International Business Machines (IBM) and Idea Cellular of the Aditya Birla group have signed an innovative 10-year outsourcing deal valued between $600 million to $800 million aimed at integrating and transforming Idea’s business processes and IT infrastructure. The pact which is designed on an innovative risk-reward revenue sharing model covers all of Idea’s existing operations and potential new additions.Said Sanjeev Aga, managing director, Idea Cellular, “We will harness IBM’s power to support Idea’s growth with robust solutions that address scalability, complexity, innovation and cost control, to provide Idea with the most advanced business processes globally.”The pact with IBM will enable Idea to meet the needs of its 14 million current subscribers and future growth. This will be through supporting end-to-end transformation of business critical processes including billing, revenue assurance, and credit collection, subscriber management, business intelligence, fraud management, customer relationship management, e-billing and payment, and customer self care.IBM will also undertake the management and support of Idea’s IT Infrastructure. “All IT department employees of Idea would play a key role in the transformation, either as Idea employees or as IBM employees,” he said.According to Shanker Annaswamy, MD, IBM India, IBM will bring its deep global expertise in business transformation and innovation to enable Idea to meet with its customer value, business growth and productivity objectives.Idea which operates in 13 telecom circles in India has a customer base of more than 14 million.“Globally, IBM has over 100 telecom clients big and small including Vodafone and Telstra of Australia,” IBM’s vice president, Communication Sector for Asia-Pacific, Ramesh Awtaney said. “IBM is free to strike similar alliances in India,” he added.“IBM can also work with Vodafone in India for which they are yet to receive a call,” Awtaney said when asked whether they would work with the UK-based telecom major which is set to acquire Hutchinson’s stake in HTIL.