British American Tobacco (BAT) has extended the outsoucing of its IT services and application support functions in a £2m deal designed to drive cost and time savings and improve collaboration across the firm.

Under the deal, supplier Parity will supply application support and development services, as well as consultancy, for a fixed fee of £1m per year.

The agreement extends BAT's 10-year relationship with the vendor, which currently supports 45 BAT applications and carries out additional projects such as developing and supporting the firm's management information and business intelligence systems, building web portals for document management and providing consultancy to implement business process change.