Bristol-Myers Squibb, the global biopharmaceutical giant, has signed a ten year outsourcing deal with Accenture. The deal, worth US $550 million, will see the company provide a range of finance and accounting and application development and maintenance services.

The “bundled” services agreement extends a four-year outsourcing agreement the two companies signed in 2004 for application maintenance and accounts payable services and expands the scope to include additional application maintenance services, application development services and global financial support services.

Accenture will provide these services to Bristol-Myers Squibb in the Americas, Asia, and EMEA regions in 22 languages through Accenture’s Global Delivery Network, which includes more than 50 delivery centers across five continents.

The agreement provides dedicated global IT and financial support services to Bristol-Myers Squibb to help achieve operational cost savings and flexibility. The agreement is also designed to enable Bristol-Myers Squibb to more effectively manage its business, by providing a variable cost structure to address varying economic factors, such as patent lifecycles.

Paul von Autenried, VP and CIO at Bristol-Myers Squibb, said: “This agreement enables us to continue to leverage Accenture’s capabilities and integrate them with our Bristol-Myers Squibb employees, creating high performance teams to improve our productivity and support our strategic transformation to a next-generation BioPharma company. It gives us greater flexibility, thereby allowing the company to focus on what we do best – discover and develop medicines that will help patients prevail in their fight against serious disease.”