The Anglo-Dutch company, which owns food and drink brands such as Ben & Jerry’s, Knorr and Marmite, revealed in October that it was conducting a review of its HR, finance and accounting and IT services functions.
Unilever said at the time that it was considering options including outsourcing to either Accenture or IBM or keeping the work in-house.
Sources have now confirmed to Computer Business Review that Accenture is in exclusive talks with Unilever to take over its HR services, which serve more than 200,000 of its 227,000 workers worldwide, in a deal estimated to be worth in excess of $1bn.
An official announcement is not expected until the new year. IBM will no doubt hope that the current trend towards using multiple outsourcing vendors will boost its chances of winning Unilever’s F&A or IT services business.
