Xerox Corp. signs new contract with HCL Technologies

HCL Technologies has entered into a new contract with Xerox Corp. worth $1.3 billion (Rs 8,982 crore at current exchange rate).

Under the seven-year agreement, HCL said it will manage, among others, Xerox’s global administrative and support functions as well as information technology and finance functions (excluding accounting).  

The Xerox-HCL relationship began in 2009 with product engineering and support services. 

Together, HCL and Xerox have delivered 215 US patents and have created R&D (research and development) labs, said a statement by the former.

“This is a win-win agreement. Xerox will benefit from our global scale, best-in-class processes and investments in artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA) and transformation tools, and HCL will benefit from a long-term agreement to provide product support and administrative services to Xerox,” said C Vijayakumar, president and chief executive officer of HCL Technologies.  

Steve Bandrowczak, president and chief operations officer of Xerox, said, “The evolution of our shared services represents our culture of continuous improvement and allows us to more efficiently address customer needs while delivering significant cost savings to re-invest in the business.” 

As part of the agreement, a group of Xerox employees will transfer to HCL (subject to compliance with European regulatory requirements). 

HCL has been one of the most prolific acquirers among India's information technology services companies. It has struck almost a dozen acquisitions in India and overseas since 2015, according to VCCEdge, the data research arm of VCCircle. HCL sealed the biggest acquisition by an Indian information technology company in December last year when it agreed to buy select software businesses from IBM Corp for $1.8 billion.

The company made three other acquisitions last year. It agreed to acquire Germany's H&D International Group for around $35 million, life sciences and consumer services provider C3i Solutions from US drugmaker Merck & Co. for $60 million and US-based Actian Corporation for $330 million.

Last week, HCL said it had agreed to acquire US-based Strong-Bridge Envision to boost its digital transformation consulting capabilities.

HCL will pay $45 million (Rs 313 crore) for the acquisition, it said in a stock-exchange filing.