We advised SOK, the central firm of the Finnish retail cooperative S Group, when it put out to tender the provision of IT infrastructure services for the entire S Group. Our assignment also involved the transition to a more flexible operating model with multiple service providers. SOK’s new contract partners are Tieto Finland Oy and CGI Finland Ltd, which provide capacity and data center services, and Fujitsu Finland Oy, which provides end user services. They are taking over services previously provided by Capgemini Finland Oy. The new outsourcing agreements are among the most extensive IT outsourcing arrangements carried out in Finland in 2014.
Our firm assisted SOK from the request for proposals to the execution of the agreements. We drafted the terms and conditions of purchase that formed part of the request, rated the proposals based on comments to the terms and negotiated and prepared the agreements with the selected IT suppliers.
The S Group is a Finnish network of companies in the retail and services trades. It consists of the central firm SOK (Suomen Osuuskauppojen Keskuskunta) with its subsidiaries, 20 regional cooperatives and eight local cooperatives. The co-op members own the cooperatives, which in turn own SOK. The S Group provides services in the trades of grocery and consumer goods, service station stores and fuel, tourism and hospitality, automobile and auto accessories as well as in the agricultural trade. In addition, the group offers banking services through its S-Bank subsidiary.
