Thomson Reuters has said it is “on schedule” with plans to standardise its IT systems, following the successful rollout of a business-wide SAP enterprise resource planning system.
The Thomson £8.7 billion acquisition of media firm Reuters closed in April, and the new group said it had “quickly moved” on its implementation plans, which are central to improving efficiency and cutting costs. It has also switched on part of its own administration platform, called GCAP, across the group.
Robert Daleo, chief financial officer at the group, told investors: “The SAP implementation went live on 1 August, moving the entire company onto one enterprise-wide accounting system. And a significant release of our GCAP automated administration system also went live in July.”
He said this meant the stage was set for a "common product platform" to go live in mid-2009.
The group has merged its Thomson Plus and Core Plus savings programmes, targeting overall savings from these, and from other efficiency gains, of $1.2 billion (£640 million) by 2011. These savings will be achieved by improved efficiency, procurement and financial reporting, a better supply chain and the consolidation of financial processes.
It has achieved $490 million (£261 million) savings in the year to date, and expects to achieve a further $190 million (£101 million) in the next six months. Expenditure to enable the savings will be ramped up in the next six months, meaning some $600 million (£320 million) will be spent on business optimisation this year.
The news was delivered on the back of a mixed set of financial results in which pro forma revenue grew 11 per cent to $3.4 billion (£1.8 billion) in the quarter to 30 June, but closely-watched organic revenue growth at its markets division, which represents 60 per cent of sales, slowed to seven per cent.
Nevertheless the professional arm, which sells business information services, saw revenues grow 10 per cent to $1.4 billion (£747 million), with online offerings, services and software accounting for over three-quarters of the sales.
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In May, Thomson Reuters said it was cutting 650 technology, content and back office operations jobs as part of the savings plan. It also established an offshore location in India to handle some of the company’s finance functions.
Last year, Thomson Reuters signed a £500 million deal with Fujitsu to run most of its internal IT infrastructure including desktop PC maintenance and email services for 17,500 employees.
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