Fujitsu just missed out on a major contract with Centrica, the owner of British Gas. Sources say the Centrica board, worried about potential damage to its reputation, decided not to move forward, even though Fujitsu was the preferred bidder for a £45 million end user computing contract.
There’s more going on with Fujitsu. They recently lost a contract with the Northern Ireland Education Board, not because of the controversy surrounding the Post Office scandal, but due to actual implementation issues. That deal, worth about £230 million, faced significant challenges, which raised its risk rating to the highest level.
Fujitsu is hitting a rough patch. Public sector sales have plummeted this year. Reports show that between January and November 2024, the company secured only seven public sector contracts totaling £1.38 million. In the same timeframe last year, they bagged 18 contracts worth over £154 million. Their struggles come after they paused bidding on new government contracts themselves.
Centrica isn’t releasing details about its decision-making, claiming they only use Fujitsu for internal IT support, like laptops and helpdesk services, but they don’t deal with customer-facing functions. Meanwhile, the public response to the Horizon scandal continues to loom large over Fujitsu’s reputation, particularly after ITV’s dramatization highlighted the impact on subpostmasters and the software issues that triggered one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
As for the Education Board, both they and Fujitsu said they agreed to part ways without blame but acknowledged that the implementation had problems that couldn’t be overlooked. Fujitsu thanked them for their partnership despite the difficulties.
In the private sector, things are less clear-cut. Contracts are not disclosed as they are in the public sector, so it’s hard to gauge how deeply the scandal affects Fujitsu’s business there. The company didn’t respond to queries by deadline.