Cognizant bags IT deal from Germany's Vorwerk Group

Software services major Cognizant has bagged a six-year deal from Germany's Vorwerk Group to transform its IT infrastructure and provide application services.

Vorwerk, an international direct-sales company, has subsidiaries in 24 countries with revenues of over $3.2 billion.

Through this transition, Vorwerk Group will be able to standardise and centralise its IT environment to a higher degree, while driving down costs, Cognizant said in a statement.

Increased centralisation will also make the Group's IT environment more transparent, enabling Vorwerk to proactively monitor, manage, and improve its IT infrastructure even further, it added.

No financial details were disclosed.

As part of the six-year engagement, Cognizant will provide Vorwerk with integrated service management, data centre, network and application management services.

"As an expanding business, customer orientation and time-to-market are top priorities for us," Vorwerk Managing Partner Reiner Strecker said.

Cognizant will also deliver end-user computing services and field services as well as manage a new service desk, providing help to Vorwerk's employees in a variety of languages, it said.

The services desk will be a central point of contact for the company, assisting staff in German, Italian, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech and Polish, it added.

"Our end-to-end capabilities in IT Infrastructure services, coupled with our deep understanding of Vorwerk's business, will help us establish best-in-class service delivery processes," Cognizant President of Technology Solutions Debashis Chatterjee said.

The Vorwerk & Co KG family enterprise was founded in 1883. The holding company's registered office is located in Wuppertal, Germany. Vorwerk's core business is the worldwide direct sale of products like vacuum cleaners, kitchen appliances, and cosmetics.

Vorwerk employs more than 622,000 people worldwide, 610,000 of which as independent advisers and generated group sales of EUR 2.6 billion (2013).