NEW FINANCIAL BACK OFFICE WILL CONTRIBUTE TO 3.5 BLN RUBLE SAVINGS

We have recently opened a unified operations center in Russia's third largest city Nizhny Novgorod that will handle all finance and accounting functions for MTS in Russia.  The move is part of our multi-year centralization strategy that will save the company about 3.5 billion rubles (US $114m) by 2017. 

In April, we completed a similar consolidation of our customer service function in Smolensk and found the financial and efficiency return on investment to be well worth the effort.

There has been a small wave of similar consolidations across Europe led most notably by Vodafone and British Telecom in recent years.  More specifically, Vodafone is the middle of a global SAP ERP rollout, and last year British Telecom opened a unified financial center with 750 employees.  These and other efforts clearly indicate that there are tangible scale benefits in doing so.

The Nizhny Novgorod center will handle all revenue accounting, settlements with vendors, accounting of fixed assets, inventory accounting and tax accounting practices. 

The new office will create 300 new jobs in a city well known as an economic center and for its tech-savvy citizens. Here is a picture of the new office.