Global Business Services – established internal service providers

Global Business Services provide services for all divisions, with some 13,000 employees supporting the Group in the areas of Legal Services, Insurance, Procurement, Finance Operations, Information Technology, Real Estate, Fleet Management, In-house Consulting, Human Resources Operations and Innovation Management.

We successfully generated value in 2007. Our Procurement unit attained a top score in an external comparative study, and another comparative study testified to the high level of effectiveness and exemplary cost structure in Legal Services. Human Resources Operations is set to provide payroll accounting for employees in the various regions along with centralised human resources management and made a start in 2007 with Germany, Asia and the United States.

Higher quality at lower costs

We significantly cut costs and enhanced quality in many areas, with both kinds of improvement benefiting the entire Group. Procurement achieved major savings for the third year running, whilst a decrease of more than €50 million in insurance costs was secured by taking policies that were previously held externally and combining them in-house. Substantial real estate costs savings were made by reducing vacancy rates. All service units are highly cost-aware in their work and take care when purchasing services on a large scale to ensure that costs rise in less than direct proportion to procurement volume. A customer-supplier relationship has become established between Global Business Services and its internal business partners. Service quality, scope and price are set a year at a time in service level agreements. This assures planning confidence and transparency for both sides.