Dive Brief:
- Parkland Corporation will cut 100 corporate employees as it prepares to outsource its day-to-day information technology responsibilities to professional services firm Accenture, Parkland leadership confirmed to C-Store Dive last week.
- About 80 IT employees at Parkland will be laid off, while another 20 will join Accenture, Pierre Costa, Parkland’s chief information officer, and Simon Scott, vice president of communications and corporate affairs, said in a joint interview. The transition will commence at the end of this calendar year.
- Both executives emphasized that this restructuring is unrelated to the company’s ongoing cost-reduction strategy, which has resulted in the termination of at least 300 U.S. employees since January 2023.
Dive Insight:
Parkland has laid off hundreds of employees in the U.S. over the past year and a half to offset declines sparked by economic headwinds across the retailer’s operations.
Costa and Scott said that the company's latest round of layoffs within its IT functions isn’t a means to reduce costs, but to increase the company’s technology capacity and capabilities. They emphasized that the level of technical support and capability Parkland will get via Accenture will be “superior to what we’ve had previously.”
“This is about helping people at the site level and employees across the company get what [they] need faster and more reliably,” Scott said.
The new IT infrastructure will reach across Parkland’s business operations in Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean. Like the company’s efforts to divest its struggling business in Florida, the IT overhaul is also part of an ongoing strategy to double Parkland’s cash flow per share and grow adjusted EBITDA to $2.5 billion by 2028.
One notable area Parkland sees Accenture improving is with point-of-sale blips at the convenience store level. Common POS issues can include hardware malfunctions or software glitches.
“It’s unacceptable to have a point-of-sale issue at a location,” Scott said. “In partnering with Accenture, we can resolve these issues more effectively, more efficiently [and] more cost effectively.”
Costa and Scott said that some individuals from Parkland’s IT team will remain with the organization, including those who work in strategy, solutions architecture, business analysis and project management.
They added that Parkland is assisting employees preparing for the transition and “coaching them on a number of things,” including seeking new employment opportunities.
Calgary, Alberta-based Parkland is the largest independent fuel retailer and second-largest c-store operator in Canada. It has 210 company-operated retail sites in the U.S., in addition to 450 dealer locations.
