Qantas hands 1,000 legacy apps to Accenture: lessons for NZ firms

What Qantas announced

On Tuesday 10 November, Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson emailed staff to say the airline had signed a multi-year strategic partnership with Accenture to modernise its technology and speed up AI adoption. Qantas says it runs more than 1,000 legacy applications, built up over decades and never designed to work together. Accenture will put money in upfront to speed up work on the airline's data platforms. It will also take over some corporate services, and AviTrader reports that most of that work will be done by Accenture teams in India, with some staying in Australia.

About 850 roles are expected to be affected over the coming years. The first phase covers finance, procurement, people and marketing and is due by mid-2027, according to IBTimes. The same report, citing Reuters, puts the figure at roughly 3% of Qantas's Australian workforce of 28,000. Hudson said the partnership gives Qantas specialist data and AI skills it couldn't hire quickly enough itself. The deal sits on top of more than A$1 billion a year in Qantas technology spending, which includes a Product Innovation Centre in Adelaide expected to grow beyond 400 roles.

The Australian Services Union says it was assured no jobs would go offshore, and its assistant national secretary called the announcement "really shocking news for our members". Qantas denies giving that assurance and says it raised the possibility of roles moving to Accenture in meetings with the union over recent months. The airline says outcomes for individual staff haven't been decided and that it'll consult before they are. Qantas hasn't published the contract's value, length or commercial terms.

Why the structure of the deal deserves attention

The Qantas arrangement combines two purchases that organisations usually make separately. One is a modernisation programme for applications and data platforms. The other is business process outsourcing for back-office functions. Bundling them gives one provider responsibility for redesigning a process, the systems underneath it and the people who run it, which can remove a lot of finger-pointing between vendors. The bundle also raises the cost of leaving, because switching providers later means unpicking systems knowledge and operational staffing at the same time.

Qantas has said that automation and AI will further reshape the outsourced services over time. The scope of a contract like this will keep moving while it runs. For any organisation signing one, the rules for repricing work as automation takes over tasks will matter about as much as the starting price. How Accenture recovers its upfront investment in the Qantas data platforms isn't public.

The 1,000-application figure is the most useful detail for everyone else. Qantas can say how many legacy applications it has, and that count is what lets it scope a programme at all. Australian federal agencies are being pushed the same way. A Home Affairs direction requires non-corporate Commonwealth entities to finish a legacy technology stocktake by the end of March 2027 and to set targets for reducing legacy systems. Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster wrote that running vulnerable legacy systems poses an unacceptable risk to the government.

What the Qantas deal means for NZ businesses

Few New Zealand organisations run anything close to 1,000 applications. The problem Qantas describes still shows up at smaller scale. A typical mid-sized distributor or manufacturer here might run an ageing ERP with a CRM bolted on, a warehouse system connected through a nightly file export, and finance reporting that lives in spreadsheets. AI tools struggle in that setup because the data they need sits in several places and doesn't agree. Qantas has linked its modernisation directly to AI adoption, and NZ firms planning AI projects on fragmented systems will hit the same wall sooner.

Large integrators offering combined modernisation and outsourcing packages aren't limited to Australian corporates. NZ boards and owners are likely to see similar proposals, often with a pitch built around offshore delivery cost and access to AI skills. The Qantas case gives buyers a public reference point for what such a deal includes and how staff and unions may react when the workforce impact becomes known.

The people side carries legal obligations here. Employment New Zealand guidance says employers must share a change proposal with affected employees and their unions before making a decision. The proposal needs to set out the reasons, the timing and the roles affected. Employers then have to genuinely consider feedback and explain which points they accepted or rejected. The public disagreement between Qantas and the ASU over what was said in earlier meetings shows the risk of informal conversations getting ahead of a formal proposal. A leadership team that signs a vendor contract before consulting may find its options for responding to staff feedback already limited by commercial commitments.

Practical next steps

• Build an application and data inventory before you talk to vendors. List each system with its business owner, the data it holds, the systems it connects to, its support status and its annual cost. Even a 40-row spreadsheet gives you a factual basis for any modernisation conversation. Our digital transformation work usually starts from a list like this.
• Evaluate the technology work and the outsourcing work as separate decisions. Score the data platform and application changes on their own merits, even when one provider bids for both. That way, a weak part of the bid can't hide behind a strong one.
• Write exit terms into the contract at signing. Cover ownership of data, process documentation, integration code and configuration, and what handover support the provider owes you if you move the work elsewhere.
• Agree how automation savings will be shared. If the provider automates tasks you're paying for at a per-person or per-transaction rate, the contract should say how prices change. Mapping your current processes first, through a process and automation review, tells you which tasks are likely candidates.
• Run the workforce process alongside the commercial one. Draft the change proposal under Employment New Zealand's guidance before contract terms are fixed, keep a record of what's said to staff and unions, and leave room to act on the feedback you get.