The news
The HMRC Salesforce CRM contract, worth up to £2.4 billion including VAT, is set to give HM Revenue & Customs a cloud customer relationship management (CRM) platform for at least ten years, according to a contract award notice HMRC published on September 8, 2026, which The Register reported on September 29.
Salesforce (CRM) came out ahead of Pegasystems (PEGA), which also sells a low-code automation platform with AI features. HMRC received two final bids, The Register reported. The report did not include comment from HMRC or Salesforce.
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform is meant to cover customer and case management, marketing campaigns, messaging, reporting, analytics and AI, according to the notice as summarized by The Register. Third parties may supply other functions, including identity verification, fraud detection and data integration. TenderAlpha, a procurement intelligence firm, said the arrangement is non-exclusive, so HMRC can still buy related services from other suppliers.
The contract runs until September 2036, and extensions of up to five years could stretch it to 2041. TenderAlpha put the value at £2 billion excluding VAT. HMRC first estimated the procurement at £1 billion during preliminary market engagement in April 2025, The Register reported, while the tender notice published in July 2025 listed an estimated value of £2 billion, which The Register described as the potential value over 15 years, including extensions.
The award is running behind the original plan. The tender notice expected the contract to be awarded and to start on May 1, 2026. In June, The Register reported that HMRC had pushed both dates to August 1, 2026; the department said then that the change would have no impact on its customer services. The award notice gave September 28, 2026 as the earliest signing date, and a TenderAlpha roundup published September 15 said the contract was unsigned when the notice went up.
The CRM deal is one piece of a larger overhaul of HMRC's customer-facing technology. On April 27, 2026, HMRC awarded Capgemini a contact-centre-as-a-service contract worth up to £600 million including VAT, for up to ten years, according to The Register. That service is intended to integrate with the new CRM platform.
The numbers
- Maximum contract value
- £2.4 billion including VAT, over up to 15 years
- Value excluding VAT
- £2 billion
- Initial term
- 10 years, to September 2036
- Possible extensions
- Up to 5 years, to 2041
- Final bids received
- 2
- HMRC's April 2025 estimate
- £1 billion
- Related Capgemini contact centre deal
- Up to £600 million including VAT
Why CEOs should care
For SaaS vendors and their partners, this is a reference deal. A central government department is placing a core citizen-service function on a commercial CRM platform for ten to fifteen years. The carve-outs for identity verification, fraud detection and data integration, plus the non-exclusive structure, show where specialist suppliers can still win work around a dominant platform. Vendors bidding for similar programmes may find other public buyers splitting the stack in a similar way.
For CIOs and procurement leads, a contract this long raises questions worth settling before signature, not after. How is data exported if the relationship ends? How are prices adjusted over a decade, and how will AI features be charged as they change? HMRC's figure rose from a £1 billion early estimate to a £2 billion tender value covering up to 15 years with extensions; the sources do not say why, so buyers should be clear about the period and scope behind any estimate.
For CFOs and boards, the headline figure is a ceiling rather than committed spend, and it should be read that way in any comparison. The timeline slipped from a planned May 1 start to an August 1 target and then to an award notice on September 8. HMRC's slip suggests that budgets for a large platform replacement should allow for delays and for a period in which old and new systems may both need support.
The bigger picture
The pressure on HMRC's service channels is well documented. According to The Register, a 2025 report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee found that nearly 44,000 callers were cut off in the first 11 months of 2023-24 after spending 70 minutes trying to reach an adviser. The committee also found that only about two-thirds of calls were answered and that average waits exceeded 23 minutes. In May 2024, the National Audit Office put the combined time people spent on hold to HMRC in 2022-23 at 798 years.
Pairing an outsourced contact centre service from Capgemini with a SaaS CRM from Salesforce shows how a large public body is assembling its customer operations from specialist providers rather than a single integrator. For private-sector buyers with similar service backlogs, HMRC's approach is a useful model to study, including the risks of coordinating several suppliers across one customer journey.
What’s next
Watch for confirmation that the contract has been signed and for published contract details, including how much of the £2.4 billion ceiling, which covers the full potential 15 years with extensions, relates to the initial ten-year term. Other signals to track are whether HMRC names third-party suppliers for identity, fraud and data integration work, how the Salesforce platform is connected to Capgemini's contact centre service, and when taxpayers start to see changes in how their queries are handled.
What “Fact-checked” means
Fact-checking means testing a story’s facts against the evidence before it is published. This story went through at least two separate checks before this version was published.
- What we checked
- Its names, figures, dates, job titles, quotes and who said what were checked against the story’s sources, including its main source where it could be opened. The headline was checked for accuracy and overstatement.
- How
- A first check reviewed the whole story. If it passed, a second, skeptical check went back to the sources to look for mistakes in the most important facts. If a check flagged the story, it was edited to fix the problems found, and a separate re-check then reviewed the whole story again.
- Who
- The checks are made by our newsroom, as steps kept separate from the writing, under rules set by our editor, Hussein Mukhtar. A story the checks still flag is held for the editor, who decides whether it is fixed, published or dropped.
- If something is wrong
- “Fact-checked” does not mean error-free. If a material error is found after publication, we correct the story and add a note saying what changed. Report an error
Companies in this story
