The five-year, "multi-million" pound contract covers the information provider's UK operations and involves managed office services.

Reuters has a centralised print facility in London.
"We are delighted to have won this contract," said XGS UK director and general manager John Hopwood.

The deal follows research by XGS with VNU, that revealed that 77% of UK companies believed that documents "were critical to the operation of their business processes". But the survey also found that only 28% had a document strategy in place.

"We believe that if companies have a strategy, we can save them between 20% and 30%," added Hopwood. "We intend to bring to the overall sector new hardware and software, new technology and service."

A total of 1,238 IT decision makers were surveyed in sectors including manufacturing, retail, financial services and utilities. The pan-European study, which was conducted online, found that 20% of companies claimed they had complete management information on the costs of owning, running and supporting of their "fleet of office output devices".

"Whether this is based on a lack of understanding of how to use output devices or a lack of management planning, we feel that companies are losing out in the opportunity to have an efficient document management policy in place," said Hopwood.

XGS' other clients include Ford, Lloyds TSB and Brewin Dolphin. The Xerox division offers services including mailroom, transactional documents, imaging, archive and finance.