OREANDA-NEWS. RWE continues to focus on its core business. After the agreement with German software company T-Systems on outsourcing workplace management last September, the Group has now sold RWE IT Slovakia to Vietnamese company FPT Software. The benefits are clear. Being part of a global software network offers the opportunity to provide IT services more efficiently. Standard software can now be programmed within FPT's global network and differentiating IT solutions can be developed by IT experts with energy expertise based in Kosice, Slovakia.

The company will enter the European market under the name FPT Slovakia. The cooperation will offer new business opportunities for both partners. RWE can reduce costs without making job cutbacks; FPT Software plans to expand to Europe through the Slovak market. The Kosice-based IT experts with wide experience in the energy business are key in this respect.

Peter Terium, CEO of RWE AG, comments on this agreement, which will become operative on 1 July 2014: “This is a win-win-situation. We have entered into a long-term partnership in the field of application development and maintenance. We expect that this measure will bring savings in the tens of millions for the RWE Group. FPT will benefit from developing the Kosice location as a basis for their European business.” 200 new jobs will be created in Kosice.

The agreement now closed with FPT offers the Group the opportunity to choose flexibly between nearshore and offshore development or even to combine the two. As a result, certain modules or functionalities can be programmed by the IT experts in Vietnam while other components for which specific knowledge of the processes and requirements in the RWE Group are needed can still be processed by the developers in Kosice. Peter Terium: “This cooperation fits perfectly to our innovation strategy.”

Maintenance and development tasks will only be transferred to Asia to a certain extent and in successive steps without a "big bang" being necessary. In this way, nearshore is gradually becoming bestshore. In addition, a number of activities in the field of quality assurance have been agreed on, including compliance with previously defined quality criteria for the transition to offshoring (e.g. ensuring comparable training standards, etc.) as well as the development of a knowledge database.

"Offshoring has become a matter of course for global corporate players", says Michael Neff, CEO of RWE IT. "There are excellent IT experts in all parts of the world today and Vietnam, in particular, has a first-class training system and excellent IT experts. The agreement with FPT Software offers us the possibility to compete with other IT companies on the global market.” Peter Terium adds: “At the same time, this will give our colleagues in Kosice prospects for the future.”

And this deal also makes sense for FPT as they will gain access to highly trained IT specialists with experience in the energy sector. This is a good starting point for further projects in Europe. Today, the Vietnamese IT group already has a strong foothold in the Japanese and American markets and now aims to grow in Europe, too. "With new customers also from outside the utility market we are able to position ourselves more broadly ", said Olaf Baumann, Managing Director at RWE IT Slovakia. "Moreover, FPT seeks to establish a development partnership with SAP in billing software for energy utilities." In addition FPT operates in the fields of trade, telecommunications, health, finance and manufacturing. The company also offers business process outsourcing (BPO), i.e. the takeover of entire business processes.

RWE implemented a similarly innovative solution in September 2013, when RWE IT commissioned T-Systems with the workplace management service for RWE. The contract lasts for five years and offers workplace system management services provided by the Telekom subsidiary. This includes on-site user support and a central IT hotline. Since February 2014, T-Systems has been providing support for around 40,000 RWE desktops in Europe. The award of these services to T-Systems means that RWE will reduce its operating costs in this area by 30 percent. Some 150 former RWE employees are now permanently employed by T-Systems. They are working on an even broader range of tasks that are part of their employer's core business.