November 22, 2012, Bengaluru: Unilever CEO, Paul Polman inaugurated Unilever's global Enterprise Support and Information Technology (IT)  Innovation Centre in Bengaluru today. On behalf of Unilever, Harish Manwani, Chief Operating Officer, Nitin Paranjpe, CEO, Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), Pascal Visee, Chief Enterprise Support Officer and Willem Eelman, Chief Information Officer were present on the occasion.

Unilever looks at IT and Business Services as a source of significant competitive advantage. Unilever is therefore streamlining operational processes and leveraging technology to win in the market - through a better connection with Consumers & Customers driving cost-efficient business operations, enabling employees to work in an agile & collaborative manner and reducing its environmental impact.  Since launching Enterprise Support (ES) and IT Innovation as our global services and technology organizations, we've been able to deliver technology that boosts our consumer and customer connectivity, improve services and reduce costs.

This centre will be the largest operating centre for Unilever and will support HUL as well as the global Unilever business.  It will also have a number of vendor partners co-located with Unilever employees. Together with our IT Services hub in the North West UK, the Centre delivers services 24/7. The activities in the Bengaluru centre cover IT Innovation, IT Services, Information Management Operations and Finance Services. IT Services and Innovation activities include building and supporting some of our Global SAP platforms and the IT capabilities for Customer Development & Collaboration. (. Information Management focuses on Reporting and Analytics with a big drive towards information simplification. Finance Services covers various finance processes including Purchase-To-Pay, Record-To-Report and Controls. The centre currently houses 1400 people including Unilever employees and co-located IT vendor partners.

The establishment of this centre reflects the growing importance of D&E markets like India for Unilever business. Currently, D&E markets contribute 55% of Unilever revenues. Unilever is making a fundamental shift towards allocating resources to D&E markets. D&E led innovation and services will ensure that this is aligned to our high growth markets and will also service our developed markets in a very cost efficient manner.The Unilever IT centre in Bengaluru will leverage the strong IT & ITES vendor eco-system in India. The company enjoys a very strong employer brand in India which will help to attract top talent to the centre.

About Enterprise Support and IT Innovation

Enterprise Support and IT Innovation provide Business Services and Technology capabilities across the Unilever business. They provide services and technology to 168,000 Unilever employees and business units in 180 countries. Business Services include HR, Finance, IT, Information Management and Workplace Services.

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