sectors and organisations (Life and Pensions, Customer Services etc). Since entering the BPO market in 2001, Steria has been recognised as a key player in the top-value chain in BPO service delivery.

For the second consecutive year, Steria has secured the No. 1 position as the purchase-to-pay (P2P) business process outsourcing (BPO) supplier of choice across Europe. Steria's P2P (accounts payable) BPO ranking was unveiled in the NelsonHall BPO Market Assessment, 2009-2013 published on November 12.

In addition, the NelsonHall BPO rankings follow Steria's recent announcement that it has been awarded ‘Best BPO Project' by the British National Outsourcing Association (NOA) for its landmark achievements as one-half of the joint venture with the UK Department of Health, the NHS Shared Business Services, established in 2005.

This included positive acknowledgement in the 2009 UK Budget report and the achievement of world class finance accreditation by benchmarking firm, Hackett, earlier this year.

About HPI: www.hpigmbh.com
HPI belongs to the leading Procurement Services Providers (PSP) in Germany. Spun-off from Hoechst AG in 1998, as their former Central Purchasing Department, HPI manages a spend of about €5bn on behalf of approx.170 companies with more than 200 employees (group) and offices in 12 countries (UK, NL, IT, Es, G, Cz, Slo, CH, Pol, China, India, Dubai). HPI's service portfolio covers sourcing, management and transaction of all procurement relevant processes, category management, strategic alliances management and sourcing projects.