Coopers and EDS retune BBC's financial systems

Coopers & Lybrand and EDS have set up a new joint venture to redesign and then outsource the BBC’s financial processes. The contract, which runs for 10 years, is estimated to be worth #40m-#50m.

The new venture will be known as Media Accounting Systems (abbreviated to Medas) and is a 50-50 partnership between Coopers and EDS, which each have two representatives on the board. Employees from both firms will transfer to the new venture, joining 90 IT support staff from the BBC.

Medas takes responsibility for the BBC’s financial systems from the beginning of March. The first redesigned systems are expected to be implemented in 1988 in a directorate-by-directorate roll-out, at which time BBC finance staff will transfer to Medas.

The Coopers-EDS relationship began before EDS acquired AT Kearney but, according to Alan Oliver, systems operations officer at Medas, AT Kearney consultants may work on the project: “Medas can procure consulting capability from the market or either of its parents,” he said. The original logic behind the deal lay in combining Coopers’ financial reengineering capability with EDS’s outsourcing resources.

“We decided the best thing for the BBC was to pool our respective talent,” he said. Although Medas is currently a one-client operation, there are plans to expand.

“We’re set up to take on more business if necessary,” said Oliver. “It was the founding parties’ intention that, once we were established, we’d be looking for other customers.”