• In 2000, UK retailer Sainsbury signed a 7-year US$3.25B deal with Accenture to outsource its IT operations. By late 2004, the deal had been renegotiated twice, and Sainsbury had announced a 2004/ 5 write-off of US$254M of IT assets, and a further USSi18M write-off of automated depot and supply chain IT. The Way forward was to reduce costs and simplify systems