03 Apr 1997
Sainsbury's has given a sharp warning to businesses yet to tackle the Year 2000 problem that they will hit labour shortages if they don't act soon.
Despite beginning work on Year 2000 over a year ago, Sainsbury's expects to source half of its expertise in India due to the skills shortage in the UK.
The retailer has already completed an inventory of programmes and identified over 24 million lines of code which need converting - 125 projects to convert systems are already underway and the company is also running offshore pilots in India.
Earlier this month Sainsbury's appointed a senior manager, Bob Hammersley, to take responsibility for Year 2000. He has a #30m budget to tackle it - the cost of a new store.
"The UK is a leader in producing IT professionals, but most of those have jobs so the challenge is to find new people. The labour market is running dry," said Hammersley.
"India is probably one of the only centres of excellence left which has spare capacity."
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