Pearson to Reduce Legacy Systems in Bid to Drive Down Costs
January 17 2019 - 8:18AM
Dow Jones News
By Nina Trentmann
U.K. higher-education company Pearson PLC (PSON.LN) is shrinking
the number of legacy technology systems it operates, Chief
Financial Officer Coram Williams said Thursday.
"At the moment, our focus is to make sure that we are running
the business on one system," Mr. Williams said.
The company is halfway through a transformation program to
reduce costs by around 300 million pounds ($386 million) a year
between 2017 and 2020. Streamlining back- office functions and
shrinking headcount to around 25,000--from 40,000 in 2016--is part
of that turnaround, Mr. Williams said.
By 2020, the company plans to have a single enterprise-resource
system to combine information on finance, inventory management,
supply-chain and human-resource management. It had 63
enterprise-resource systems and around 3,500 legacy
applications.
Pearson has a physical presence in around 70 countries and
counts the U.S. as its biggest market. The company expects to
deliver adjusted operating profit for 2018 of between GBP540
million and GBP545 million.
Write to Nina Trentmann at nina.trentmann@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 17, 2019 08:03 ET (13:03 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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