Qantas outsources 850 roles to Accenture: the automation lesson

What Qantas announced

On Tuesday 10 November, Qantas Group told staff that around 850 corporate roles will be affected by a new multi-year partnership with Accenture. ABC News reported that finance, procurement and marketing are the first teams in scope, and that the first changes are due by mid-2027. According to Quartz's summary of the company statement, Accenture teams in India will deliver most of the transferred work, some of it will stay in Australia, and the services will be changed through automation and AI over time. Accenture is also making an upfront investment to modernise the group's data platforms.

Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson linked the deal to the airline's technology estate. She said Qantas runs on more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together, and that the partnership will expand the airline's use of AI (ABC). Her statement included the line "Standing still is not an option for us" (Quartz). Qantas shares rose more than 6% on the news.

The announcement came three months after Qantas pushed back on an earlier report. In August, Information Age covered an Australian Financial Review story about a project called "Project iQ" that could move up to 1,000 back-office roles to India. At that point Qantas said no formal agreement existed and denied that job losses were planned. The Australian Services Union's assistant national secretary, Scott Cowen, told the ABC that members were shocked by this week's news, that most of the affected jobs are in Sydney, and that the union will fight for every role.

Outsourcing first, automation later

The order of events in the Qantas deal deserves attention from anyone planning back-office automation. Qantas is moving the work to a provider first. Automation and AI come afterwards, over a period the airline hasn't defined. Neither company has said how many of the 850 roles will be replaced by automation and how many will simply move offshore. Qantas also hasn't disclosed the contract value or which processes will be automated first.

Under that model, the provider ends up redesigning the processes. Accenture's staff will learn how Qantas actually runs invoice matching, supplier onboarding and campaign approvals, including the exceptions and workarounds that never made it into a procedure document. Once the provider's staff hold that knowledge, the automation that follows will be built around the provider's view of the process. Bringing the work back in-house, or moving it to another provider, becomes harder with each year.

Accenture already has similar arrangements with other large Australian companies. Telstra formed a $700 million joint venture with Accenture in early 2025, 60% owned by Accenture (Information Age), and Telstra has since revealed plans to cut 209 jobs (ABC). The ABC also reported that Coles may move up to 1,000 jobs offshore after partnering with Accenture. Three household names have now made similar arrangements, and boards on both sides of the Tasman will notice.

Why NZ businesses should pay attention

Most NZ organisations won't sign a seven-figure transformation deal. Many of them do buy the smaller version of the same arrangement: an offshore accounts payable team, a managed payroll service, or an ERP partner who promises to "add automation in phase two". The same questions apply at any size, because the trade-off is the same. You gain capacity quickly, and you give a third party control over how your processes evolve.

The Qantas example also shows how legacy systems push companies toward outsourcing. When a business runs on hundreds of applications that don't share data, automating a finance process means building integrations first. Handing the whole problem to a provider with capital to invest looks attractive. NZ mid-sized firms often face a smaller version of the same mess, such as an ERP that hasn't been upgraded, a separate procurement tool, and spreadsheets bridging the gaps. Fixing those data flows is usually the real prerequisite for automation, regardless of who ends up doing the work.

Staff and reputation risk needs planning too. Qantas promised to consult with affected employees and unions and to redeploy people where possible, and the union response still dominated the coverage. NZ employers considering restructures linked to automation or outsourcing should get employment advice early and document the business case carefully, because the process will be scrutinised.

Practical next steps

Before you outsource a back-office function, or before your provider starts automating one, work through these points:

• Map the process before anyone else touches it. Record the steps, the systems, the exception rates and who handles each exception. Without that baseline, you can't judge whether a provider's automation has improved anything.
• Decide which processes you'd automate in-house. High-volume, rules-based work such as invoice capture, three-way matching and supplier data checks is often cheaper to automate directly than to outsource and automate later. Our process and automation team starts with this assessment.
• Write ownership into the contract. Process documentation, bots, workflow definitions, prompts and training data built during the engagement should belong to you, with a handover obligation if the contract ends.
• Require automation milestones with numbers. "Automation over time" isn't a commitment. Ask for target volumes, accuracy rates and dates, and tie part of the fee to achieving them.
• Fix the data layer as a separate piece of work. If your finance and procurement data lives across disconnected systems, consolidating it is a project in its own right. An ERP review will show whether your current platform can support automation or needs replacing first.
• Check where data and processing will sit. Offshore delivery means staff overseas will access financial and supplier records. Confirm which countries are involved and how access is logged, and check your obligations under the Privacy Act 2020 for any personal information.
• Plan the people side alongside the technology. Identify which roles change, which staff can move to higher-value work, and how you'll consult, before any announcement leaks.

What to watch

Qantas's first changes land by mid-2027, so the real test of the deal is about 18 months away. The useful signals will be whether Qantas reports measurable automation results in finance and procurement, and whether the 850 figure grows or shrinks as automation takes over work that was first moved offshore. For NZ firms, the question to settle now is who will design and own your automated processes. You can still set those terms before signing a contract, and they're much harder to change afterwards.